Muse

The video shows Robbie Stratton running through a convenience store with an alligator in his hands. He takes the animal in the beer fridge as well. I don't even remember coming up here. We asked Stratton where the alligator came from. No clue. No clue. This store sells some good liquor. And I drank a lot of it that night. They told me what I did was stupid and I'll be facing some charges here soon. Probably go to jail, probably not. We'll see.

TBTL!

when i eat hot cheetos i get crazy i just love hot cheetos i love them so much

daddy's gonna dish out some daddy discipline as a fellow daddy i approve stop saying daddy

you've got a papa bear i'm not handling this well i don't feel competent i'm depressed we're the number one show in hospitals and on sinking riverboat casinos this is not your mama's podcast This is too beautiful to live.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Why now? What are they doing? And how can you steer clear of it all? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I was cyberbullied within an inch of my life last night.

Coming to you from the Hollywood Broadcast Center right here in Portland, Oregon, where it is an absolutely mediocre day, weather-wise. Not too hot, not too cold, not too sunny, not too raining, just kind of cloudy and happening. This is also happening, episode 3934 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And I am so happy to be here today. I mean, I'm always happy to be doing this show, But I am especially happy to be standing here in the Hollywood Broadcast Center on this Monday because there were moments on Saturday, and I'm not trying to be sort of hyperbolic. There were moments on Saturday where I was in some amount of fear for my life when I was climbing a tree that is nearly 300 feet. Dead ass you high, huh? And what I had failed to consider was the absolutely terrifying impact of having your entire life depend on a rope as you dangle hundreds of feet above the forest floor.

I am petrified, petrified with this story.

We'll talk about that coming up. Also, I have on this program many times talked about the Denver airport being 10 miles from the Denver airport. And it turns out I'm not the only one who has noticed the deep weirdness of D.I.A. A New York Times story gets into the various conspiracy theories. I believe the headline from the New York Times, which is a great one, a great piece by Tiffany Shue. A towering, terrifying demon horse isn't even the weirdest part. That could also be said about TVTL. Anyway, we'll talk about that. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show. may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I'm a professional. Look it up in the book. He sure is. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I want to hear about your adventures in the trees, but I will, of course, delay the interesting stuff with a little bit of emotional bullshit that I think you might be able to associate with. And it just occurred to me, if I don't mention it right now, it'll probably just go by the wayside. But I think you'll be able to dig. I have some slightly toxic feelings I'm dealing with here that don't make any sense, but I think you'll understand when I tell you. You had texted me earlier today, and I mentioned I was working on something. I was loading up my car full of a bunch of leftover debris from various projects around the house. I'm going to take a run to the dump later, Luke. It's a dump day. It's a dump day Monday. I love it. And one of the things, the heaviest thing by far that's going to cost me, you know, they kind of charge by weight. They weigh your car when you show up with a bunch of shit, and then they give you a card and then you dump all your stuff in the various places around the dump then you kind of check out at the end you give them their card back and they re-weigh your car and they can tell how much you know how much stuff you got rid of and they're going to charge you uh you know based on the weight anyway the heaviest thing i have is this i guess whatever what is a sink made of a ceramic sink right that came out of my bathroom porcelain is the word

actually it might even be it's probably it's probably porcelain it's whatever the cheapest Your sinks are actually steel, like metal, and it's coated in porcelain, but I bet you yours, if it's from the bathroom, I bet it's porcelain.

It's pretty heavy, and it's certainly, you know, it's not a great sink. I, you know, talked often and long-windedly about kind of the shitty stuff that, you know, kind of not decorated, but the shittiness of the vanity and sink and all this.

stuff in my basement bathroom, like the medicine cabinet and all that. So I'm taking all of that stuff. But Genevieve wanted to try to donate the sink itself, this, I guess, porcelain heavy sink, which, you know, again, I complained about how ugly the bathroom was. So I'm not trying to say here that it was a really nice sink, but it was functional, you know, and I'm just talking about the porcelain top part, not the entire vanity. And I kept telling V's like, let's just dump it. Let's just dump it. It doesn't matter. She's like, no, I just want to see if one of these secondhand stores will just take it off our hands for us. I hate to dump it, which is, you know, the environmentally right thing to do, reuse, recycle, et cetera. But we drive down to the, you know, the used housing supply store down in Soto or wherever it is a few weeks ago. And we are going to donate that and a couple of other things. And the guy rejected the sink. and like i didn't even want it triggered what i have an over triggered rejection button which probably had to do with maybe like part of my like dating profile or lack thereof as a younger person like all the irony of that is i think many more people than you realize did have a crush on you well maybe that's an that's emotional baggage for another for me to ruin another show with um But anyway, the point is, like, now I'm loading this frickin' sink back into my car, back into my car to take it to the dump where I wanted to anyway, and I just am burning with rage over that guy who rejected it. You're, like, re-litigating it in your mind, basically. You couldn't have sold it for $5? I mean, we took it all the way, and I'm just sort of like, I didn't even want to take it to you. I was going to take it to the dump anyway. Like, this caught, by the way, I'd just like to point out, it cost me nothing. It cost me – the only thing was I load it into a car, then I had to unload it again a few weeks ago. But there's something about this goddamn sink right now that is so triggering to me because the guy rejected it, and I was giving it to him for free. And I just want this thing out of my life so I can put this behind me.

