Muse

Well, well, well, well, well. If it isn't the big-time, hot-shot lawyer, man.

Oh, my God. I do not have time for you. Yeah, sir, we both have busy schedules, so I'll make this quick.

A shot mince words with you for long. I am challenging you, sir, to a duel.

I accept. Are you serious? No, I accept your challenge.

Do you want time to think it over?

No! Nope, nope, nope, not at all. What time were you thinking of dueling?

Any time is good, really. I don't know. You don't have time, because you would have to go out and get a proper gun.

No, I have a gun. I actually keep one right here in the drawer.

You got one right there? I don't need to see it.

I like to keep it loaded, because you never know who's going to walk into a law office these days.

Safety first. So, let's rethink some things. TBTL.

Good afternoon and welcome to Judgment City.

You've just had quite a little journey, so for now, relax and enjoy the ride. I swear, every time this guy talks, all I hear is a turkey goblin. You look like Matlock.

No, I look like a young Paul Newman dressed as Matlock. It's not great. It's fantastic. You totally undersold it. The pageantry, the costumes, wow.

That is obviously what is clear that our view is we don't support that view.

It stinks.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everybody, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Definitely. For sharks. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. When you got God, you got a friend, and that friend is you. Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is just absolutely gorgeous today.

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

It's a weird sort of feeling because all of the news is talking about this absolutely terrible winter weather that's descending on the U.S. and, in fact, emanating from the West Coast. And yet here in Portland, it's got to be like, it's like 50 degrees, blue skies. It's just absolutely gorgeous. So sending a good thought out to all the people who aren't getting to enjoy this kind of weather and who are dealing with all kinds of ice and snow and sleet and this and that and the other. We have arrived at episode 3841 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Known as this, that, and also the other. That's which episode we're at We have some top stories to talk about Including a white elephant Gift exchange At a workplace That got intense Because somebody won $175,000

That cash could really get me out of a couple of jams

From a thing That they only got Because somebody stole Their actual present we'll talk it we'll talk it we'll talk it about that also rest in peace Franco Harris Pittsburgh Steel are responsible for the immaculate reception

believe it or not I'm a complete catch

does it matter if the immaculate reception actually happened because I was watching a lot of video this morning and it's a decent case to be made for the idea that it it didn't it was so immaculate that it was actually impossible. Maybe we call it the impossible reception. Anyway, we'll talk about Franco Harris, plus do some emails and V-mails, and say hello to this young man, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

You're like the coolest person I've ever met.

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

Good morning, Luke. I got a letter from the county here this morning waiting for me on the kitchen table when I woke up. It's from the Department of Elections, not Corrections. If you thought I was going to say Corrections, don't worry.

Honestly, that would elevate you in my estimation. Really? I have to go knock over to 7-Eleven in order to gain your respect? If you had a few kind of skirmishes with the law, I would be into that. Huh.

Okay. Good to know. Hold on. I'm writing that down. Okay. Get arrested.

Not even arrested.

I'm just saying get on their radar. It's for my Thrive review coming up in the new year.

What are your goals for the new year? Get arrested. Get on law enforcement's radar.

Slash good for TBTL plot lines. Now, this isn't a huge deal. I don't mean to overstate it, but I'm in my head about this a little bit. You know.

I'm 46 years old. I know my signature has changed a bit over the years. We just recently bought a house. There's a lot of things you sign when you do that. Your signature might get a little bit lazier by the end of that process. Oh, my gosh.

Those documents are ridiculous. I was signing Groucho Marx by the end of that last time I bought a house.

Don't do that if you're trying to vote because the Department of Elections sent me a note saying, Hey, listen, we got your ballot this time around. Don't worry. It was counted. It's all cool. But, and I'll quote here, in each election, we compare the signature on your return envelope to the signature on your voter registration record, which I probably filled that out when I first moved here in 2009. I don't know. A ballot may only be counted if we can match the signatures on your record. The match of your signature was sufficient to count your ballot this time. However, we recommend you update your signature on file to avoid a future mismatch or other issue.

This makes me so furious.

Now I've got, they sent me a signature update form, Luke, with three chances. Like, I'm so nervous about signing this now because, you know, like now suddenly it's kind of like, oh, this is the new one that's going to be on record. And like a signature only works if you don't think about it too much, right? The second you start thinking about the signature as you're writing it, you're going to mess it up or do something weird.

Yes. You have to just go into a flow state. Like I was recently when two Microsoft, I'm sorry, two software fans showed up after Livewire and I signed two different printouts. And I was very proud of what I wrote, by the way, on these, like a photograph of me and then the Microsoft, I'm sorry, the software logo. i wrote because you know these are security videos i believe i said i wrote on one you're the most important factor in dual factor authentication and then the other one i wrote you fished for my heart and you caught it wow that's really good that's getting and i spelled fish with a ph there's like actually some of my best work but when i signed it i had to like totally relax and just be like it's okay if the l and the b are kind of they are what they are because you're right if you overthink signing your signature it'll get it'll get wonky pretty fast now this makes me furious though because this feels to me like it is a reaction to the people who have a problem with quote-unquote election integrity hey i don't know like do you think that the state of washington would be doing this if we weren't in a hyper politicized environment where there's this cadre of people who are obsessed with this idea that like people are cheating and voting in you know the the wrong election or the wrong people which side note is the least efficient way to throw an election like that's the thing that makes me so mad about that idea is like one person is going to go out and they're going to impersonate 10 other people and they're going to go you know stand at the gymnasium you know if it's an in-person voting state and vote for on behalf of someone else but like throw it for aoc like it's the it would just be the most time-consuming way to try to cheat an

election i'm not saying i want you to cheat an election luke i'm just saying i want you on the election board's radar i would i would require no signature i wouldn't even require that people vote I would just declare it for Barack Obama here's the deal I'm a little skeptical of that only because I don't think there's a lot of that pressure in King County I think King County's just just being smart and probably I feel like this would have happened five years ago too I could be wrong I know we have wackos in the state of Washington who are currently claiming election fraud over their recent losses i know that like washington state is not immune to this tiffany smiley doing that um no it's not smiley it is no smiley has conceded although smiley did not concede to um murray herself she conceded just like the campaign manager like these sore losers

man there's by way of carrie lake uh like carrie lake that's the person who's also not conceding

in arizona yeah i think i can't remember the name of the candidate in uh eastern washington who at least as far as i know still has not conceded and is of course just churning up more headlines it'll go nowhere but it'll just bolster their reputation for the next time um they run right but anyway yeah i i don't know i i could be wrong you know what would you know what would um sort of answer that question if a bunch of other people in king county are also receiving this now or if there was something about because maybe that does make the most sense i mean maybe they do an audit

every now and then they say, hey, let's take, what, 5,000, 10,000 sample voters and check their signatures and see if it's up to date? Or is there something specifically about my signature that kind of raised an alarm? Because this is not the first time I've gotten a letter from the election board a long time ago. Regarding your signature? It wasn't about my signature, but for some reason, one of my ballots was not accepted one time. It might have actually been my signature i don't think it was though but i know i got it on time because i don't mail it in i drop it off i've always it's like a little tradition are you writing john hancock on these things no i'm just dipping my cat's paw in a little bit of ink and then i'm pressing it down and you know what the thing is i use a different cat this time that's that's what it is yep they got a bingo paw bingo no i mean that's what i mean my signature has definitely gotten more relaxed over the years um and so it's you know i mean is it a security threat to describe one signature i think that's probably public record right it's a big a and some squiggles and a big w and some squiggles i mean the squiggles what's your mother's maiden signature they're barely squiggles anymore it's like a and a line and w and a line so really all you have to match up is the a and w really um but yeah so and i'm wondering if back in the day i when i first filled out a card i was more careful about it the the ndrew maybe was a little bit more pronounced and now it's just like a slash because i'm kind of a cool guy you know what i mean like

