Muse

I will say this, I'm enjoying a long night of Miller Lite, everyone. Yeah, Miller Lite, sir! You know about this? All the kids are going crazy for Miller Lite. Miller Lite lets everyone know, I'm here to have 17 of these. I'm going to gradually become a problem. In about five hours, I'm going to be an issue, but until then,

Miller Lite, Miller Lite

The official beer of weekend custody, everyone Miller Lite, she's not coming back TBTL

Big news, sports fans I've decided to start calling everyone sports fans I know I'm not exactly the jockey type But I watched Hoosiers last night, and I like sports now.

I have no idea what you just said, but I feel totally transformed.

Is this a joke? Because if it is a joke, I just want to say that I get it. I get the joke, and I'm in on it also. And it's hilarious.

Have a good show, dummy. It's what you do is so important.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Are you sure? Mm-hmm. Okay. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Oh, yeah.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it's just an absolutely gorgeous day, actually. Beautiful sunrise, and now it's clear blue skies. The sun is out. but it's actually not super cold.

California got sunshine.

It's kind of one of those weird, I guess, beautiful January days you get sometimes in the Pacific Northwest. We've got one of those weird, beautiful episodes of TBTL, which are also slightly rare, but we've got one for you today. It's episode 3856 in a collector's series. Now, we were running the TBTL Winter Games for a couple of weeks, And, of course, lots of news was happening. I've got lots of news. And this whole week we've been threatening to go back and actually talk about some of the stories that we missed. We're not making great progress on the list. And now this week, new news is adding up and being added to the list. So I don't know.

Yeah, we're going to do it all. Yes, because we can't do it all.

My theory is, and my hope, I would just say my goal, my deliverable, is that by the next TBTL Winter Games, we'll have gotten to all of the stories that we are trying to get to from this year's TBTL Winter Games.

You've got to be kidding me.

Look for that. And look for this guy. Is he happy? Does he like being known as the longest-running co-bro of the show? Yes, he does. He is Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. First of all, I apologize to you and the listeners who probably have noticed that something was slightly off with me the last two days, our first two days back from the Winter Games. Maybe something that you couldn't quite put your finger on, but just something wasn't clicking.

What do you think it was? Well, it's going to take us down a whole road if I'm wrong, so why don't you tell me what it is, and then I'll tell you what I think it might be.

If you guessed this, I would be shocked. But what's been going on here is I have a Google Doc. Oh, no. Am I anywhere near?

My theory did not involve the words Google Doc.

You didn't think so? You didn't want to start your podcast talking about Google Docs? Every year I have a Google Doc where it just keeps getting kind of bigger and bigger throughout the year as I add our show sheets to it. Oh, my gosh. Can you hear my voice? I can, and I'm just going to talk for a minute here. Wow. You're muted. That was old, man. Maybe I should go back to my old system. Anyway, I have all of my show sheets from 2022, and every time we do a show, I add the new show sheet to the top of it, and by the end of the year, I have all of my show sheets saved in one big Google Doc, but it's 2023. I've been using the 2022 Google Doc the past two days. The show sheets have been in the old Google Doc. Now, as we talk, as we speak right now, and as I clear my throat like a radio professional, I am trying to rectify this I'm creating the 2023 document I'm moving the last two days Show sheets into it It's not going to help the sound of the past two days Unfortunately, that is just stuck to the tape What did you think it was, by the way? I thought that you were maybe

feeling the emotional strain of being called in so hard by a television commercial. I don't know if I've ever seen a television commercial that calls my friend Andrew Walsh in harder than the one I'm going to play for you right now.

Let me just tell you really quickly what the name of yesterday's After These Messages podcast was.

Ah, okay, okay.

We titled it The Bins of the Father, and I am so proud of that title, based on a hearty conversation we had about this commercial, which I will tell you about our first experience watching this and our reaction to it.

If I were a better friend, Andrew, and colleague, I would, of course, I would be refreshing after these messages the moment it dropped onto my podcatcher. I didn't know that that was the title of your recent show, and I didn't know that you've talked about it. So I want you to understand that as I was just out here living my life, I saw a TV commercial, and I just said, did they surveil my friend Andrew Walsh and then write a mostly factual account of his life and then put it on national television? I'm sure our listeners, if they saw the commercial I'm talking about, had the same exact reaction. Let me just play it for you. I assume we're talking about this progressive commercial.

It would be amazing if we were talking about different commercials. I also just noticed that you've been numbering your show sheets, or you've been dating the show sheets 2022, so you need to you need to clean up your own house there too just crabs in a bucket

i'm doing great i'm going to the gym early i'm a new luke in 2023 but you're just down there in the bucket pulling me down into your own mislabeling adventures like you just let me live dude just saying priorities priorities well listen why don't you spend less time writing your name on your trash can bins and more time focusing on what year we're in so this is you know that that um kind of a series of commercials with this guy he's called dr rick and the whole idea is that he is helping uh you know people sort of not turn into their parents uh because they're they've bought a home and and by the way i'll just mention all of the people who are turning into their parents are probably late 20s early 30s yes because the joke doesn't work otherwise right

because it's right the joke is they are starting to display behavior of an older like middle-aged

person like me right right exactly because like when you and i do it it just checks out yeah exactly so dr rick is this guy who's there to sort of help people not turn into their parents prematurely and so he is at a home and he's with the wife and they're observing the husband's obsession around

his garbage cans uh-oh is this a pre-roll on the ad is this an ad for the can you just play it from

your end oh sure i don't have it in front of me right now okay i'll get it here again it was no See, the problem is, the thing I just played you is from something called Commercials Review.

No, no, no. Use iSpot. Use iSpot.tv. I got it here.