Addie talks about that with reselling Clothes at like Buffalo Exchange or Red Light like the Amount of judgment from like a 23 year old wearing like an ironic Bass Pro Shop hat Sifting through your treasures And telling you none of these are resellable She talks about that being a Really tough blow

Genevieve would talk about the same thing And like I don't want to cast aspersions but Genevieve Is you know significantly older And also of a different i would say hipster class than had laid and this sounds like i'm being insulting to genevieve she's

just of a different age so can you imagine was genevieve wearing janko jeans at a recent town hall because i will give her the win on fashion based on did you see something that she wasn't wearing these young people these youngs and their outfits i swear my daughter was wearing

something right on the line of being janko jean oh hadley yeah but that's what i'm saying and And, again, without being insulting to Genevieve, imagine Addie being a younger person living on the Hill, whatever. My guess is the stuff that she's trying to donate is much more in line or at least more recently in line. And not donate but sell. Oh, sell. Yeah, that's a thing too.

Yeah, that's the whole economy of that. Yeah, of course. She's constantly reselling clothes. But, yeah, so you're saying when Veves takes her stuff in, it's maybe from a generationally sort of a different thing than what maybe the hip folks on the Ave are looking for?

Yeah, I mean, let me put it in the parlance of today's youth and just say, homie, don't even play that anymore. Genevieve is not going to the Buffalo Exchange, even trying anymore.

Low-key, the Buffalo Exchange is high-key, not taking.

Yes, exactly.

It's giving, we don't want this.

She stopped that. She stopped that emotional battery like 10 years ago, I think.

Right. Yeah, I could see that being something that would bring together. When they reject Addie's clothing, it's just on the level of like, oh, wow, I'm not going to make more money. And also, I guess you have bad taste. But if I were to take something in, it would also be a really clear indication of that I'm aging out of. I mean, have long ago aged out of the demo of people wearing clothes that other people, young people would ever want to wear. Like it's a real reminder of the aging process.

Yeah. And I was never in that space. I was always my entire life of me buying my own clothes.

Huge blouses from Saskatoon come back in style, my friend, and you're going to be laughing all the way to the bank. I just buy big-ass flannels in Goodwill. You know, the don't come in here like Joel Otto from the Calgary Flames. Oh, the Kroll show. Wheels High? Oh, yeah. Wheelies. Wheels High Ontario or something? Is it Wheels High or Wheelies Ontario? Yeah, that was a... I'm sorry, right now the cat is trying to send a fax to 1993, so...

That was a recurring storyline. It was like a recurring sketch on the Kroll show. Yeah, it's a high school, and every...

It's a high school, and everybody uses a wheelchair except for the main character. It's supposed to be like a fish-out-of-water story. Do I have that right?

Yes, and they call him Legs when they bully him.

Right, right, right.

But I'd only heard the audio that you had pulled for—I never really watched the Kroll show. I mean, everything I've seen from it makes me laugh hysterically. Like, it's not that—I was trying to not watch it, but I just didn't get around to it. and uh yeah the other day on tiktok that entire sketch at least the the one that has um the guy uh oh is his name john daly maybe the guy who's playing the teacher who says oh yeah come in here like you're joel otto from the calgary flame yes right right right yep and i forget who is playing his mom who's dropping him off at school but it's um anyway it's uh somebody who i love is uh is playing his mom, and she's dropping him off at school, and he's nervous, and that's where the audio of they don't tuck in their blouses, or whatever it is.

Oh, yeah, that's from this, okay, so here, I got this. It's all from the same sketch. We're not in Saskatoon anymore, Mom.

People in Toronto don't tuck in their blouses. They want to dress well here. They don't want to fit in, you know? And that concludes our lesson on the founder of Canadian electricity, Sir Brian. Oh, look who decided to come in tardy. Now, don't think it's okay to just roll in here at 100 kilometers per hour like you're joel lotto with the calgary flames okay who do you think you are prime minister

stephen harper oh i think i might cut the harper stuff usually because it dates it a little bit

just so wonderfully overly canadian in i mean obviously that's the premise of the sketch is just like why does everyone in the sketch keep saying things that are overly canadian so as to remind us that this show is set in canada but it's it's just a wonderful little present that i

opened about 15 years after everyone else here let me give you one more thing for your stocking we stand with two of our undergrads in their dorm rooms and what's a dorm room oh it's where the students sleep oh a room share oh i like that and you'll maybe eat meals with them in the dining

hall that's the cafetorium i don't i've seen that i don't know if that's from wheelies or wheels up i don't know but that's definitely from the kroll show though it sounds again highly canadian it's Definitely making fun of, yeah, Canada or Canadian speak. Anyway, so, okay, I got my bullshit out of the way. So you were what? So you're taking me to the dump today.

Can I make a prediction? And can I lay some money on the line? I'll bet you $5 Canadian. I'll bet you five loonies. I'm sorry. I'm just obsessed with that sketch right now. There's also a lot of Canadian money talk in it. I am guessing that you will not make the minimum weight for the dump. In other words, I think, what is it, like $30? If you were to take one McDonald's cup you wanted to throw away, it's $30.