a real cool signature guy um so maybe that's a big a and then squiggle and then big w squiggle

big w yeah i'm in the pocket of big w i um big w energy i uh yeah i mean honestly if you can imagine a big capital a in in um like uh you know in print form i don't use cursive and like so comic sans yeah so that would be funny if what if i could just have that ability to perfectly create comic sans with my handwriting um the the line that goes through the a just kind of becomes the line that extends out to the right and represents that's what i do with my l there you go that's what i do with your a when i'm voting on your behalf yeah exactly and smiley still didn't win so um it doesn't i don't even know if i vote counted next time yeah i almost bought something

off of instagram speaking of like comic sans fonts or things that are a little bit uh you know we might say hokey it's a photograph of like danny from the shining but he's writing instead of

writing red rum he's writing live laugh love that's good it's a pretty good spoof like

they're really getting me with these instagram ads this time of year also i'm out of ideas for presents for the people in my life who i love um but i was like man because i'm not like a big i don't have a lot of movie posters up in the house or you know certainly band posters things that are I just feel a little bit to be the sort of interest of a person in their 20s. That's not really my vibe. But that one was actually funny enough that I was like, that could be pretty cool if you actually got that and framed it.

Yeah, although I feel like that's why I like the Internet. You got to see it, you got to enjoy it, and you got to move on, you know.

I got to share it with the listeners. Exactly. But, Andrew, can I buy a framed copy of your dart scoring system? oh you saw my little picture i saw that on instagram and i have questions i don't even

think what the hell is going on i have a feeling that i i have this vague notion that when i took that and posted i thought i hope luke doesn't ask me about it because i literally cannot explain it

on the show like i literally cannot explain something to you yeah well i mean that you can look at it and identify what happened in a particular game with all those circles and

Most dark, okay, so basically what we're looking at, I mean, the very basic of what you're looking at there is not especially weird. It's just a bunch of X's with circles around them. I was playing a game of cricket, and that's how you score cricket. So, okay, let me just try. But honestly, this would be a great time to refill your cup of coffee. This would be a good time to maybe check in on those kiddos, make sure that there is still, nobody's swallowed any Legos or anything. Why would I put that in the universe? All right, so...

I would say stepping on a Lego is more of a health threat than swallowing a Lego. I would take swallowing a Lego over stepping on a Lego.

Hmm. Yeah, maybe. If I had, like, if I could down it with some water and an Advil. All right, so the game of cricket is pretty straightforward. On the scoreboard, you put the numbers 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. And then you put a B for bullseye. so those what is that six things you need to do is you need to score

a 20 at least three times you need to get your dart in the realm of the 20 at least three times you need to get three 19s you need to get three 18s there are ways to get doubles and triples in the game too but basically triples are best triples are best so if you're playing against somebody the first person to close out all of those categories 20 through 15 and a bullseye but getting them each three times or getting a double or triples or whatever it takes to get you there whoever gets there first wins if two or three people are playing or whatever right now what you saw was that scoreboard but also me using three different colored markers to indicate various things and i think well actually maybe just say two because i think one color was just me using red to put the numbers up there but i was playing this game by myself not unlike when i was a young child with a dartboard playing darts by myself in my basement or when i was a young

child pitching a mariner's game with a tennis ball into a zone on a brick wall while listening

to it well i'll tell you what i played a lot of darts this summer while listening to baseball games and it's really hard not to like kind of draw comparisons to sort of like findings the zone and like controlling your pitch sometimes you'll throw an off-speed the dart bar will be way in front of it just caught the outside of the board on that one so what happens is I don't even know how to okay so when you're scoring a game of cricket the way I just described it you put the numbers up and down not left to right so it's like 20 at the top 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and then a bullseye at the bottom and then you're scoring in columns so player one will then kind of mark their score when they get one of those points they put a slash when they get their second 20 it's a slash the other way so you have an X and when they get their final 20 they're third 20 you put a circle around it you've closed that out there's also a way of accumulating points if you play that way but i don't um so when i'm playing by myself i start with i mean is let's just call them imaginary players but they're not imaginary they're me i'm just playing against myself they're just like ghost runners but i let's say you have player on the left hand of the board and player on the right hand of the board and i just start playing the game i just alternate player on the left hand side goes for the bullseyes first marks whatever score it is player on the right goes you alternate but if i'm in a good groove and it's a pretty close game and one of my imaginary players or let's just say left column wins and closes it out and right column was getting pretty close i might say all right let's turn this into a two column game in other words i don't i'm not ready to end now i'm just going to continue playing and i'm going to use you're rooting for the underdog in a way i'm kind of extending it it's like that it's like that product extends that's what it's for it's for dark games are you familiar with that

i am is that one of the things that um uh who's the there was a coach who's the white socks

guy frank oh frank not uh i didn't say miller but that's not it that's a comic book artist i know you're talking about no um he does have some sort of like uh product that he sells that is a A supplement. A supplement.

It's one of the most suppulant supplements.

I have upstairs near our Christmas tree, there is a bottle of liquid that we pour into the water that we give the Christmas tree to help it stay green longer. And the name of this Christmas tree slash plant stuff is called Prolong. And I told Genevieve that I need to come up with a quiz For some podcast One of these podcasts I do I need to come up with a quiz Is it a men's product Or something that you feed your plants Because I feel like Prolong and Extends Are the first two clues 100%

I can't believe that they didn't The people who made that didn't Also there seems to be more of a Is it specifically for trees?

Yeah it's for Christmas trees

I feel like there is a more Christmassy Play on words that they could do I'm waiting I can't think of it at the moment But I'm not in charge of that company I'm saying if you gave me an hour I could come up with something It just seems like you should have a pun That's Christmas related For your powder that you put in the water That prolongs a Christmas tree's life

Santa's little helper I guess that one's taken by the Simpsons That also sounds like a boner Don't ask me about my private life I would take a moment to wish everybody a happy holidays and a season's greetings. Anyway, I'm playing cricket by myself. When I decide to not end the game but I keep going, I switch the color of markers so that if at the end of this prolonged game now, I want to go back and kind of see which one of these players won officially the first round.

round by and i scored that using the black marker but then which player ended up kind of continuing on i started using a green marker and then when i still didn't want to end and i just closed out whoever the ultimate loser was i think i switched to a brown marker yeah so i had three different colors i don't think any of that really made sense at all but you got your answer this drives

this drives people to your instagram feed though yeah but it's gone now that was forever green

days ago how about forever green oh that's pretty good yeah forever right and it could f-i-r like

the the fur oh even better yes yeah forever green we make a good team honestly like uh can we buy that company and rebrand it because i feel like we could make some real money by by not calling

it a boner pill forever what do they call what do they call it crazy rhino boner pills for your tree huh there is something called fur evergreen tree farm where is this place i'm suing the pants

right now good luck enforcing that copyright trademark what have you oh they're in canada oh i got this i mean they legally probably can't even enter this airspace alberta i'm coming after you who's even by the way five of the donors of the day will be in alberta i hope so we've manifested it they're all going to be your family members somehow some it just works out that way all right let's take a quick break and then uh when we come back i i'm i am fascinated and mildly obsessed with this first top story about a white elephant gift at a place of work where somebody won one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars uh so we'll talk about that in a minute here on tbtl hey let's thank some of our daily donors who are keeping tbtl rolling with their monthly support which we are extremely appreciative for folks like don tyler up there in seattle washington or maybe down there in seattle washington depending on if don lives north or

south of you andrew how's the snow up there well the snow exists um as they say in internet talk um it is 24 degrees here right oh sorry update is 25 degrees here i am continually surprised at the difference between our weather and temperature patterns between our two cities which i think to be you know i i just i guess it's just a simple way of thinking which is how i like to approach the world but i just figured we'd share more weather patterns i know well it's 40 here so