Well, Andrew, I don't host a hit podcast based on commercials. It's free.

They don't check your credentials. So I got it here. I'm going to play it from my end, like you said. So we have Dr. Rick, and he is staring aghast alongside this woman as they watch her husband polishing the trash bins with a squirt bottle and rags.

doing he's cleaning the trash cans oh boy meeting a new young homeowner for the first time is a unique challenge so you think you can help i can try hey what you doing ah just cleaning my trash cans wow it's important to build trust see you put your address and phone number on here well you can never be too safe with trash progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents but we can protect your home and auto when you bundle with us oh look at the hedges they're a mess

and then that's the i'm sorry that's that is the coup de gras like i'm watching and i'm like god this is this is really andrew with this like obsession around the garbage cans but then the hedge then he points at the hedge which needs this guy was playing darts during this commercial it would be the only thing that could be more andrew i want to tell you about our experience

of watching that but i'm trying to figure out if the the first time i watched it i thought the hedges was the coup de gras because it did almost i almost fainted when they had that right that little tag at the end that was so me but also do you know what i think my favorite sleeper aspect of this commercial is something that is not that the listeners right now unless they've seen the commercial would not have picked up on because it's purely a visual joke okay i don't know um can you tell me not only is he polishing and cleaning the tops of these trash cans and you can see that he does have his phone number and address on them presumably if they get lost but he's also installed locks on each one of the trash cans that is so that people don't throw their dog poop in there no Luke I literally did that I don't know if we talked about it on the show in my old place

I took a drill I took a drill and I drilled into the plastic bin and I bought a piece of cable and a lock so that people at the business that work next door to us would stop throwing their trash in our bins I'm suing so Vives and I are in Hawaii and I can't remember because we were getting ready to go somewhere and the TV happened to be on and this we were I remember we were leaving the room we were walking away from the TV and then also this commercial started and it caught our attention because we love the dr rick commercials and this was clearly a new one and all of a sudden genevieve's like we're both we stop and we both stare at the screen and genevieve starts yelling this is at you this is at you as in the at symbol like this is this commercial is subtweeting this commercial is not just for me it is directly at me and then and then violence and so we're just standing there i swear to god like mouths open And, like, zombie is just like, what are we seeing? And then the hedge part pops up, and I'm pretty sure I fainted and fell into her arms, and she gave me a smelling salt. Like, we could not. It was like we had a Gene Parmesan moment when he mentioned the hedges. Gene!

Oh, I hired him a million years ago.

Okay, well, so you've seen the commercial, I guess. Well, not only that, but so we did talk about it a bit in yesterday's podcast about TV commercials that me and Vives do. We've now talked about it on TVTL And guess what cleaning fans This is also going to be a segment in our special Rated C for Clean segment On my Spotless podcast That's where we take, I don't know if I've told you about this Luke But we'll take like scenes from a movie Or a TV show where people are cleaning up Some mess, often a bloody mess If it's like a movie where somebody was murdered But people clean So terribly in movies So we'll give them a letter grade Based on how good they're doing And Hannah apparently has some pretty strong opinions about the way this man is going about cleaning his trash bin so we'll be talking about it it's a three for it's a triple

crown if you need some more sort of sus cleaning my dad and I watched as I've been talking about a ton of British BBC crime docs ITV crime docs not docs ITV crime fictionalized things during the last week of the winter games and I specifically remember a scene where somebody this is in the missing is trying to clean a boat oh okay where there's been a murder uh-huh and i'm just looking at it and i'm like i mean why don't you just go try to bail the ocean out with a teaspoon bro like you're doing nothing i haven't

even seen this but i know what they're doing they're sloshing it around right they're moving

it around right away they just start even wet it's like let's just get a oh you know what i grabbed some i grabbed some cloth and i'm all i'm doing i'm turning this pool of blood into like a spiral

of blood right they start in the middle they always just they have some sort of a puddle that they're cleaning up and what do they do they get a sponge and they just start sloshing around from

the middle as if that does anything i know it looks like um spiral jetty shout out to our fans of land art created by robert smithson sorry that's what you get for being married to an installation artist at one point in your life you can drop a robert gober you can drop a spiral getty maybe a vic munoz now there's one other commercial though andrew that you would have never seen but that i also made a note to talk to you about because i'm wondering if there is a version of this if there's something like this that you and veves have been seeing in seattle and this is something i only see in portland but it is for a com it's for a company called sunset heating and cooling and what's interesting about it is that it is clearly a commercial that someone has created to sell to small businesses or local businesses that looks like it has pretty high production value so that you can then just simply superimpose the face of the business owner into the commercial have you seen anything like this what it's like a deep fake am i understanding it's no oh boy it's a shallow fake at best it's it is not convincing and it also makes no sense from a sort of a narrative standpoint so it's the company is called suns i've seen two of these now and it's like uh owner rick johnson of sunset heating and cooling really knows hvac after 30 years in the business that's the voiceover or whatever and you're seeing a shot of an astronaut like on a climbing out of like a lunar module down one of those ladders and then again the production value is reasonably high like it doesn't look like a local hvac Company try to reenact the moon landing We leave that to NASA Why would the flag be straight Wait what do you mean reenact So it's like but it's good It's clear like this was made by a sort of a professional film or video company you know like it's convincing the actual scene of the astronaut on the ladder on the moon is good but then the astronaut turns their face and in the like face shield is Rick from sunset heating and cooling and they're like but what he's not good at is remembering his keys and the astronaut is like locked out of the lunar thing because they don't have their keys and he's like little help here please and then there's something else that happens in the commercial obviously I'm doing all this from memory where the astronaut like does something else they climb down onto the moon surface or whatever and then they turn again and it's like our guy Rick's face again in the astronaut you know whatever you call that face shield but not super convincingly and then there's one other thing where he does something I forget what it is but he's got some like papers that he's like throwing and they all say sunset heating on them like it's all surfaces that can