I think it's less. I think it's $17 where I go.

I go to the one up in Shoreline. Right. Didn't that create some kind of situation, a different time? The reason I say that is— It's technically only for Shoreliners?

I think, yeah, that's what I think it's a the first time I went, I didn't realize I was sort of breaking the law, breaking the law, because technically it's a King County run dump that if if you live in Seattle proper, you're not supposed to use it. I didn't even know that the first time. And then our buddy Lee heard my story and wrote in and said, hey, you got away with something there. And they gave you the sticker so you can go back anytime you want now, which I do. And I'm guessing that maybe the fee structure might be slightly less. so i'm naughty because i when i used to take a lot of stuff to the dump in bellingham

i would feel like i was just like loading my car up with so much stuff and it would not make the minimum weight like in other words it was just like you're gonna have to pay the whatever it might have been there 20 bucks 30 bucks for anything between zero pounds and like i don't know 400 pounds and i always just was like man i just i i felt like my manhood was in question I'm not even bringing enough heaviness to this dump

You wanted to be charged Charge me for my dignity

No, what I wanted to have was Let's say that the minimum weight stops at 300 pounds I wanted to have 299 pounds I didn't want to have 50 pounds I felt like I was just overshooting it I was paying for this amount of dumping That I wasn't doing Because I live a very Cosseted sort of Podcaster life Which means I'm not fully using And I almost said utilized, but I've learned from you how to use that word properly. I felt like I wasn't using the dump to its full capacity because I was just bringing in kind of like a, you know, 100 pounds or something.

You're throwing away a couple of RCA adapters, like a little podcasting wimp. Right. Quarter inch to eighth inch. Totally.

Like all these other like macho men are there.

As you throw your little things in there. The sound. The sound of just your little adapters hitting the side of the car.

The sound of a podcaster throwing away RCA cables is extremely vivid as a thought.

In the same way I got this cheap-ass ring light at Goodwill for like $2.99 at most because like some vlogger bought it in the height of the pandemic. And now that's sort of like already like we're on the other side of that. I can imagine just like how much podcast detritus is filling up our landfills now that everybody's podcast has failed. How many USB microphones? How many snowball microphones? Yeah. just I mean blue yetis what's gonna happen

when the aliens come here in like 50,000 years and all they're finding are blue yetis it's the only thing that hasn't deteriorated they'll be like

what do you call the crypto what do you call like a yeti there's a name for that right oh cryptozoology yeah cryptozoology but it'll be these old microphones that nobody uses anymore

what were these humans doing that's how they talk by the way the aliens

yeah

Let's do this It's actually about on time to take a break But let's do it before I launch into my story Of tree climbing Because I have a feeling it could kind of get out of hand So let's do a quick break And then we'll be back with more TBTL In a moment

On your mark Get set Now ready Everybody rattle

Hey let's thank some dazzling donors These are the wonderful Generous folks keeping tbtl in business uh with their donations of a dazzling amount of dough this is now the time in the show when i also remind folks that starting july 3rd tbtl is going independent if you didn't hear our exit interview with our supervisor beth perlman on friday you should go check that out i thought that was a delightful conversation yeah except for the part why is it that as many jokes as we make and I make about us not having many listeners when Beth told me slash us that when she took this position they said TBTL is one of our most beloved and least listened to shows that hurt me a little bit you know

it didn't in the moment it made me laugh but over the week if I'm just going to be really raw here if I'm going to be really raw here for a second I got to say is one of those things that can't kind of came back and this is not a statement on Beth but yeah came back in my head as I was doing some chores this weekend and this isn't a statement on Beth but when she said well they also told me you know that you have the most loyal audience you'll ever see but also you have by far the smallest audience on the network part of me in my fantasy was like and did they tell you what they've done to help us build this audience that we brought APM eight years ago like all of the outstanding publicity work that I've seen on other shows but anyway I didn't say that

I think it's good that I didn't tell the guy not to take your sink

well the only reason i'm comfortable saying that is because that is not beth's job and that is obviously i did not say that that wasn't that was yes but just in the as i just to admit that i did later get post defensive about that both shadow boxing the same one that i 100 asked for like i

was like i teed it up and all our our boss beth who is again wonderful and lovely all she did was give an honest answer and i believe i maybe even said please be honest no and i'm glad that she

did by the way i'm glad that she did that me saying that is not a statement about beth or what she said on the show it's about my me and some hang-ups that i have certainly it's about

christina homer in san francisco california andrew who is one of what we've learned is a very small number of people who like this show exactly but thank goodness for the christina homers of the world because that's how this thing continues on and hopefully will continue on into the future when folks start donating directly to TBTL, the business. Christina is in San Francisco, California, and says, Hey, Luke and Andrew, thanks for another super-duper year of TBTL's dazzling hashtag content in the books. I humbly nominate San Francisco and the Bay Area for your 4,000th show. Have we ever done a full-on TBTL Live in the Yask area? Not with me.