it's not like it's it's not balmy but it is bare and dry it's blue skies there's no snow anywhere

up down here well the streets are still um the streets are still kind of a little bit slushy and stuff but nothing has fallen since yesterday morning i think as long as it doesn't get in the

way of me getting to karaoke at the eagles on friday andrew yeah i guess i was wrong huh yesterday

singular purpose i told you i think yesterday on the show that genevieve's karaoke kj debut by the way she has a kj name i will not reveal it here but she's very excited about this she has a kj name um she's going to be doing uh karaoke at the eagles she's brought it back for the first time after pandemic and um she tested out the equipment yesterday kicked the tires on that and i told you that tomorrow was going to be her debut but instead it will be Friday and you were already going to be up here looking for some fun times on Friday. I know I was considering

going up early just to catch that and then we were like texting around in our friend group and Veeves was like oh yeah Friday's going to be my debut and I was like oh well this is just kismet. Also it would appear based on the photo that Genevieve has been training under the world's buffest karaoke KJ. What is that guy is freaking dope.

That's a friend of ours. It's so funny. I love that photo so much.

Look at the gains.

I know. I know. That's our friend T. He's in very good shape. He's very fit. Doing some upper body stuff, clearly. Sweetest guy. He helps with bingo and stuff. And so he was helping Genevieve set. I was not there yesterday, but I guess they were at the Eagles setting up the equipment, giving it a test. And then in the background of that photo, this is so silly for listeners who've never seen this photo. I'll ask Genevieve if it can be the show photo today. In the background, you see Darren, who was the president when we joined, and he loves karaoke. He will slip into some pretty screamo karaoke pretty quickly, usually like hair metal from the 80s, I think, the early 80s. But I love that photo because Genevieve just sent us a quick selfie of her kind of acknowledging that everything was good to go. And you see T in the background kind of buffed out, kind of like in action, looking like he's troubleshooting something. And then Darren just screaming into him.

her phone behind it. And Genevieve just looking blissful. And Genevieve just looking like, I'll just say it, what is it? It's KJBA Bass is her KJ name, because one time Oh, I like that. Her nickname is Veves, I always call her Veves, spelled V-I-E-V-E-S, and we were at karaoke, oh, like 20 years ago in New Hampshire, and she put in her name with her slip as Veves, but the KJ I think was probably a Spanish speaker first and saw that as b-a-bass not vives so they kept calling b-a-bass and then he was like oh that's me and so now sometimes we call her b-a-bass and so now her karaoke name that would explain her instagram handle yeah yeah yeah because she spells it out b-e-e yeah e however i had never

understood what that was i thought it was b-a-bass right it doesn't really make following your girlfriend on instagram for now many moons and i've always been like i guess her name is b-a-bass On Instagram

Yeah she phonetically In English spelled out B.A. Bass But that's a good point I don't know how she's Going to spell her K.J. name But hope I didn't Steal her thunder there

Very very excited And you know who would Never do Screamo music On Genevieve's On B.A. Bass Debut at K.J. Tony Erickson Of Minneapolis, Minnesota Mostly because it's A long flight To get to Seattle But also because Tony has good taste And he would just Be so tired

By the time he got here He would do Exactly He'd be more

Like kind of mumble Yeah I would definitely be doing Linger. Of course, that gets kind of... Okay, sorry, Tony. Thank you very much. No, Zombie gets a little... Yeah.

Zombie, Zombie, Zombie.

Oh, save it for the Winter Games, birds. Thanks, Tony. Thanks also to Jessica Jordan of Tacoma, Washington.

Thank you, Jessica.

Thanks to Heather Lynch as well in Newtown, Pennsylvania. Do you think there was a period of time And listen Full respect To the pilgrims And the well actually not really full respect To the pilgrims they didn't want to pay taxes I don't know if I respect the pilgrims Neither did the Beatles If only there were a song That always irritates me Summed up the Beatles feelings about taxes

Because I think Donovan was on that too Like all these hippy dippy like Supposed progressives from that time Were like rallying But then again There might have been something funky About the UK's tax laws I don't know the ins and outs It's just like get a better manager It's just like Jesus Christ You're really writing You're all writing songs as hippies About not wanting to pay your taxes Like get a better inspiration

Yeah it One wonders Well like you know Paul and Ringo are still around I guess one wonders What those folks would look like at 80 I guess we again We kind of know because two of them are still alive and they seem, you know, reasonably. I haven't seen any of them on Alex Jones lately, so that's, I guess, a win. But I was going to say, do you feel like a lot of the early settlers to the northeast were just like, we're calling it Newtown. I don't know why they talk like John Lovitz. I was going to say, it stinks. There's a lot of Newtowns and they're like, what should we call this place? We just. Oh, there's a Newtown. Most of us died of scurvy getting here. We'll call it the new place. Remember England? We're going to call this New England. Holy forking shirt balls. This is the new place.

One of my favorite Simpsons lines is when somebody mentions New Mexico and Homer just says, ooh, there's a New Mexico.

Thank you, Heather Lynch in Newtown, PA. Thanks also to Stacey Martin in Kalispell, Montana See, by the time they got to Montana They were like, we're not calling anything Newtown No, it's all been done It's in the words of the bare naked ladies It's all been done You know that song, right? I don't think so, but you don't have to sing it

Now I kind of want to

Are you coming to karaoke on Friday or are you a pass on that?

Yeah, no, I'll be there, yeah.

I'm going to sing It's All Been Done With the Barney.

I wonder if it's one of those songs that when I hear it, I'll recognize it. Yes, you'll totally know. That's kind of why I don't need to sing it because that other one, don't do it, but it gets stuck in my head. No, we'll make it a surprise for Friday. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you, Stacey. Thanks also to Sarah Roilance of Seattle, Washington. Same last name as the famed British actor Mark Roilance.

Oh, I don't know Mark Roilance.

If you Googled him, you would. He's like always he's always the person standing next to someone in some kind of movie called like the king's speech or whatever. And he's always getting an Oscar nom.

OK, let's see here.

He actually I think it's Mark Rylance. I don't think he even has the same last name as sir. It's Rylance It's not Roilance Dang it Yeah Sarah I'm sorry I've besmirched The good name of the Roilances Of Seattle Washington But we appreciate the donation very much And we would love to get Mark Rylance In the game as well So if you know him Please You know Help us out Thanks to all of our donors

What the hell is TVTL episode As an intro

That would be I think For his preparation He's probably playing a podcaster In his next role But like a very tortured podcaster who will be nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. So let him know. Thanks to all of our donors of the day for making TBTL possible. We really do appreciate you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I think this is a very interesting top story. It's a story of somebody named Laurie Janes, who was at a work thing at a Louisville dental office. And it was like the work holiday party And it was a white elephant Now we've been talking a lot of white elephant on the show Of late Well really just on Monday and then today But Lori was in this white elephant Thing and she Picked Initially Let me see let me turn to the next page

So this was a proper white elephant I'll buy you some time here by asking because I haven't Read this article yet you're welcome for me not prepping for the show um was this a proper white elephant where people were doing that thing where they were kind of stealing others others gifts yes it was it was uh one of

those ones where you can steal she was number four on the list so she was the fourth person to go and uh she was very excited uh because uh as number four she was able to get a 25 gift card to T.J. Maxx. That was what she drew. And then one of the hygienists at the dental practice said, don't get too attached to your gift card, Lori. I'm going to steal it. And sure enough, this other person snatched the T.J. Maxx gift card, which then led Lori to grab something else, which was, it turned out to be some kind of scratchers for the lottery There in Louisville And she started scratching And it was a $50 prize Basically everyone was like, Laurie, scratch it off As they're all sitting there So she scratches the first one It's a $10 scratcher and it's a $50 prize Then she scratches a $3 ticket Which was $10 Then she scratches another $10 Scratch off Which said that it was $20,000 And she was thinking That this was some kind of a You know that they actually make Fake scratchers I've seen this on TikTok They make like these scratch off tickets That are like a million dollars You put them in someone's stocking And then ruin their life