be superimposed upon with your businesses but it's very uncanny though is his like his superimposed face is sort of is it sort of floating there it's not that uncanny in fact my guess would be i am probably one of five people in the portland metro area who even noticed anything is off and i don't say that like to brag on myself i say that because it's not like it's it's super bad i'm just The reason that I knew something was up was because I was just no – first of all, it makes no sense. Why are you in space? This has nothing to do with HVAC. Like I think what happened was Rick, not his real name, or somebody at the company was on some kind of website that says, here's what you do. You send in some photos of your face and the name of your company with these specifications. and these are the various commercials that we will put we will we will put you in and then we'll record specific vo for it it's some kind of plug-and-play service and i believe it was rick who thought i would like to be an astronaut even though it doesn't like if you were an hvac company you're trying to make a commercial it'd be you putting an hvac somewhere it wouldn't be you on the moon staring dimly through your your astronaut mask i could see like if it wasn't a generic

template i could see actually a good argument for like i mean can you imagine a place where like making sure that your hvac is really locked down is more important than on a spaceship you know like you could actually see a pitch there but like but you can't what you're describing is like the commercial version of and i know we've talked about these on the show before those Records that my mom would Get us for our birthday where there's A specialized name or something Exactly there's about some guy who would I don't know fly his rocket Ship to the moon and wish me a happy birthday At the same time for Andy And my sister Amy had one as well

This is kind of like that It is and it's not a bad it's really not A bad idea You know because think about it like You're a regional company and you don't Have 50 grand or 100 grand to spend on a commercial in terms of the production you can get something that again i think to 99 of the people that are just like watching uh you know sunday night football and then it gets to that point where the they start cutting in the local commercials you know it's like after the second half kind of thing like uh sort of like in the super bowl too you know how like when you see the first local commercial of the super bowl it's like christmas is over yeah right yeah okay well you better take the tree down now now we're just or or even just a commercial you've already seen

oh yes you're right like it could be a national commercial but one that is not new in super bowl

to the super bowl not like prestige yeah prestige clydesdales or whatever just right just a regular old like hyundai commercial that you've already seen the previous week and you're just like well

the fun stuff's over yeah there must be they must have really broken open the lead on this game spending any money anymore i guess that's around the corner i guess we're gonna start thinking about super bowl ads pretty soon which is starting to feel exhausting to me like the super bowl ad thing just doesn't seem fun anymore like it just seems like it's it seems like such bullshit now

doesn't it do you think that's because you have been hosting this show with genevieve about commercials for the last few years or or do you just think it's because that they it's one of those things that it started organically in the sense that the super bowl was something that had a lot of eyes on it and so naturally the commercials that were put up there the people were the companies were really bringing their a game and then people noticed it and then it became a thing i only watch it for the commercials and then it became a thing where they're releasing the commercials early so they can get the maximum amount of earned media on it like do you think

that's what it is yeah i do i think i mean yes we do watch it closely and it's amazing well to me It's amazing. Not to anybody else. How long have you and I have actually been doing this show now? I think this will be our seventh or eighth Super Bowl. What?

whoa yeah and start we started this back in 2014 i want to say so um i might have my numbers a little bit wrong there but anyway so we've been doing it for a while and of course we've always done it in the internet age but i do think the internet is really what changed it like last year actually i think i was pretty net positive on the quality of the commercials you know just there's a lot of them but generally speaking i thought it was maybe better than the previous couple of years um but it's more about that idea that like yeah it used to be a tv product Right. But now it's a little bit like you would describe as maybe McBoat boat face or whatever. Like now it's got to be this whole industry of, well, first we released the teaser online and then we do the blog about it. Then the integration with this and it's got and then the ones who really get it wrong, I think. And I probably, again, said this a million times on the show is like the people who are just like, well, get every celebrity you can get. Don't worry about the writing. Don't worry about just all we need is we need the guy from One Direction, you know, and we need. Lil Wayne, and I don't know. I mean, don't worry about where we're putting him right now. Just get the contracts, then we'll figure out a commercial.

Get me Mark Hamill's agent on the line and Jean-Luc Picard.

They're still in the same commercial. They're just sitting in that big, open factory floor waiting for their directions.

For me, the thing is that how I watch the Super Bowl has sort of changed in that, like i i don't think up until five ten years ago i don't know if i'd been to a quote-unquote super bowl party if that if that even seems believable because like i don't know i just just maybe the crew that i ran with wasn't a big super bowl party having crew or something so i do remember some period of time where it was like i'm sitting probably just like at my house on my own couch the super bowl's on like i'm in bellingham or something and i'm actually watching the commercials because i'm interested but of what they're gonna you know what they're gonna to be like and and then i'm also of course interested in the game and at some point it shifted to i'm always going to a super bowl party event where you just you can never get the level of close watching and concentration exactly that you know you might be looking for it's just like there's so much talking going on the volume is either too loud or too quiet or you're it's just it's just not a good environment for for actually analyzing anything and so then both the game and the commercials right like well yeah i mean i'm always the i'll tell you i'm the outlier what i realize this is again i don't know along with being the only person qualified to analyze the sunset heating and cooling ad i'm also going to brag and say i'm one of the only people who get sports andrew like nationally i would say maybe even internationally but like no i find myself at football watching here's what really happens when i get together with a group of people to watch a sporting event what i quickly realized and there are some exceptions like i watched the mariners come back against toronto with your friend and mine hannah brooks olson and her fine fine boyfriend and i mean that literally and figuratively he's fine i know yeah um and uh and some other people those people were as into that mariners game as i was but what i normally find when i watch sports with a group of people is i give way more of a shit about it than most of the people and i don't know if i'm jealous or if i pity them because everybody likes to say oh yeah seahawks fan or whatever like and again peace and love there's no way he's going to hear this because my dad did ask me recently if tbtl is an app so i don't think that this is going to be on his radar but my dad and i were watching that game on sunday while we were doing the construction and it has never been more clear and my dad would self-identify as a seahawks fan in fact along with his lord of the rings not all who wander are lost homemade bumper sticker he also has a big seahawk on his truck my dad would definitely say he's a seahawk fan but he was deeply uninterested in what was going on in the game and i'm like dad it's like if you watch this clip i put on instagram it's when quandre diggs gets that interception my dad is bending over pulling like a tool out of a tool tub and i'm like you don't see it in the video because i edited it because i seemed