I don't think ever I don't think we've passed through that area On various road trips But I don't think we've even really stopped much Sacramento I'm now remembering

That would be great I do feel like we have a decent Number of folks Numbering in the 20s or 30s Of people in San Francisco and Oakland And that whole area who listen Anyway Christina says According to my calculations that should be in early august maybe i don't know you know more about the show numbering than i do christina honestly um i hear the weather here is usually warm and sunny around them winky face what's the famous quote from mark twain about san francisco oh yeah it's the the coldest winter i ever spent was a summer in san francisco yeah i forgot i have absolutely

observe that myself it's it's the oddest thing because you know the weather in san francisco is quite beautiful a lot of the time and then it's summer and you're like is it 48 degrees right now in like august uh and then christina mentions my favorite drop probably one of my favorite drops which of course is that um oh ma pa it's just beautiful i hope to see you there says christina and then additional note from christina keep up the skyjink segment well today's your day i heard that at the beginning of the show what a great coincidence i did not plan this although my 10 and a half partner can't stop saying what's in the box what's in the box we got to bring that one yeah let me see here just more for the audio than anything i i'm pretty sure that i said this in some form or fashion a few times but i just want to say if you sent me a christmas card or a holiday card that made its way to the po box to andrew to me thank you so much I literally just went through all of them. Becca was over and she saw this pile of cards that were sort of opened and she started looking through them and she just looked at me. She goes, do you understand how blessed you are that like people send you holiday cards and other just tidings of comfort and joy just because they like this show? Like it is such a kind thing that our listeners do for us. So I just want to say if you sent me something, I have looked at it and I really do appreciate it. and maybe we are due for another What's in the Box at some point

you know what I'm just realizing now I only have Brad Pitt saying What's in the Box mixed into the What's in the Box intro for some reason I didn't save the isolated What's in the Box and my apologies

well I think you had mixed feelings about it because of the nature of that audio tape

but I certainly had it at one point because I used it as a mixing element why wouldn't I have saved it see this is where when I hold myself up to a high organizational standard I really disappoint myself when I realize I didn't follow through on.

Wait till you're the head of the organization. No. Yeah. What is starting July 3rd? President and CEO. Co-owner of the organization.

Right. Yeah.

Anyway, thank you, Christina. We really do appreciate you. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go.

Everybody rattle, sattle.

Look who it is. It's Danielle Goudreau. I love that pronouncer that Danielle sent along with her name. Now.

How am I, what am I missing? Oh, so it says good row, bad paddle. What am I missing about bad, is like rowing a boat, don't paddle it? What's bad paddle?

I don't know if that is an expression, good row, bad paddle, but it made me know, because first of all, because if the pronouncer was just good row, it could be good row. That doesn't really help. So by saying good row, bad paddle, immediately evokes.

God, it puts the row in the context of what we're doing on our logo. It's a good row, it's a bad paddle. Danielle Woodrow who's rowing on our logo I don't think I've actually noticed are you rowing, am I rowing, are we both rowing?

I remember we had a conversation about that too because we were working with the artists let me look this up what is our website again, tbtl.net tbtl.net is where people can sign up

for the new tbtl newsletter

you are rowing and I'm in the front of the boat and we thought that was an interesting power dynamic I think we were in a meeting with artists talking about Who's in the front and also who is rowing And I'm in the front But you are the Wind beneath my wings

This makes sense in a way because you're keeping your eyes On the horizon you're really Kind of observing what our Destination is wait update We both have a paddle it's a good row But two bad paddles Danielle Goodrow is in Nashua New Hampshire and Says I just want to thank Luke and Andrew for another year of tbtl i want to thank luke for rowing the boat of tbtl by himself solo yeah my no help from

my paddles in the water but i'm just sticking it in there like i'm not doing anything i'm trying

to make that is you know what it is that's the beginning of the show right there you're trying to push the boat forward and i'm just sticking my oar in and we're going are we stuck on something

i want to thank luke and andrew for another year of tbtl and the tbtl community for being a constant presence in my life and making the world a little better just a reminder i do own the disposable media trademark wait is this one of our danny this is our this is this is i was

gonna say uber danny but that's that gets more confusing yeah no this is danny lawyer number one og danny yeah in new hampshire i'm sorry the danielle threw me yeah yeah um i do own the

disposable media trademark in new hampshire when you are ready to expand your podcast empire okay Well, let's try to get through our first TBTL-a-thon of the new era of TBTL, and then we'll talk about expanding. Finally, a large percentage of my practice is elder law. I encourage everyone in the TBTL community to make sure they're... state plans are in order and to check in on the people in your life who are 65 and older and vulnerable to isolation and financial exploitation andrew check out the work on elder luck concerns

by peter falk's daughter oh katherine as in organization colombo yeah because um i don't know if there is something specific in the life of peter falk that would lead just one more thing his daughter to take up the cause but i do know that peter falk's last years were you know were very tough and he dealt oh they were okay i didn't know that yeah he he um suffered from dementia and so and i think there are some things that were he he had some instances in public that i think were pretty embarrassing as well i don't know if that gets into any of this at all yeah it's kind of a bummer i think things were said that you don't want to

hear loved ones say i i just think of him as being in that truly bananas i think like german

music video oh i think you're thinking of wings of desire that has a music scene in it the vim vendors film is that what you're thinking of it's black and white no no no okay no no we