Why would you ever do that to somebody

Thank you What is the upside What kind of cruel family Again I've seen this on TikTok People giving somebody Who they allege to love A scratch off ticket That is for a million dollars And the people will be on the phone with other people like their entire life has changed they think and then you look they're like look at the back look at the back and the back is like you know saying this is a joke

that is not funny that is just not funny not funny at all do any good to anybody ask yourself

if you're somebody thinking about getting someone a joke scratch off ticket ask yourself what's the denouement of this what is the ending of this when i say to them it's a joke are they happy or are they looking for a bridge somewhere like that is the one of the meanest things i think you could ever do so uh laurie was wondering is this a joke it was not a joke she ended up winning in total off of these scratch-off tickets 175 000 jeez louise and the reason i'm fascinated with this is because how do you live if you're the person who went with the tj max gift card how do you get through the rest of your life knowing that there was a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars within your grasp and you you went you you decided to be a maxinista you become a super villain I think I think that's your origin story it really is and this is the other question I had Andrew if like imagine that you know TBTL had an actual staff that wasn't just you and me and we had like a staff christmas party and you had like uh you know we were doing a white elephant and you had the little thing and i stole it from you or or you stole something john may be there

yeah they're running it they're very good at running things

and I like honestly I'm fairly disorganized so all holiday parties going forward are handled by John and May but I mean like do you think it would negatively impact our friendship if you had had if in some way either you you hoisted yourself by your own petard on that or I stole it from you in some white elephant context and $175,000 moved from your side of things to my side of things through whatever circumstance?

Well, first of all, depending on how the white elephant thing played out, it sort of sounds like the woman who really wanted to be the Maxinista, as you say, kind of played themselves, right? Of course. You can't really be bitter about that. If somebody took it from you, it's unclear to me whether or not this winner took this from somebody else's man. So that actually helped, because you're right.

She didn't steal this from somebody else. She had her gift stolen, the TJ Maxx gift card, and so then she went for something that looked promising, and she got. And then, although, I feel like there was another line in the story about whatever it was having been stolen the maximum number of times, which you were saying was kind of...

I wasn't familiar with that part, yeah.

You can freeze a white elephant gift usually after, I think, two steals, or once it's been stolen twice or something. But, yeah, like, but to answer your question,

well, knowing you and me, I mean, you would be pretty magnanimous about it, if that's the right word. I feel like, like, I'm not saying that you're going to cut me a check for 50K. That goes beyond magnanimous. But I feel like you would do very you would use some of that money to do very nice things to me. Like you would be very conscious of that dynamic as very nice things, money and you would do very nice things on me. It's funny what a preposition can change. I just sort of feel like I mean, this is a tiny, tiny, tiny. I mean, we're talking about what you say, one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars versus after taxes.

I think it was one twenty five still in the six figures versus my example, which I'm going to throw out here.

when I gave Darren a $1 pull tab. And what did he end up winning? Did he win $100? Yeah, I think maybe he won $100 or something like that. And I hadn't won that pull tab forever. I give him one of my pull tabs because I owed him $1, so I paid him back in the pull tab, and he won. And, of course, everybody was like, he tried to give me the money. We tried not to take the money. He left us a bunch. You know what I mean? I don't think that it's a huge difference between $100. I mean, you could probably figure out. If you had a calculator, you could figure out the difference between $100 and $125,000. I mean, I couldn't just do that on the fly. One is more than the other? One is more than the other. But also one is less than the other, which is what always confuses me about that. Multiple things can be true. But anyway, I just sort of feel like you would do the $100,000 version of that, whatever that means. You know what I mean? And I think that I would as well. I mean it really kind of depends on But you and I are also close friends You know what I mean We don't work at Well that's the other thing What if you were at Cairo Right exactly And Jason Antebi Well that's a bad example

But like how about Maren Brustwin Uh huh right Like somehow like Again we're now veering off of what actually happened But imagine that you have it And somebody steals it from you And it's like Brian Bucklew Right right right Bucklew's a friend of ours, too. Bucklew's a friend.

I think he would do... Who's even there anymore that we know? I think it's just Bucklew, and he's fired everybody else.

Ursula Royteen steals it from you that it's frozen, and then Ursula's got $175,000 to spend at the wide shoe store. Whatever she was at for these days. Yeah, right. I guess my thought is that is an amount of money that is fairly life-changing, right? And that allows you to buy a house maybe that you couldn't have afforded otherwise or pay off your kid's college or something. I mean, that is life-changing money in the six figures. And that life-changing money was just circulating at this dental practice in Louisville. And I feel like I would hope that I would be able to just – I've never had this experience at a casino where I've like sat down at second base on the table. And then the person sits in at first base And they win a hundred grand or something But I think that would really mess with my brain

Especially if it's a stranger Yeah I do think it really has to do with Your relationship to the person And what the situation

situation is certainly like that's why when i when i'm at the casino i'm playing a table game i always have to be at first base that's like first position so when the dealer is dealing you're the first person to get the card and it depends on the game like in blackjack that matters you get the cards first there are certain games like pie gal where the cards come out sort of randomly so it doesn't really matter if you're at first base it does not mean that you're getting the first cards but there is something that is so uh sort of troubling for me about the idea of being at second base so second position and then someone sits at first base and then they get a hundred and seventy five thousand dollars yeah i do so much to avoid that ever happening

and it's worked it's never happened to me that's why i don't want to play um blackjack anymore i only played twice with like real people it was at goldie's and the first time it was get ready on friday you think we're not going to be a cold and then the next time i got yelled at by the person i was there with you but you were at a different table i was just there by myself and i've been this is years ago now we were working i know i remember us being there but

boy had i been at the table and someone was yelling at my friend andrew yeah i would be

banned for life nobody would be that wouldn't have worked out well for anybody involved um but uh yeah i mean somebody didn't holler at me but just kind of said you know i had been practicing blackjack on my ipad for like weeks or whatever and then i think maybe a few weeks earlier you had taken me to goldie's and like we were there with rad key and that the um friend of yours of you go yeah i think hugo um and you know i just sat there and it seemed fine it seemed comfortable nobody was judging me whatever and then we went back another time and i was just there playing at that table by myself with you know there were a couple of other strangers there you were somewhere else and somebody just kind of like groused at me like why did you do that thing if you had done that thing you wouldn't have screwed me over and like I don't understand the game enough I don't understand it well enough to know like what like the cause and effect downstream is just trying to hang on to my just trying to hang on to my seat and not make a fool of myself and you know I'm also very shy and I don't like looking a fool and so that really just took the fun out of it for me now I'm too scared to play anymore

Well, I was going to say that that's such a bummer, but as I think about it, it's probably saved you thousands of dollars. Yeah, right.

I don't think I never go thousands, but yeah.

I don't like anybody hollering at you.

But you said that you also know, though, because you sit at a certain place. There must have been many times you love that game. There must have been many times where you've seen a bubblegummer like me kind of maybe ruin something for you.