like a maniac but what happened right before what you see on instagram is me going dad because i could see either the rams were going to catch that ball and the game's over yeah that was bomb yeah or quandary like you could hear the announcer's voice you know you hear the tone in the announcer's voice change and before the camera is even whipped over to where the action is about to be you can tell some shit is about to go down and so anyway my point is when i get together with a bunch of people in a room ostensibly to watch a sporting event what i usually realize is i care much more about this sporting event than a lot of the people and i'm not talking about you andrew but like most people who aren't you or ders or my brothers it's like they're just kind of there for the snacks well i do think there's a difference You

between football and baseball in that way i mean i could be wrong here let's examine this or the listeners are probably like or don't or get to top stories for once in your goddamn life

i told you andrew by 2024 we are finally going to clear the clear the pipes on that and i this is

judgment free by the way because i think that i've i've watched football a variety of ways in fact we hit on this a little bit in our no point conversion yesterday like kind of talking about where i plan on watching the the playoff game this coming saturday because like i do enjoy watching the sport intently right and like if i'm gonna really watch the sport and and like kind of pay attention to every play i want to be at home and even then i still might run and grab some pizza rolls from the air fryer or something but like it's my domain like i'm standing in front of the tv i'm probably pacing i don't like sitting during football games if i'm watching them at home like I'm locked in you know and then there's the other thing which is hey let's get together and watch a football game which is how I watched most of them this year and you know I'm watching with people who in some cases know more about the sport than I do certainly but there's still just naturally if you're watching it in a bar or at the Eagles or whatever there's a lot of conversation going on like I the guy the old man who was sitting next to me at the Eagles on Sunday didn't even realize that the first play of the game was an interception somehow so he just thought that the Rams started with the ball and I'd say no no sir that was an interception so there's just like sort of a there's a lack of concentration just because of the nature of you're getting together you're eating jalapeno poppers you're talking you're laughing that is also fun right and then there are some people in that crew or in that type of crew who don't care about the game at all and so they're there just for the conversation and maybe the commercials having said all of that I'm wondering do you think there's a difference with baseball because you described you know watching the game with hannah and keith who are like you know huge baseball fans but i feel like if you're going somewhere to watch a baseball game you care about the game there seems to be more of a casual culture

around football totally because it's not like baseball games do not typically occur on sunday alone there's not the whole snacking culture like what's the last time someone was like oh man mariners game on sunday bring over those famous loaded baked potatoes you make like it's just okay it's not the same as long as you bring a ridged chip you know what cube up some mozzarella you pop that in the microwave i love it like but you know what i mean you're right it doesn't have the same kind of like snack it does it's not an event in the same way there's also 162 of those games only at the end do they start getting really stressful for normal people etc yeah um i will say there is every once in a blue moon the stars align and you one finds themselves in the perfect position or the perfect melding of socializing and football watching and i will tell you when that was uh it was when the seat for me when the seahawks managed to defeat the green bay packers in the nfc championship game a game that they were losing by i think three scores with like seven minutes left i believe russell wilson for through four interceptions in that game we had based on whatever you know ai program they run like a less than one percent chance of winning that game and what it was we were out in port towns and we still lived out there and it was me and carrie and camaro kev and anita and that game was so tense but also fun something to do with it being in a house maybe it being my house we had snacks we there was nothing for making hawk bombs which of course are the superstition in our friend group that camaro needs to drink in order to help the seahawks so we dug around in the liquor cabinet and found whatever we had and kind of made these homebrew similar to hawk bombs when we started doing them was when things started to turn around for the seahawks and it was just that like perfect amount of like everyone is partying i mean we're going crazy as a group but we're also watching every bounce of the football if i could just get people to agree to that like let's all be here let's all be kind of tuned up let's all be snacking on those ridged chips but let's also all be staring at the television and quiet when ron torber is trying to explain why that was not

called an interception right no and i actually i watched a lot i think i started watching football games at your house and of course this was a college football game uh but i remember pizza

mountain never let me down what do you mean live it down pizza i think i was kind of mean to our friend andy about that because i think that was the apple cup it was the apple cup i thought that you guys were getting a i thought you guys were i'm sure we i don't you know i didn't know either

one of you as well back then so maybe i don't remember all i know is i had i when i think about

a game that happened that long ago and how much alcohol i was potentially consuming and that it was pizza mountain that i think my weird neighbor cole came over at some point i just think oh what did I say I just have that moment of kind of anxiety like uh but anyway I'm sorry I was gonna