talked about this long ago there is this it may not be german there is this truly wild video where celebrities are lip syncing to it's not i don't think it's imagine that was the gal gadot thing that everyone kind of got a little bit annoyed with at the beginning of the pandemic it is a beatles song if i remember right and it is everyone in the world from like jason alexander to oh and then oh yes here falk is is not is one of the only people who's not singing it's like they just got some footage of him you know when he I think was maybe in better health

he was gone by this point right or no this was a video

I'm sure many of these people were no longer live Huey Lewis is in it

you know what Luke I can tell you specifically when that sort of resurfaced because you presented that on the show when I was staying with my parents and doing the show out of my parents basement which was a couple of years ago that would have been like March of like a year and a half ago because it was also the time that the war broke out in the Ukraine just weird ways of but I think it was originally something that was made in like the early 2000s is that correct it just sort of like it just was resurfaced around this time yes it had been out for a while

and it just due to it's let it be okay is the is the song that they're doing and I will I'm gonna just I just want to read you the list of people that are in this D Snyder from Twisted Sister Freddie England aka Freddie Kruger oh right let's see I'm trying to find a complete list Tanya Harding Leslie Nielsen from the Naked Gun Mickey Rourke let's see I'm trying to find let's see Malcolm Jamal Warner from Cosby Show in a different world Judd Nelson Harpo that can't be like

Harpo Marks maybe they just like Falk Maybe they just grabbed footage of him or something

Right Said Fred Daryl Hanna From the movie Splash It's just It is such a great David Faustino from Married with Children, Bud Bundy If you have not had a chance to see it I would highly It's a Norwegian TV show I believe And if you just google Norwegian TV show Let it be It's just like Each person is more unlikely than the one Before them for being in this video So it's just really incredible. But anyway, Peter Falk was in that. That's why.

Right. That's why we thought about it. And by the way, it's Nick Cave and the bad seeds that are in the movie Wings of Desire, which is why, and which is a very, you know, it's a, you've seen that movie, right? So if you saw like a Peter Falk and a guy with him.

I don't think I've actually seen it. I remember it getting a lot of, a lot of, didn't they remake it with Nicolas Cage? Oh, yeah. Called like Angels of Desire or something?

City of Angels?

Yeah.

It's something like that. Yeah, and another, oh, and I can't remember who plays opposite him, but another very famous actress. Anyway.

I remember when the Vim Vendors movie, well, actually, you know what? I don't know if I know when Wings of Desire came out. I think I remember when the Nick Cage movie came out, and everyone was saying, that's based on the Vim Vendors movie.

Which I've never seen the American remake of it. City of Angels, is it? 1998.

anyway peter falk's daughter katherine falk organization.org is it sounds like according to one of our dannys doing some really important work for folks that are dealing with uh elder care and elder law so do check out katherine falk organization.org uh and uh danielle Thank you. Signs off. Ta-ta for now. Final comments. How awesome is it to have John as a boss?

He rules with an iron fist.

Do these pass through the John Sklaroff filter?

Is it possible that John added that? That is my guess because as these dazzling donor messages go on, they become more and more glowing towards somebody named John at 8 p.m. I don't know what's up with that.

Daniel, if you didn't say that, please let us know because we need to, As one of our final acts Get Beth Perlman on the case Tell John Sklaroff to Quit polishing his own apple Although It's great having him as a boss though

Yeah no he's a pretty good boy That could just be something that Danielle observed By the way I did send a note to Beth saying that We should probably do One last round of Thrive Performance reviews before we get out of here So don't worry I didn't forget about that and I sent her a note so she'll be tapping you on the shoulder. I really appreciate it.

I love being in business with you. Here I go once again. Wait, that's not what we play here. Uh-oh.

Sometimes it is when we... It is, you know what?

Sometimes it is. Today it's not. Today it's this.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

A quick update, not tree-related, but Amy Sedaris-related. Remember the other day on the program I was talking about how he's a little bit... I've slightly regretted trying to do a flex on stage at Oregon State University. We were talking about Dream Guests for Livewire. And the name Bridget Everett came up, who's the star of Somebody Somewhere, this show that I really love that's got its second season starting. And I think I wanted to sort of be a big man and let everyone know that I do have Amy Sedaris' cell phone number. So I texted her from the stage to see if she could put us in touch with Bridget Everett. And I sort of immediately regretted it because, one, it was probably – it was like midnight in New York. So it was kind of a weird time to send someone a text. And it's just like we don't have that kind of friendship. I have interviewed her one time. She was very kind. I got her number. We've texted a couple of times about the mandadorian. But it's not the kind of thing where it's like me asking you for a favor. um and so i sent her that message and i and then she responded i don't know if i brought this up on the show when we talked about the first time but her response in the the next morning was extremely non-committal it was the it was what she said was um uh i'm seeing her tomorrow night i can ask her who represents her um i do know she's beyond swamped right now which was a way of saying like i can ask who represents her i believe our friend ryan in dc might have sent me the uh thank you ryan the info for uh management yeah it's like and ryan i hope you take this in the spirit it's intended if ryan could find it so could me or laura hadden our executive producer meaning that was kind of like i can try to find out the thing you could find on the internet made me think well this is going nowhere and then but this is amy sedaris for you i get a text from her the next day that said i gave bridget your contact info and i said nice