Well, yes, but the thing that I used to get pretty agitated at folks, like I used to always actually, it's funny, I just said this whole thing about first base. My go-to used to be sitting at third base, which is the final position in blackjack, because I felt that only I deeply understood the cards and wanted to be the last person to act, because you'll have that thing where the cards are coming out, and then the last person takes what we would call a bad hit, like takes a card when they don't need to or whatever based on what the dealer has up and then they somehow allow the dealer to have a better card and then everyone's mad at them. So I used to always be like, I was ho-dooring basically. Yeah. I was ho-ding that door because I was so confident in my, I just play basic strategy but I play it really hardcore so I don't ever deviate. I don't go with hunches. If I have a 16 and the dealer has a 7, I'm hitting it. stuff like that that's kind of again real hodor energy but again the thing that is silly about people yelling at other people at the blackjack table and he didn't yell i should just say he

reprimanded i would say he groused that guy on friday i will no but it's that

when somebody takes a card that you think of as a quote-unquote bad card or whatever maybe in that particular moment the outcome is the dealer makes their hand or whatever but anything else good that happens to you in that shoe is also because of that card and i think there's actually some pretty good research that like people hitting the wrong quote-unquote wrong card is a real mixed bag in terms of what it does there's there's this kind of i think kind of canard around blackjack which is that if everybody plays perfectly uh the players will win every hand and it's like no they won't otherwise there would be professional blackjack rings i mean i know the there are like the bringing down the house ben mesrick people but they're just counting cards if it were just about like everyone plays basic strategy nobody takes a bad card there would be teams of people that would just go around winning every single hand it's like it's not that easy like so i get mad when i get annoyed with people who think that there is a way in which the table can quote unquote beat the the dealer by doing it right because if that was a thing

Thank you.

people would be doing it all the time can i ask you this so i've never this is well hold on i said can i ask you this i'm going to start with a comment and it's going to become a question okay would you say it's more of a comment this is more of a comment than a question excuse me when you wrote in your book no um uh so i was at goldie's which is a card room on aurora in shoreline just north of the Seattle border right and the people and it was probably an afternoon it was probably like when you and I did the morning show it was probably like I'm guessing this was late afternoon maybe very early evening but not not probably prime time for Goldie's I'm not sure and so whoever was there was probably you know there quite a bit and they had a system and they're probably grizzled and probably living a life that I wouldn't want to live right Do you think That if I were to go to Las Vegas where I've never Gone before I've never been to I've never had Like the real Vegas experience do you Think there is much more there's Almost less judgment because they're all A bunch of dummies like me coming in From Ohio and Kansas And you just go to certain casinos Where it's just a bunch of idiots or is there just As much judgment at the table

I think there's just as much judgment because Not always but Often the people that are at that table Are the grizzled Maybe they're less grizzled Because they have money for a plane ticket on Southwest But they are the people Who think of themselves as knowing How blackjack is supposed to work They just happen to be from Kansas City But now they're at the Golden Nugget I could be wrong about that I do think that there is a more Festive vibe In Vegas if you're on the strip Than there is at a Local casino on Aurora 100% Because this is a destination for folks But I do think that people still Kind of well You know what I'm talking myself out of my initial Answer I think I think people would be more chill In Vegas honestly yeah

And what I'm proposing here You can't tell that I'm proposing anything because I didn't Propose it yet but more of a proposal than a Question more of a proposal than a question Would you make me the happiest podcaster Would you make me The happiest book Reading attendee ever I I like it would almost I know this is antithetical to gambling, because if you say this is a table for if this is a table for schmucks, then that would have that would have implications in the game. But like if you had, let's say, tables for schmucks and if you're a veteran, great Steve Carell. Exactly. You're a veteran player. You you can you can't keep people out of there. Like, if you're a veteran, you can play at this table. But with an understanding that the people around you may not really know what they're doing so they can ruin your flow, you'd almost be playing, like, with a certain amount of randomness that maybe you're not used to as somebody who's usually playing with people who really know how to play the game. It would be harder to game that. It doesn't seem like that would be an attractive place for a chaos ball, chaos ball. Exactly. Would that be like, in other words, like, they should just have tables for idiots like me.

I would honestly, if there was a chaos ball table where it was like, people are going to do weird shit, but it's going to be fun. I would play that table. Yeah. We used to go to this place called the Party Pit at Harrah's, which is now I believe at last check it was they changed it to Toby Keith's. I love this bar pit. I'm not kidding. It was. But when it was the Party Pit, it was the absolute best. there were these dealers uh one guy called bronco billy who would just yell what is really going on before he would fist bump you there was a guy who called himself the dealer comes of the wizard of busting like there was a guy called marwan aka speed racer who his thing was he would deal the card super fast jess and the mummy and i just were like regulars at this place and it was such a fun vibe like you could fist bump the dealers you could you know the drinks were flowing it was like it was so fun that it didn't even matter if people were playing basic strategy or not like so if they could if they could resurrect the party pit somewhere in Vegas where I will be in January by the way for work TV story yeah for a TV story I'm interviewing Lin-Manuel Miranda in Vegas at the staging of freestyle love supreme um but uh well i'm supposed to although they were on the fence about it and now i'm calling in some favors so i guess the the the true story is i may be interviewing linman i'm

going to interview other people in the production you got to get our friend chris to prep you on that chris hayes is i mean he knows him right oh that's right he knows him personally they think they went to high school together but also like he's just up on those you and i are not

huge broadway people right well i only like broadway when it comes to the venetian in las vegas that's true broadway that's the great white way ask him a bunch of questions about that how do you feel about um the uh uh hell's kitchen restaurant here at the venetian in las vegas

will you run my tables for schmucks idea by him just see what he says i absolutely will ask him

his opinion on that but um no i i do think though i think you're i think your hunch is right that i think it is a more fun chill vibe in vegas uh with some exceptions uh you know people getting kind of worked up all right let's talk about franco harris for a minute have you ever seen footage of the

immaculate reception you know i was thinking about that this morning as i saw these headlines that he passed away i don't think i i can't picture it let me put it that way there might have been a time where I was curious, working on a story or just behind my computer and seeing a tweet and I looked it up. Should I watch it now?

I mean, it's a pretty big play in the history of the NFL. I knew about Franco Harris because he was a Seahawk when I came into consciousness. So when I found out that Seattle Seahawk Franco Harris had had a whole other life as a Pittsburgh Steeler and was involved in one of the most legendary plays in NFL history, I was shocked. Now, the thing is, so it was Terry Bradshaw was throwing, I think, to a guy named John Fuqua. This was at the end of a game, and it was a playoff game, I believe. And so it was basically not quite a Hail Mary, because it wasn't like he threw it 50 yards. But he threw it to this guy Fuqua, and it bounced. And then Franco Harris, a fullback, I think a rookie fullback at the time for the Steelers, plucked it right above the turf and ran it in for a touchdown, which won the game for the Steelers. And it's called the Immaculate Reception.