say that but we did have an era too and even though we lived in a very small like walk-up apartment that wasn't even perfect for viewing during that era I remember you would come over and we'd have like endures and a gang of people would come over but we'd all sit in that tiny little room even in our place remember I don't even think we had a flat screen tv then or maybe we had our very first flat screen tv and I think we were all there like on in our Capitol Hill apartment when the the beast quake thing happened you know and that was 2012 like even then we were all still pretty locked into the game i remember we're on top of each other all staring at the tv

you remember i was holding momo oh did you bring momo over i didn't remember that i was dancing i was dancing with momo the dog which was this dog that vanessa and i had um and uh momo was very very quiet scared mellow you could bring momo around to places momo was just pretty much wanting to stay off of everyone's radar at least in those days and i was holding momo in one arm as the beast quake you had broken out the brown liquor for you and i and the beast quake happened and i just remember dancing in that upstairs room of yours with this dog under one arm and just reveling in the moment also by the way one of my uh one of my top that's beast quake has to be one of my top 20 sports memories it was just so crazy it was unbelievable and am i right and we should

probably move off of this because there's no point in actually i have a great way of moving off of this then we can take a break but um was that also didn't didn't did that seal uh an unexpected playoff berth for us because we had a losing record but we also went to the playoffs that year

and that run helped in the playoffs oh that was in the playoffs that's the i mean for all of the Sorry, we'll end the no point. We'll end the little kind of, what would you call it, the turducken, the no point that's wrapped in. We stuffed a no point inside of a typical TBTL. But this is why I can probably never complain about the Seahawks' fortune. Sometimes they're in a division where you have to be really good to get to the playoffs. And there are other divisions where it's like sub-500 teams are getting in. That year, the Seahawks were 7-9. but because that was enough to win the nfc west new orleans had to come to seattle new orleans had to put a vastly better record to play a road game against us that's the ultimate insult it was total no fairsies and then the seahawks who stunk on ice that season won because of the beastquake right

right right that's amazing okay here's a quick thing um speaking of sports i was listening to a very dumb sports radio program this morning um but they said something that is i think also dumb and fun luke do you know what the largest u.s city is that begins and ends with the letter p philadelphia puyallup my boy according actually is it puyallup i haven't fact checked this but that was because i was listening to the brock and salk show and i think brock is from puyallup And so they mentioned something about that And that must be a stat that they throw out Because they just threw it out really quickly And I was like, ooh, I should double check that But you know what? Why double check it? It's more fun just to believe it

That is an interesting stat And I don't think I can think of another city I've ever heard of that starts and ends with Right, exactly, it's a short list Fairly rare company, I guess Okay, thank you everyone for humoring us If you live in Portland or in Oregon And you see one of those sunset ads Hit me up, tell me I'm not crazy And also, I'd really like to actually get to the bottom of where you like what I really want to find out is what were the other possible commercials that they could have superimposed the boss into?

Yeah, because I'm this whole time we've been talking. I've been on YouTube. I've been on iSpot. I've been looking for these commercials. And Sunset does have a YouTube page. But I can't the latest commercials they posted were like seven months ago. And they are hyper local. I mean, these are I don't there's a commercial where people are eating spaghetti and sweating. I was watching this with the sound off and then they go out to the car it looks like to turn on the air conditioning See those are good HVAC commercials

and by the way if we were going to do our NASA if we were going to do 2001 and HVAC Odyssey it's easy you're in the capsule let's say you're in the International Space Station and there's like one of the astronauts is talking to the other one the astronaut who's in charge of the HVAC and the one astronaut says hey did you fix the heating and cooling And the other person goes It should be fine And then just like the side of it blows off Of the capsule And then the thing is HVAC is more important than you might think Call sunset heating and cooling Just make it relevant to the space plot Yes, space plot Okay, quick break And then we'll be back With more space plot on TBTL

all right let's thank some of our daily donors who are supporting the program with a monthly contribution which we really do appreciate it's how we're able to do this five days a week 52 weeks a year due to the help of folks like katherine mcfadden katherine of portland oregon thank katherine have you seen those sunset heating and cooling ads and what is what is your take on them please hit me up also thanks to brandy unruh of woodenville washington hey thank you wine country woodenville sure is did they did the our old sponsor chateau san michel didn't that get sold to somebody i thought i saw a news headline about that because they were

already owned by a huge company they were owned by by philip morris yeah whatever their new name altria yeah altria but then i think that they were i read an article um i don't know why i'm getting into this i read an article maybe this summer saying that there it looks like they were going to be closing down major parts of that operation out there maybe still maybe still having it as an event space but maybe like not doing a lot of their manufacturing there anymore

Ah, I see. Well, you know, we have certainly appreciated their support over those years. We had some fun times out there. Definitely. Brandy may have even been at some of those events in Woodinville, Washington. Chris Denations would have been coming pretty far from Rochester, Washington.

I like that last name, Nations. It reminds me, though, of something I've been wanting to tell you, which is, you know, I flew Alaska this last week. And you hear this in the commercials, too. They say, you know, Alaska Airlines, part of the, what is it, the One World Alliance? One World Alliance, which sounds like the most evil thing. It sounds like something like somebody's questionable uncle would call the UN. The One World Alliance always chills me.