things about you so i hope she gets in touch wow what a mensch very much so yeah you mentioned that um because i was like oh that was that that was nice that she responded at all even if it is somewhat non-committal and i understand that like being non-committal is not necessarily a statement upon the person asking the request for the hookup it's a statement of respecting the boundaries of the other person i mean i just did this recently with somebody's like hey do you know anybody at this one public radio station i'm like yeah sure but like i said that you know i'm not sure if this is the type of thing they cover or not but i passed your information along they'll keep an eye out for an email from you you know because you just don't want to put anybody on the spot right absolutely

and i yeah i didn't think it was in any way poor form of her to sort of be general about it but i was quite surprised that she remembered and that the next night when she was having dinner i don't i still don't think bridget everett is going to come on our show because it would involve her sending a text to a random number of someone who hosts a radio thing that her friend amy said

they're trying to get in touch with you yeah like hey i heard you want me on your show like that's

probably not gonna happen i don't think that's gonna happen but it was a very kind thing from amy sedare so i just wanted to make sure everyone knows that she is in fact a wonderful human being okay now on to andrew a thing that happened to me this weekend that i will tell you is probably the most physically and emotionally demanding thing i have ever done in my life like i cannot overstate how hard it is to climb a nearly 300 foot tree on ropes using only your arm leg strength to propel yourself coupled with the realization at about i don't know 100 feet in the air that my entire life depended on this rope not snapping and even though the people running the course who were just absolutely wonderful were very clear these ropes can hold like 4 000 pounds these ropes are designed for this they have sometimes multiple people on the same rope Even though I've been putting on weight lately I'm not yet at 4,000 pounds Even though intellectually I understood

Did you go to the bathroom before you started climbing at least To get rid of any excess weight

I did In fact, the guy running it said As we were in the deep forest of Silver Falls State Park in Oregon He said, now would be a great time for anyone to pee Because we're going to be up on those ropes for a while When my friend and colleague at CBS, Anthony, said hey do you want to do the story about tree climbing i was like sure i pictured in my mind scrambling around on tree branches um which is something that would not i don't think it would strike a ton of fear in my heart but what we were actually doing was climbing on a rope with a harness using again our own strength to to to propel ourselves up a tree that had no limbs on

it up to like 250 feet when you and i were talking about this on friday were you still picturing yourself scrambling up because i don't do a ton of research that's like well you know me i'm nor do i i'm still looking up the um you would research this well of course i would research it and say no but um no it's funny i'm not trying to be a know-it-all but i never pictured you scrambling up branches i always pictured this like basically climbing up the side of a mountain or side of a building like our friends did in downtown seattle for charity years and years ago or whatever i figured you'd be like harnessed up and just just crawling up a rope we had friends who climbed up the side of a building for charity do you remember when like ron don and libby climbed up or did they just climb down maybe they just had to climb down but it was like one of the it wasn't the smith tower but it was one of the is it the columbia tower but they were outside they were outside the building yeah it was it's like some charity thing i have a newfound respect for them you were in the building you were in you weren't in the columbia tower but you were in cairo like during the time you've just forgotten yeah it was some it was some sort of a like thing

i didn't give them their propers at the time because i did not understand how just terrifying again i'm not i don't think of myself as someone who's overly afraid of heights at this point but i am telling you my friend when i so you do the way it works is first you do a a training session so you kind of learn how to operate these this climbing gear and you're using these two things called ascenders and the ascenders are these kind of like metal loops that are connected to your rope and they only go up they cannot go down and you're wearing a like a harness that it's kind of you're wearing it around your waist and and through your legs that's attached to the ascenders so you're attached to the rope you really can't go anywhere um but the thing about this rope is when when we were out in the woods well first was we hiked like almost an hour a lot of it almost straight uphill and i remember and we were carrying all this camera gear and equipment to film it and i was like this doesn't feel like it's preparing me well for something that could be physically pretty demanding what i really didn't factor in was the physical challenge of doing it because basically what you're doing is pulling yourself up you're not supposed to be using your arms as much as your legs it's supposed to be more like a squat so you you sort of you raise your legs which which gives you a little slack in your ascenders and then you move your ascenders up and then you stand up and then you move your you lift your legs and you move your ascenders up it's this pretty arduous process that i just didn't think about the physical component of this so i find myself at about 100 feet getting the fear like the fear on a feet is about a third

of the way up am i remembering this correct yeah exactly so it's like 280 feet or something is the

top of the tree i've been rounding up on instagram saying 300 because it sounds more badass but it's so i'm about a third of the way up i am totally exhausted physically and when i look down i realize i am now at a height where i would die if this rope broke like i'm already at like i'm in the death zone and i start getting the fear i start having intrusive thoughts like that are what would happen if this rope snapped or if this harness i'm wearing broke and even though i know intellectually that there's like almost no chance of that happening i can't i'm trying to push the thoughts out of my mind. And I'm also dealing with the fact that I need to be at the top of this tree in the next like 20 minutes so we can film the sunset because CBS has paid a lot of money to hire a crew and they're paying me. And, you know, it's a big project, this thing. And if I don't get to the top of the tree, I kind of ruin it for everyone. but i'm also terrified like paralyzed by fear like having and i don't want to be glib about this but having what felt like a kind of low-level panic attack which felt like it was in danger