I'm watching it now and I'm watching something that is referred to here as the original broadcast. And you know what the interesting thing here is, Luke? This was a different time in broadcasting. you have like far far far far far far far far fewer cameras and so far even on the replay they're showing me and maybe this is where you're going with this you never really you never really see him catch it he's off camera because the camera is trained on the wide receiver it bounces off of the wide receiver and then comes straight back almost towards the quarterback again oh there i finally i finally there they found an angle that a camera had it and it sounds like from your intro to this story you're questioning whether or not this was a catch was there a football move i think

there there's i think that there is the pole is blocking it sorry there is reason to wonder if he actually caught it or if it may have like skipped up off the turf and the thing is this was a very different time there was no instant replay rule uh like you said there was like two cameras Pretty much So it's one of those things where It's one of the greatest plays in NFL history And there are people who are on the field Who say oh definitely like that ball Bounced before Franco Harris Caught it Raising the question does it really matter Like in the modern era of football I do feel a little bit like Unless it's going in the Seahawks Favor in which case I love it But I do feel like we have gotten to this Point of like granular research or granular information on like a catch that is at some point almost like counterproductive like there was a time in the NFL where you caught the ball or you didn't and there was probably some you know

men were men and you spit on some mud

thank you if you got injured you walked it off and you got your bell rung Andrew you just sucked it up But, like, the idea that, like, you could catch a touchdown now, do something amazing, but because there is a tiny movement in the ball only uncovered in the 74th viewing by Terry McAuliffe, that just, like, there's something kind of unfun about that for me as well. Also, when it goes against the Seahawks, like it did with that interception, thankfully we won that Rams game, but that Bobby Wagner, quote unquote, interception was such massive bullshit that like when you have when you have all of the tools of instant replay at your disposal and you still go, yeah, that's an interception. It's like the guy is like lying on his back, holding the ball like the Seahawk. And then at some point, Bobby Wagner comes over, puts a gun to his neck and then kicks the ball. up and then runs away with it so it was it was one of the most yeah considering how long they looked at that and it was so clearly overturnable um because it was they they maintained the call on the field for that right it was it did yes exactly it was so happened there so that was

extra maddening that was like you know not to be confused with madden right which is a football game that would be a good side game man i would play a game called extra maddening yeah but yeah Like, again, just like there's something there was something, I guess, kind of I would be furious if I saw what I thought was. Well, like when the Seahawks before there was instant replay, the Seahawks played the the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl. I was at that game and there was a play where Ben Roethlisberger was stopped a foot short, like a full on foot, maybe a yard short of the end zone. and they gave it to him and like i was and that was trying to maintain my that was the super bowl i was trying to maintain my journalistic this was the only super bowl by the way peace and love to our yinzers this was the only super bowl where the nfl formally apologized to one of the teams in the super bowl and guess what they were apologizing to the seahawks because there was three redonkulously blown calls one was on matt hasselbeck who threw an interception and then was called for an illegal block on the interception that he threw as the quarterback, which beggars logic. There's just no way you can throw an illegal block as the quarterback who's just thrown an interception. He was trying to tackle a dude. You're not even blocking on defense. It made no sense. The Roethlisberger touchdown that wasn't a touchdown, and then there was one other play that was, I mean, clearly. Again, this was not in the era of instant replay, so there was just kind of no recourse for the Seahawks. So all of that is to say there was something, I think, kind of interesting about the Immaculate Reception, maybe happening or maybe not, but just being a thing that it did happen because they called it a catch or called it an interception. There was no going back. There was no reviewing it. There was not three angles. It was what it was.

Now I think this is interesting Because I didn't know that there was I don't know if you would call it a conspiracy But I'm getting conspiratorial minded here Rewatching this original broadcast And in fact we should listen to the I bet you the audio on this is good It's great

It's so low key I'm going to play it again here

But the amazing thing is So the original shot The catch happens off screen The first replay Is the same shot only slowed down so it doesn't give you anything it's totally off screen then finally they get another angle from a camera that's like behind the uh the the field goal the field goal poles wait what do you call that the the goal posts and um i uh and right as he's going to catch this ball off the ground he and the ball pass they're on the others it's like a one second and what would it be six inches and it's blocking it from that angle too this catch happens and it's an obstructed view because of the pole it's like if you wanted to create some sort of a conspiracy this would

be perfect let's take a listen last chance for the Steelers trying to get away and his pass is broken up by Tatum tipped off Frank O'Harris has it and he's over what

Frank O'Harris

should I keep going

should we keep listening to the replay yeah I think it's the aftermath is like I forget what the guy says but the other guy the color commentator jumps in and he's just like well that's a play you've never seen before it looks very mellow

let's watch this again A million to one odds on this one.

Watch this. Ricochet. Ricochet out there off of Jack Tatum and into the man of the year. Jack Tatum.

Legendary Oakland Raider. There he is.

When you talk about Christmas miracles, here's the miracle of all miracles

now I was also noting when I was watching this today that like they how rudimentary the scoreboard actually is like fireworks going off on the jumbotron but like if you were to like be winning at a slot machine a gas station in montana that's the level of graphic display they have luke there is a tire

repair shop at a stoplight on aurora that i often am i'm stopped at the light and i'm looking at the the graphics that they have on the sign which are is it on your way down to like the stadium is it no it's up north it's uh i think it might even be right by 125th again not not the restaurant we talk about all the time no no you know where it is it's up uh it's right on the border of shoreline I think it's an Aurora and 140th. There's some auto repair place, and they got a new sign at some point.

Oh, I know that place by the Taco Time.

Yes. Is there a Taco Time that far north?

Is it 145th? Yes. Basically right on the border, and if you were going north, it's on your left? Yes. I was confusing 40th and 145th. Yes. That place got the most wild signage.

Yes, so you know it. I do Somebody had so much fun They're like oh my nephew got this sign for me For Christmas I'm going to spend all the time All the time in the world Programming in these fireworks And it's just like pew pew pew Check out our ballard shop Pew pew pew like why is everything exploding

I don't know There used to be across the street So on the other side of 145th Basically kitty corner from like faux tic tac

Yeah exactly

Like there was this place I'm sure it's weed now But this little Sad building That was just one open room And it was It might have actually been called The Golden Nugget which I think is probably the second time I've referenced the Golden Nugget Today on the show which is weird But it was just this sad little Room that had blackjack And I had won there one time Like I had had a good run So it became like my go to on Fridays And I would go there I would order a Sierra Nevada I would order many Sierra Nevadas

That's funny I don't think of you as a big Let's drink a bunch of beers guy

I can still surprise you all these years later I've been through my phases But like I would get For some reason I was really into Sierra Nevada At the time and I would get a Sierra Nevada And it was like there was like three The place would only fit like three tables It was like across from that post office Basically Oh okay yeah so you're taking a left You'd see that post office Is that where our P.O. box is?

That's where our P.O. box is and that's where I'll go for lunch In fact maybe I'll do this I actually have errands to run in a different neighborhood But I like to go there with my book Have some lunch at Faux Tick Tock And then go across the street Check the P.O. box That's my move That's why I see that sign so often

I mean you had described it but I hadn't put it all together I love that that's where our P.O. box is Those are sort of my old stomps Did you see on Instagram that I was yesterday googling

best way to reheat deep dish pizza no i no i didn't so you got your deep dish pizza

now we were talking about that in the winter games this will unfold during the winter games but you know spoiler alert andrew mentioned deep dish pizza and then it it uh it lit a fire under me so i ordered i was eating for six andrew it turns out so i i um i i had it the other night and then i still had a bunch left and so i was reheating it yesterday but i was trying to figure out the best technique i don't know why i thought it was different than just regular pizza what did

they probably said air fryer first or conventional oven second right but um i think that's the the

first result on google was uh conventional oven 350 sprinkle some water on the pizza and then loosely cover it with foil so i guess there'd be some sort of steam activation

Interesting.

It was fine. Did you do that?

Did you sprinkle water on it?