The globalists and their One World Alliance with their reptilian. That's my Alex Jones impression, by the way. It's not good. It's not good at all. It's actually my impression of the guy who does the Alex Jones impression on the Howard Stern Show. Only our friend P. Fletch will know what I'm talking about. But that's an impression of an impression, and it's not great. What is great is that Krista Nations is supporting our program. Thank you, Krista. Also, Gail Weller is in Santa Monica, California. Great town, great song. Love it. Beautiful Santa Monica, California. Is that the... Everclear. Is that Everclear? Everclear, I want to say, yeah. Swim Out Past the Breakers And Watch the World Die I didn't do the last part because it's a little dark It is dark as I was singing it But it's a very catchy song though It is, it really is I don't know why Art Aleksikakis decided to go there with that But okay, he's a Portland guy You know what's funny is I was talking to Chuck Klosterman Before we did Livewire the last time And he wrote a book called The 90s It's very good by the way I would highly recommend it but um we were talking about the the everclear song um not that one but this one that's like another one yeah you would if i played it for you it's like um it's a song that talks about buying a house in the hills in the west hills and i always thought that was also a some kind of like an la reference but it's actually that's a kind of tony neighborhood here in portland and chuck was telling me that when he and his family moved to portland and they were looking for houses and they were looking in the west hills he was like i was just completely in an everclear song like i was like i was fully acting out the lyrics of whatever that everclear song is i don't know if

i know it but i see that their second most popular song is i will buy you a new life

i believe that's probably it seems like it would be anyway all of that is to say thank you to gail weller and also thanks to kelly zuger who's in seattle washington any songs written about

seattle washington that you can think of i don't think so it's not really a big music you know i

I think it's a big music town, but I don't like it's not like Pearl Jam is writing songs about Ballard.

No, that's true. And I appreciate that. I think they I mean, listen, I like Santa Monica, the song by Everclear. But generally speaking, when some band is trying to write a song that pays tribute to their hometown, it's usually cringey.

It's yeah, it's it's it's I'm with you, unless it's Michael Stanley writing about. right exactly but um but you know there is of course the um there was a sitcom called like seven brides for seven brothers which a sitcom it was from like the 70s i've never even seen it but it famously had that song the bluest skies you've ever seen are in seattle yes i do know that song yeah i don't know anything about the plot of the show i couldn't tell you who's in it i don't know what who the seven brides are who the seven brothers are but it does say the bluest Thank you. guys you've ever seen now are you sure it's a tv show because it's definitely a musical film maybe that's what it is i don't know again i have limited information about it but i do have a lot of information about our final donor katie porter of hillsborough north carolina i know that it's not katie per katie porter the uh member of congress that is what you that's all the you said you have a lot of information that's it i know this is a different katie porter okay because That Katie Porter is, I believe, from maybe the state of New York or Michigan, not from North Carolina. So this is our, I consider this to be our Katie Porter in Hillsboro. You know, my mom loves it on Sunday morning when Jane Polly says, our Luke Burbank. Sometimes she just says, Luke Burbank has more. And sometimes she says, our Luke Burbank has the story. And my mom lives for when Jane Polly says, our Luke Burbank. It is a very, you know, it is a very warm introduction, I feel like. James Pauly is a complete sweetheart. But I would like to say our Katie Porter is supporting us from Hillsborough, North Carolina. So thank you so much to all of our donors of today for making the show possible.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

all right andrew we have been uh trying to get to some of these top stories for a while and what i have been doing though i said this at the top of the show i've actually now been amending the list i've been jettisoning stories that happened during the winter break that i don't think are very interesting and replacing them with newer stories that i do think are interesting um so let's just start i think we're only going to probably get to one of these today and i actually would like to talk about the newest one if you're comfortable with that because I feel like it's relevant to your interest and that is this change in how American bowling alleys are resetting their pins did you see this? No, I didn't see this was this in the show sheet? How did I miss this? I think it is, it's some strings attached, that's my headline by the way, I think they really missed out, this was a piece in the Wall Street Journal written by Ben Kessling, I think that the Wall Street Journal missed the chance to their headline was American bowling in is in a knock-down fight over new high-tech pins. I think some strings attached, bowlers not happy about new pins, that's a better headline in my opinion. Yeah, it's less wordy. It's more punchy. So here's what's going on. There are these bowling alleys that are replacing the old-school pin-resetting machinery with this new system where each pin has a string going into the top of it. So that after you hit the pins and they're knocked over, instead of that complicated, prone to breaking down lots of parts that need oiled machinery, this thing just kind of pops them back up like marionettes.

So they're never like really like when you get a strike and they go scattering all over the place, they're really still tethered in some way.

Yes. And this is making old school bowlers angry. They are saying, look, because, of course, this system, I'm sure if you talk to whoever makes these things, they would they would claim that, oh, we've got a special technology that makes it so the pins respond exactly as they would otherwise. But bowlers who've used this technology and who've bowled into these pins say that, no, the pins behave differently. Sure. It's not the same. This is all written up, by the way, in 11th frame dot com, which is bowling's digital daily newspaper. Andrew how have we not been reading The11thframe.com Bowling's digital daily newspaper I have been How many of the stories are just about new technology And foot spray

Well what I was going to say is Now and again we're just getting started And I haven't pre-read this I'm sort of catching up On it now but I'm a little shocked And this might not make sense but I'm a little shocked that they're even investing In new technology in your Run of the mill bowling alleys because I would figure that run-of-the-mill bowling alleys are maybe a dying breed, but that also might just be because I'm not in the Midwest where, like, bowling is king.

Yes, this is, by the way, Dateline Milwaukee. So they've gone right to the epicenter of this whole thing. The Holler House Bar in Milwaukee, long considered a cradle of American bowling, is one of the holdouts when it comes to string pins. It opened in 1908 and operates the oldest sanctioned bowling alley in America. There are no automated pin setters. Instead, Langdon Savage of Franklin, Wisconsin, one of the pin boys, there are also, by the way, pin girls, loads fallen pins into racks and resets them after every frame. Now, that's too personal for me. I like the machine. I want something that does a good job, but isn't just some 14-year-old who I might hit with the ball. Yeah, right.