of going into a high-level panic attack i mean i know this feeling well and i'm not trying to put myself in your shoes because i couldn't have done i couldn't have gone up i couldn't have gone up 25 feet but that fear that you were feeling that that that that feeling of panic is exactly the feeling of the fear of heights that i have in much much much much less uh scary scenarios but it's just like okay i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine all of a sudden not fine yes not fine i had a little bit of that this weekend as i was climbing out on a board in this like one like just little area like if i had fallen i was climbing out onto a board that was not nailed down and it was only had like about an inch of a lip and i realized if i move a tiny bit this board will fall underneath me and I'll fall maybe I don't know eight feet tops down onto it's still pretty high onto some

ironically you were in more danger doing that than I was in this climbing exercise because of how much safety equipment I was wearing for the record you were in much more danger with what you were

doing Genevieve ended up going up there and then and again it was just to get a couple of bolts on on this one little project we were working on but I just want the listeners to know that after I was like this doesn't feel good to me I said let's nail this motor scooter down that's how I not swear on the show i said let's nail this board down lightly before you climb up there just to secure it was what we did so anyway by the way that project looked great i saw some pictures from veeves i was like how do you know we get a drone sent me in road and said no i was not yeah it's just it's a humble little uh fixer up but it's better than it was anyway okay i think it was a big improvement so yeah so you're getting that like almost like shit before

you have almost i didn't want to come over to your house paralyzed feeling right like like Oh, my gosh. Yes. And I just want to say that I have a different appreciation for what what you just described. And also, basically, like we've talked at length about like the when we did the Blue Angels show and we're on my roof and you kind of got that sense and you wanted to go back inside. And it's sort of a fun I put that in quotes, sort of a fun memory on the show. And it's brought up a lot. If I've ever been like glib about that, I want to apologize, Andrew, because I got that feeling on Saturday. day and it is rough like it was it was just and but again i just was like i really had that moment where i was like i don't want to do this i don't want to be here i don't i'm scared i don't know how to get down i am physically incapable of going any higher i'm terrified everyone's relying on me like I had a pretty big meltdown midway through the climb and then was just like I don't my only option is to keep doing it like I really really didn't want to continue but I just was like I have to not look down by the way that really works shout out to not looking down that helped me a lot like I made a conscious decision to not look down only look up only look laterally do not look down because if i had looked down even one more time i would have seriously gone into a panic attack i think yeah and i just kept also i got help from leo who was the guy who started this business he was kind of underneath me and he was helping my feet stay where they were supposed to stay when i was doing the the movement of climbing because your feet have a tendency of wanting to kind of splay out and go in this one direction that's not really helpful for like moving yourself vertically so uh i basically got an assist on the climbing part and i just didn't look down but then and i i don't want to trigger anyone who has a intense fear of fights i don't trigger you andrew that's okay i'm sorry what did the assist look like more than advice it was a it was he would put his hand sometimes against my feet so that my feet stayed where they were so you have these two loops your feet are in these loops yeah yeah and that's kind of what you're standing up you're basically doing like 280 squats like your squat you're okay you're sort of you're you're you're hunching down in a way so that you have more slack in the line so that you can then move these little ascenders up and then you can stand up and then

you stand up oh that's really interesting every time you stand up you gain like a half of a foot

yeah yeah i can picture that now okay gotcha which is slow going and be trying to get 280 of

those and in your non-training and also probably in some sort of a of a survival instinct or something your feet were going wider meaning that you're gonna have to do more of these things and he's trying to get you to go more up and down yeah

and it's also just like you're not doing yourself any favor in terms of um like i don't know if the word is gravity or just like you want your feet to be underneath you the more vertical you are the more your feet are underneath you the more extension you're going to get when you stand up as opposed to your feet being out kind of in front of you like which is not you're gonna go only you're only gonna ascend a tiny amount yeah so what he was doing was helping me i would be doing this kind of squat position and he would be keeping my feet from splaying out too much and being more inefficient essentially yeah i can be more efficient with my movement yep that makes sense but i was sitting there at about the 250 feet mark or something there were branches and i just that was like that was um Valhalla for me I was just looking I was like if I can get to those branches then I can just kind of you know I can stop doing this rope thing that's like so hard and I'll just climb those branches I'll just kind of work my way up I'm you know I'm still strapped in I'm still very safe but I'll that'll be great when I get to the branches well I get to the branches and i realized that my arms are so tired that i cannot lift my own body weight on these branches so i'm sort of standing on a branch but standing on the branch actually feels way unsafe to me because of the different physicality like when i'm i believe it or not at this point i've actually gotten used to being in this harness that i'm leaning away from the tree in but it feels safe now it's what i'm used to and somehow standing because i feel tension in the rope when i'm leaning and that now my brain has started to equate with safety so when i get on this branch i don't feel any tension in the rope the rope is slack and that feels like danger and and of course if you were to fall it would tense up and it would tense up i like i know intellectually that will happen i don't spiritually i can't connect with that concept yeah of course and so i'm like and it's oh also side note i'm miked this whole time i forgot there's people on the ground listening to

me have like not my bravest moment and so of course i killed him i killed him of course is

that what they got exactly i dursted it so hard it's like my one it's my so weird one go-to for a hot mic situation it's not naked gun part two i go right which is what constantly goes through