I did. I spritzed a little water on it with my hand. It was fine, although they said 15 to 20 minutes, and it should be gooey. And at 18 minutes, it wasn't even. It had not even begun to melt. How much did you put in there? Was it like half a pizza or a couple of slices? It was like half a pizza because it was, again, I had ordered a large, meant for six people so um uh but eventually i kept putting it back in eventually it was sort of okay but it wasn't i have to say i enjoyed it when it was fresh but i did not enjoy the leftovers as much as i enjoy typically enjoy the leftovers of non-deep dish pizza it's interesting because i

i'm not a huge fan of reheating pizza in a microwave i mean i do it quite a bit because it's faster than the conventional oven and sometimes i don't feel like messing around with that air fryer thing if I just want to quickly, like, stand in the kitchen and just, like, you know, grub down a pizza, leftover pizza. But I prefer to put it in the conventional oven, any kind of pizza, that is. But this whole thing starts.

started you know again we talk about on the winter games which which are coming up but uh me and genevieve and our dear friend barry broadcast barry uh went to a place he loves and got some chicago style deep dish pizza the other day and um it was really good because i don't think i really had like pizza that really claims to be chicago style deep dish pizza before i mean i think pizza hut is technically deep dish pizza right but or no that's no no no that's not true That's pan pizza, but that's like a cousin Yeah, maybe, but it's got that I do see where they got that buttery crust from This place was really good called Johnny Moe's But I had one slice of deep dish left over And I threw it in the microwave really quickly And again, microwave is not an ideal way of reheating pizza I know that, don't get at me I don't have time or energy for that But it was not terrible Like the cheese melted through pretty quickly I mean, I was really hungry But my God, did I house that piece of reheated deep dish pizza in the microwave i have and that's what got us talking about it was how remarkable i found the

reheating experience yeah i think i wish i would have a microwave this because it i think there's so much cheese involved in this particular deep dish which is a little different than when i've been to like pizzeria uno in chicago and places like that i feel like when you go to chicago the deep dish has a lot of marinara on it it's almost like equal parts yeah this was marinara very saucy the stuff i had very saucy and see what i got here from via chicago was really heavy on the cheese and less so on the marinara i feel like if i would have microwaved it it might have been a little bit better although you know what the fact that it was only semi-edible meant that i only ate one reheated piece and then chucked

the rest of it? You chucked the rest. I don't think I can throw away pizza so hard. You can't stay mad at it? I just can't stay mad at it. Even very mediocre. I mean

normally I don't, but I was like, I mean it was a brick of cheese and dough and not in like kind of a good way. It was, again, it was fine, but I exercised more restraint than I usually do, I think because it wasn't actually that delicious on reheat. I'm so hungry right now, dude. I am so goddamn hungry What if, like, now me talking about deep dish Sends you out for it today We just eat deep dish for the rest of our lives But then in the future we're also eating it That's a thought crime, I don't know

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

Any voicemails from other children furious at us?

I have no angry If any angry children called us in the past 24 hours I haven't heard it yet I'm a little behind on the voicemail line Although I did pull this one off the voicemail line Today, this is from listener Rich This is the one, Luke, you and I were previewing it before the show And we just listened to the beginning of it And it immediately caught our attention So I don't know exactly where this goes But I was just like, let's just stop it there This is good, let's play it Rich, take it away We were talking about hot air balloons On the show the other day

Hey friendos, this is listener Rich from westchester um i was just listening to a good old episode 38 30 where you were talking that's how we think of good old episode little house in the prairie home um and boy do i have a story for you guys um seriously though there is a game that's played i used to ground crew when i was a kid my my parents used to ground crew and then i would get ride-alongs now and again sitting in the van chasing a hot air balloon down um but every once in a while i'd get to ride in the balloon can you pause it

that's such an interesting element of the hot air balloon game that I hadn't thought of which is you're having fun up there you know you're like part of a picture postcard you're maybe proposing but there's this people that are getting are having no fun who are just driving around for whenever it is that you come back down

to earth well it sort of sounds like it's fun I mean it sounds like fun for rich I mean fun for rich

Listen, I'm trying to, you know, be critical of Rich's childhood memories. And if you were a kid, it would be fun to be on the ground crew. But I guess I just never thought about that fact that, like, a lot of times somebody has to basically give up their afternoon so that you can have your, like, hot air ballooned ya-ya's.

Yeah, but I'll bet you the people who do it love it. But here we go.

And in hot air balloon competitions, there's like a very Luke thing that happens where you and if you are able to launch your balloon from the right spot and have your balloon pass a specific flagpole and throw a beanbag out of your hot air balloon such that it lands within a circle that's around the flagpole, you win a car. and so like

It's all about, like, the hot air balloonists checking the weather and finding the air and finding the currents and whatever, and having you, like, launch your balloon at the right spot so that you can get there.

Let's win a car so we don't have to get around in this goddamn balloon anymore.

Let's win a car so we can be part of the ground crew. That sounds so awesome to me. Gambling and hot air ballooning.

It reminds me a little bit of that game that I played at the minor league San Jose Giants game where after the game, I guess near the end of the game, you could buy like I think bags of baseballs. Is that right? Like you could buy maybe five baseballs and then and they were just like an old baseballs. And then at the end of the game, they drew some circles on the field or they put down big hula hoops or something. And the crowd could just gather at the edge of the bleachers and just throw your ball. And each ball had a number on it that corresponded to the ticket that you bought. And if you could get your ball into one of the circles, you would win. Not a car, though. Probably you just get to shake hands with the mascot who was dressed up like a churro that night. All right. Here, take a listen. I would love that so much. Again, gambling and sort of like physical feats of physical prowess. It was really fun. That really stood out to me. I'm so glad we did that. And here's the kicker.

One time I was in the balloon. I was 11 years old. We were getting there. We were so close. My balloon master was like perfect in terms of launching this thing. And he handed me the beanbag because we were going to be like literally right over the flagpole. And I threw it out of the basket. and we were probably a few hundred feet above where the pole was, and it hit the rope that connected to the emergency release at the top of the balloon and fell literally six feet outside of the circle, so we did not win the, I think it was the Corvette at that time. But, like, literally, I lost the balloonist that we did the ground crew for's Corvette because I was an idiot. Anyway, that's the story about Hudson.

air ballooning hour out that's such a it might be a lukean concept but it's such a walshian

delivery takeaway the walshian takeaway wait what what does the emergency release do on a balloon yeah like the emergency release rope what is it just like detach you from the balloon that seems

bad i wonder if it's a quicker way uh because you have to like what do you do to what do you do when you want to start descending i'm trying to think you change that i think well you stop lighting the fire into the balloon right you just merely stop doing that you don't need to do anything i wonder if there's something that can that can accelerate your descent that is not ideal but in

case of well you know they used to have sandbags oh right and you would have a bunch of them and then you would like let some of them go so as to achieve you know start to fly up but i guess once those are gone you can't get them back hey throw me that sandbag you can't put the sandbag back in

the toothpaste tube that's right that's what they always say that was a great voicemail i did not i was that was on the edge of my seat i did not know how that was gonna go i was somehow thinking that

it was gonna be that the the beanbag or whatever you toss from the balloon hit the top of the flagpole and like impaled itself on there and they won a corvette first of all balloon master

who doesn't want to be a balloon master who doesn't want to have a balloon master um but also i wonder how the adult handled that like i hope well i hope well there's a reason they're

giving a corvette away it's hard to do yeah yeah but also the balloon master could have been like

if i had just done that myself like okay i let's say that the balloon master was you know gracious at the time but what was going on quiet i think it was a he right what's going on quietly in his head you know is he just like oh my god i should have i'd have a i'd be in a corvette right now

instead of a hot air balloon i'm remembering as we were talking about hot air balloons that the the first big impression that hot air balloons made in my mind was when i went to a movie theater to see the original production of around the world in 80 days you familiar with that um i feel like i

sort of picture a poster or something but no i'm not uh i'm not i have never seen it it was a book

and then it was a movie yeah it was uh i forget was like jules verne or something oh yeah i forget who uh yeah it was jules verne yeah right and my dad and i went to and i mean this movie was from the like 60s or something but it was it must have been replaying and again it was a fairly limited list of films that my parents felt were appropriate for me when i was a kid so the

i guess they figured jules verne is going to be fine and there's a lot of like them being in a hot air balloon which is i think about it now is a terrible way to get around the world in 80 days like it's like it should be called around the world in 80 years like there's no way a hot air balloon is going to be your best conveyance i'm trying to figure out which one you would have

seen in the theater because it looks like it was a movie from the 50s and then probably that one

oh so they just had like a revival or they were just showing it for some reason and uh yeah i forget the theater we went to but it was yeah it was an old fat it was an old timey movie that we were seeing it was in color though so maybe it wasn't from the 50s maybe they made another one

i'm looking at it looks like it might be um the 1956 i'm looking at the trailer here i don't know if we want to play it or not but it does look like it's in color it might be a tech i am feeling this is technicolor if that's the right term for this type of magic let's take a listen this is too long I don't think we're going to do that.