And look, now I'm just getting the part of the story where they show pictures. And first of all, I do like seeing this. Is he a pin boy? He's not a ball boy, right? He's a pin boy. Pin boy or pin girl. Pin person. He's a pin person. In fact, look at the alliteration. Pin person. Yeah, but I'm also seeing photos of these pins that have the tethers coming out the top of them. I didn't like it when you said the words. I dislike it even more now that I see it. It looks so... They look like they're not... I mean, listen, I'm sure that they were tested a million times, and I bowl once every two years, and I'm terrible at it. So, I mean, people who know way more about this implemented this technology, but it just... It's a mind F for me. It looks like they're just like they're all they're all on strings. I don't want my I don't want to see the strings.

The International Bowling Federation has certified string pins for tournament play. In 2021, they put out a 41 page string pin setter research report. Now, it says that they are not necessarily convinced that the cost savings outweigh the pins apparent reluctance to fall. So they said they want to conduct more testing. Because I guess that's the larger argument here is like, look, bowling alleys are dying for reasons that I don't understand. Some of the most fun moments of my life have been in a bowling alley, and it's not something that I think you can really get a digital version of. I know there are video games and whatever and Nintendo Wii's or something. Is that a Nintendo product? Mm-hmm. I know there's lots of things you can do that are like bowling, but I still think bowling is very brick and mortar. Like, it's just fun to stand in that bowling alley, smell those smells, roll that ball. I don't understand why every bowling alley is now turning into an Orange Theory and a Five Guys and a Starbucks with four condos on top of it, four floors of condos. But the problem is bowling industry is dying, and so they're going like, well, where are a lot of our expenses? Well, fixing these pin-setting machines is a big part of it. What if we have these strings? What if we save money there? It's sort of like, would you like to have a bowling alley with stringed pins, or would you like to have an Orange Theory that you can't bowl in legally? because they keep telling me to leave right like well I don't know I mean it's kind of a tough

question yeah no I definitely want bowling to remain healthy and it's just there's something that is like again like looking at these photos I was even like kind of saying well I'm sure they're like you can't see the strings and for some reason just seeing them it's upsetting it seems like a different game it seems like like when I was a kid I had this bowling game which I think I might have re-bought as an adult or maybe somebody got it for me as a gift But it was this I wonder if a bunch of people had these It was a little plastic brown It looked like a little miniature briefcase Almost like the size of maybe two decks of cards And then you would Pop it open and set it up So that it was a little bowling lane And then you had a wind up Bowling ball with these little feet And it would go click click click click click click And it would knock down the pins at the end But the pins were actually connected To the floor To the floor, the bowling Did you have one of these? Can you picture this?

seen them i don't think i ever had one yeah along with the varney shirt andrew i didn't come from

suitcase bowling toy money like you did come from bowling toy money but anyway there's just something like about seeing these strings and i i'm really trying not to be the like any change is bad guy like with some of the changes in baseball rules which of course you know are always contentious because of the way people respect the tradition of that game like i'm usually i don't know some of the changes i like some of the changes i'm against i'm not somebody who just thinks like well this is the way it was and this is the way it should be there's something that is actually disturbing my mind about the idea of bowling pins down that are connected to strings

yeah somebody in the article said it just reminds them of like an arcade because there are versions of this and i've seen this too like down the seashore in new jersey you know in a place that's not a bowling alley you know as their sort of like main focus you'll get these little like next to the ski ball there'll be like a kind of weird quasi bowling deal it'll have strings on it but you're like i didn't come here for bowling you know so i i don't have that expectation but i do like this quote from one of the pin people uh london langdon savage uh mr savage stands in the pits hopping out of the way when the pins come flying and grabbing bowling balls to roll back on a track to the players mr savage places the pins in a frame hanging over the alley then he pulls a cord to set them on their spots despite the occasional pin to the shin orchestrating the operation is quote a bit therapeutic mr savage says wow a pin to the shin that doesn't sound good that is an old school job yes it is in person and you literally do have to jump out of the way of the stuff i assumed there was some kind of a you know crow's nest you were in or something but i guess in order to do that quickly enough i mean i hope you get tipped out on that yeah good point like what is the policy because that seems like a kind of a thankless and and uh and and kind of dangerous job yeah definitely and also are you drinking back there is if you're a pin person who's over i'm honestly i'm loaded when i get to work if that's

what i'm doing also like you know those folks who are doing it you're putting money back in the economy by hiring people to do it. I mean, you're a job creator. Take pride in that. Don't, don't replace, you know what, Luke, don't replace people with strings, people before strings. That's my campaign. So, you know what?

Huh? I was trying to be like, you know, cut the strings or, you know, don't like, don't try to keep people on a string. I like yours better.

Well, I do think that no strings attached is a, is a good headline. Now that I understand the thing, listen, we are a little bit crunched on time, But this leads into something that I am interested. Give me two minutes on this because I'm just remembering it now. You know, you were hanging out with us, as we talked about on the show recently, at our Eagles Club recently. In fact, you're going to soon be an eagle yourself. And you were playing some darts with us.

I feel like I am an eagle because I now get emails from the mother area. Does that count? Not until you get swatted a hundred times.

I have to get swats? You have to get swats. Yeah, that was fun.

Is Walter going to be a darts? Yeah.