Three, two, one, fire.

Okay, wait. I need to explain what's going on here. This must... I'm a little confused. This is a trailer that begins with what looks like stock footage of an actual rocket, like an American rocket program rocket launching. So I assume that they're going to make some juxtaposition here, but this must be a trailer that was made for the re-release or something because there was no rocket program in 1956, right?

This is a $9 million, 275,000-pound Atlas Agena rocket. Today it circles the globe at a speed of over 18,000 miles an hour in little more than 80 minutes. Is this any way to see the world? It's a wonderful world

if you'll only take the time to go around it. Are you formally challenging me to undertake a journey around the world?

Is that David Niven?

I say this is absurd. Gentlemen, I have on deposits at Baring's Bank the sum of 20,000 pounds, and I'm willing to wager any or all of it upon the same contention, namely that I can complete a tour of the world in 80 days.

He said it. He said the name of the movie.

Come with me if you want to live. Oh, this song. I remember this song being in the movie.

This is giving me very cozy feelings. I've never seen this before. We make all the stops. Two oceans.

Five seas. Eight ways to travel.

I see. So the balloon is only one of them. He goes by ship, by boat.

Yeah, it's like by hook or by crook. Whatever is available to old, like, Phineas Fogg or whatever his name is in the movie.

Is Dom DeLuise in this? This feels definitely like something Dom DeLuise would have been in if it was an 80s movie.

He was busy shooting Cannonball Run. Yeah, right. Cannonball Run. One and two. Or It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Yeah, both of those kind of occupy the same space in my brain. I remember Dom DeLuise. Again, I tell stories like this a lot, like jokes that just struck me as just hilarious and edgy when I was a kid. I think my mom often had daytime television on like the whatever the morning talk shows were into like the mid morning or whatever all the you know the chefs come out and they have their five minute bit on the show or whatever and whatever I don't know if it was good morning America or what it would have been at the time but I remember Dom DeLuise who I didn't really know who he was I just knew he was kind of very famous at the time he's coming out he's a celebrity chef and he's a jokester and he's I think you're thinking of Paul Prudhomme who looked like Dom DeLuise.

Dom DeLuise was not a chef?

Dom DeLuise was not a chef, no. Oh, my God. I'm literally learning that today.

They look so similar. If you Google Paul Prudhomme and Dom DeLuise, they are doppelgangers. They both would wear that hat. They were both on the heavier side, but they're not the same person. And I thought that as well for many years of my childhood.

Dom DeLuise had no connection to food at all. He was not a chef. Well, he liked it. Right. Let's not make fat jokes. But he was not. I'm just saying. But he was not He was not a chef Oh my god I'm learning this today But it's just amazing that I'm learning this On the air in 2023 Almost Sorry 2022 I'm exaggerating You can't trust me for anything I just can't believe I am I just can't believe I'm learning this now

I had the exact same They look so similar Paul Prudhomme was on TV all the time He was like a kind of a Cajun dude And he would be the guy that would come out on You know all those You know morning talk shows or not talk shows But you know the Today Show or whatever it was called back in the day And he looks exactly Like Dom DeLuise but they're not the same Dude

Okay here's one thing though on his Wikipedia page He is listed as an American actor, comedian, director Producer, chef and author Is there a chance

There's a chance that if he was a chef, that what I remember from my youth was him doing some bit as a chef comedian. Because he is listed as, I mean, the word chef is in here. I mean, I would say it's, that's certainly possible.

I would say it's more likely that the chef Paul Prudhomme, who looked exactly like him and did a lot of TV, was the guy you saw. But I can't obviously say that with any kind of certitude.

It says he was also a friend and self-proclaimed lookalike of famous Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme and author of several children's books. Yes, that's the part I'm thinking of. Yeah, but it does say that he also was a chef. So either way, it was one of these guys who was doing some bit. In my head, it was always Dom DeLuise, and he was making something, and he had a leek. It was the vegetable leek, and he said, so you want to cut this up, and you want to put this in the pot. And he said, a lot of people don't like to take a leek and put it in their soup. And I was like, oh, my God, I couldn't believe that sounds like I couldn't believe he would say that on television. You can't say that on television. I couldn't believe how funny the wordplay was. I couldn't believe my mom let me hear that. I was a very sheltered child. But that was that's one of those early jokes that just lives in my head.

Now I'm on the Dom DeLuise IMDB page and I'm marveling at all the stuff he did. The History of the World Part One with Mel Brooks. Also, All Dogs Go to Heaven, which I think is a criminally underappreciated cartoon movie that also featured the voice of Burt Reynolds. Oh, really? Cannonball Run, Obvs. He was in An American Tale, not Fievel Goes West. Apparently, they couldn't come to terms for—wait, is An American Tale—was there a sequel called Fievel Goes West?

Fievel Goes West was the sequel.

I see. Okay.

Guess what I just found here.

Paul Prudhomme, right?

I have an Eat This No. 4 Dom DeLuise cooking video. I think he did cooking things, like he did a series called Eat This. I'm sticking with my assumption that this was Dom DeLuise. Yes, I know. I hear it. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't realize that he also cooked things. I think maybe I'm just leaning hard into my childhood misunderstanding, which was thinking that this other dude was him. But, yeah, it sounds like he definitely was out there in the cooking game as well.

I mean, you told me a memory of my youth was – it sounded like you were irritated there. You told me a long-held memory of my youth was wrong. My mind was blown for a second. I'm just trying to stabilize here again, please. That's fair.

That's totally fair. I'm just – now I'm going into a deep dive on An American Tale as well, which I don't know if I ever actually watched the entire thing. But I have a lot of fondness for this movie even having not seen it. Like, basically what happens now when we do the show is I go and I either eat deep dish pizza or watch an old cartoon that has been stimulated in my memory. Anyway. Okay. Well, here we are 81 minutes in. Probably time to call it a day. Are there any more emails or emails?

No, we can go with that. That sounds good. I'm looking at it. It looks like I might be able to recreate my childhood because I'm getting close to finding the exact segment. I'm very excited about this. Wow. I'll do that in my off time. We'll play that tomorrow. I want to hear that.

All I know, what I know about Dom DeLuise also is that I feel like there was an SNL send-up of him. Maybe, I don't remember who was portraying him, but the joke was that Dom DeLuise would laugh so hard that he would pee his pants. Which I know is funny because you were talking about taking a leak. But there was some SNL sketch where someone was portraying Dom DeLuise, but their whole bit was they were just laughing so hard. they peed their pants the entire sketch that was that was what dom de luis because he was just such

he had such a big big laugh and that was i guess maybe i didn't even really know much about him at

the time i just remember the parody of him being like i'm laughing so hard i'm peeing my pants um so anyway all right well thanks for listening uh everyone we are going to be back here tomorrow with more of this imaginary radio for you uh until then have a great wednesday uh we will see you tomorrow and in the meantime stay safe and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

oh see so here it is now this is a small version this is like for two three four people the point is that all the time that the chicken was sitting even without the skin, was sitting in that sauce, you're getting a sauce wonderfully made, tastefully being added to by the sweet onions. No garlic here, remember that. And what happens is you have, and that's why it's called Easy Does It, a simple little dish. You put this in the oven, make love to your husband, by the time you're ready for dinner, you've got some chicken to wrap around his lips. Oh, eat this. Power out.