What I was going to say was There are a couple of dart boards there And I brought my darts last time We were hanging out there And you and me And you mentioned this road And some friends were playing some darts I just want to say

I've never been more attracted to you Than when you were throwing those darts

I wasn't even playing that well That's the thing

Dude, compared to somebody like me, Andrew It was crazy how tight your cluster was

And also your dart playing Yeah, thank you I've been waiting my whole life to hear that I do think Quick aside I do think that there's something going on where I've measured where the line is, like where the toe line is for my dartboard here at home, and it seems to be regulation. It seems like the lines are too far back at the Eagles, but you don't want to say that because then it sounds like you're making excuses. But there's something very different about throwing darts in the Eagles. Having said all of that, somebody dropped some information. apparently someday i believe this weekend some dart competition has rented out the eagles space for their dart competition and i want to figure out what that is and if it's open to the public or if i can because you know like it's the eagles i'm a member of the eagles but if somebody has rented out the the rental space i'm not gonna just gonna grab a beer and hang out with them

you kind of gotta you know but you should go watch it well that's what i mean can i be in that area

I want to see like you thought I was impressive did you see that oh I know you saw that viral video going around that our friend Chris sent us of of like people just like nailing like I mean just I mean they never miss they just never miss they can get the tiniest little corner of the

board over and over and over again I mean yeah that's another level but I still think you're very good at it now uh certainly compared to somebody like me I was just I mean I was winging it at that dartboard and then they'd be all over the place it'd be not hitting the board sometimes it'd be going to a part i wasn't aiming at and your stuff was just very precise to me i was i was very uh very impressed by your work by your dartsmanship thank you how long before darts are

on strings now oh i know man oh you can't dart anything these days here i go once again with

the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all right email or vmail before we skeedaddle yeah let me do a little uh quick kind of summation here our audience luke loves them some british mystery cozies oh good i mentioned midsummer murders that was not a show that you watched with your dad apparently over the break But I see it all over the place, and I got some impassioned emails from listeners, like a lot of emails just saying how much they love Midsommar Murders. Apparently, it's been around for a couple of decades. I didn't realize that. Got a note here from Bette that says Midsommar Murders is great. There are also so many others. If you want another good one from the BBC, you got Father Brown is awesome. I think I've heard of that. Let's see here. Shakespeare and Hathaway. Is that one that you guys were watching? Shakespeare and Hathaway? No. That's more modern, it looks like.

Okay. Now, here we did. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. I was going to say, the two that we watched were May Gray, starring Rowan Atkinson, and something called The Missing, where the main detective is named Julian Baptiste. Those are the two that we watched.

The Missing really sounds familiar to me, but I don't think I've seen it. But here's a note we got from Anne, who really wants us to know what's out there. It says, hello friendos during the early days of the pandemic my octogenarian mother and i worked our way through a many murder series your comments on midsummer murder and magritte do you remember magritte it's it's may gray oh that's may gray that's how you oh you know you just said it but i'm looking at it it looks like magritte sorry i know it does and i was trying

to explain to my dad the artist magritte because also magritte always wears a bowler hat like the Magritte. Oh, wow. Kind of character and stuff, but... We should name it... We should... name it, This Is Not a Murder Show, or today's title will be This Is Not a Podcast. Wasn't that Magritte? Sure. This Is Not a Pipe? Yes. Anyway, so anyway, Anne recommends these, and she has a couple of lists here I want to share with you. Here are the ones set in England that Anne recommends. Midsummer Murders, Queens of Mystery, Father Brown, Rosemary and Thyme, which I'm pretty sure is also a restaurant in Ballard, and Poirot, which of course must be based on the Agatha Christie character. Set in Australia, you have Miss Fisher's Mysteries, Dr. Blake Mysteries. Set in Canada, you got the Murdoch Mysteries. Oh, sure. Sure. Set in South Africa, Recipes for Love and Murder. And finally, set in France, you have Balthazar, which again must be a restaurant somewhere. It is a restaurant.

Balthazar is the restaurant where James Corden was being rude to people. That's why it stood out to me.

There you go. The famous Balthazar. So there you go. Thank you. And again, those are just two emails that I rushed through here, but we're just getting so much love for Midsommar Murders and and this entire genre.

I need to. Yeah, I need to get into it. Get into it. Yeah, because those it was really fun watching those. Again, I like the missing a little more than May Gray. But yeah, I'm I'm I'm excited about all these recommendations and excited to delve into that world. Also, my dad, with all of his, you know, illegal purloining of these things, I was like, Dad, you know that I was Googling, trying to figure out what people thought about the ending of season one of The Missing. And it was like, Amazon Prime, The Missing. And I was like, Dad, you know, this is all on Amazon. You guys have Amazon Prime.

You guys have Amazon, but you just get into, you know, what is the line that you love from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Once you get into a bit torrenting habit of a tendency to push it as far as you can take it. Did you start White Lotus season two?

No, we're starting that tonight. Okay, good. Actually, I was recording a podcast yesterday that drops on Friday. My friend Walker and Eyal, who are also in the Livewire House Band, have a great podcast called Honest Jams. It's kind of a music podcast, and I was recording that with them yesterday, but we were there for a bit, and so Operation White Lotus got pushed to tonight. So I could have a report for you tomorrow.

No, no, I see. I'm just interested. I feel like I'm putting a lot of pressure on this, though.

um uh yeah i i feel like i'll be able to um you're an adult under the weight of that pressure so don't worry you're an adult you got this all right everyone thank you so much for listening uh that's going to bring us to the end of today's show but we will be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that until then have a great wednesday here in january of 2023 despite what andrew's told you it's 2023 i know that i'm looking at the show sheet i'm looking at the show sheet i don't know what version you got mine says 2023 oh really

what it will check yesterday's okay all right maybe i'm wrong no mine says 2020 okay you gotta

don't have you met me of course i have the wrong gear on there it'll probably have that also until next year's winter games anyway thanks everyone see you tomorrow until then please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

hey Luke and Andrew it's Christine your London based Scottish 10 just ringing to wish you a good new year here's Hayes Langley alum reek and power out power out