my mind when i am urinating wearing a lavalier mic which is a lot of my life yeah i believe that actually so i'm standing on this i'm standing on this branch and i had sort of i was excited that i had gotten to almost the end of this and i stand on the branch and all of a sudden i'm terror i'm re-terrified because my it feels different all of a sudden and you think it would feel different in a safe way it feels different in somehow a more dangerous way and so he's like you know that now the sunset is 10 minutes away it's like this ticking clock is also really not helping the fact that we need to be in this position filming from a certain vantage point by a very we have a very hard out and as i like to joke with my friends in the television industry it's going to go from the magic hour to the tragic hour very fast if i don't get to the top of this tree and i am trying to pull myself up to these branches and my arms are so tired that i can't do it and i'm losing my grip which is a stress dream come to life like this is what happens in my stress dreams i'm trying to climb something and my arms are too weak and again i'm roped in i'm safe but i'm not feeling safe and i'm thinking is this the moment of my death like i'm trying to pull myself up onto a branch and my arms are so tired that i can't do it and i feel myself losing my grip on the bark of the branch at 250 feet in the air i obviously i didn't fall uh i just i sort of got it together but um and i managed to sort of i waited a while got a little more arm strength kind of got a sort of a system worked out where i was i was then actually using the trees to climb but in a very scared way like in a like i want four points of contact at all times yep yep you know do you

remember me on your roof and again i hope it's not weird that i keep equating it because being on a roof is very different the feeling is the feeling is the feeling but honestly remember there's that back i was probably on the roof for it felt longer but i'm i want it feels like i was up there at least 15 minutes before i finally like broke and said i can't take this anymore like it was like and it sounds like when you were at the 100 level it was kind of like that for you and you just powered through but it's to use the phrase from my favorite arm wrestling movie it's like a switch like you can tell yourself that you're fine you're fine you're fine and then Suddenly, boom, you're not fine. And I remember for the first 15 minutes, I was nervous. But before the real pain.

set in my instinct was just to get as low to the roof as possible the thing i was standing on or sitting on like because you pulled out some chairs like uh uh like a lawn chairs right and sitting on a lawn chair on a slightly slightly peaked roof that high up freaked the f out of me so do you remember there's that photo of me where it looks like i'm super casual and just enjoy because i'm laying on the ground propped up on one or yeah lying sorry oh no i wasn't trying to Yeah. But like I'm lying down. My legs are crossed in front of me, but I'm kind of propped up on one elbow talking into a microphone with the other. And I think I'm wearing sunglasses, too, which is rare for me. So it looks like I'm being like like I'm being some misguided attempt at cool. But it's not. It was that I needed to be I needed to be flat on the ground as much as possible. Points of contact. Like what you're saying.

i had that feeling so like it basically ended up being the case i get to the top of the tree by the way this guy leo has slept at the top of this tree in a hammock oh god like arrested

development like that protester in arrested development but he has i mean you know and

again i can't state enough how safe this is like it is actually safe it's just mentally unsafe for me because it doesn't you know um but uh we get to the i get to the top of the tree but then my rope is kind of twisted around a branch and the only way for me to get like a more comfortable position and also to be like more correctly oriented for the filming would involve me needing to go way out on this branch to kind of go because there's two branches and they're kind of close together like a v and i'd have to go way out in the branches to where the v opens up enough for me to squeeze between them so that my rope is is clear and i was like no i'm just filming over here I'm just staying on like I'm hugging the tree. I'm standing on what feels like a safe thing. I'm holding on to this other branch. This is just how we're going to have to film this. I cannot even though I'm tethered. I could I could swing around this tree like on, you know, like anything and be safe. But my brain still could never connect with how safe I actually was. And so I ended up hanging out up there. Now, let me say this. It was incredible up there. Like we watched the sunset. Leo made us tea. He brought like a little portable, like whatever camping stove thingy that you can boil tea on. We drank tea. We hung out. We watched the sunset. We looked at the stars. It was incredible. The amount of like, I don't know if it's serotonin or gabapentin or whatever, the amount of good like chemicals, like pleasant feeling chemicals that were coursing through me, probably just from surviving was so powerful that I would actually recommend people doing this. But then it was time to rappel down. Now it's pitch black, Andrew. And now what you do is you get on the rope. Now you have a thing called a descender. You were using an ascender earlier. And the descender is this kind of, I don't know, ratchet thing with a handle on it. And you use one of your hands as your brake hand. you're holding the rope and you kind of move this ratchet up and down and the more you open it up this handle the faster you drop and you are just descending into complete blackness with a headlamp on but moving faster right moving way faster it's i mean physically not demanding it's um it was a little bit like it wasn't i wouldn't say i was terrified going down but i also wasn't letting myself really think about it too much because if i like if i considered what was really going on which is i am just rappelling into complete blackness and i'm still 200 feet in the air if i started to think about that too much i would have freaked myself out so i just kind of slowly and gingerly let myself down and then like all of a sudden i was 10 feet off the ground and

i literally kissed the ground when i got off not and they weren't filming it this was not for effect i felt a sense of relief being on terra firma that is hard to describe i mean you understand it because you have this sort of thought process as well like after you were at the grand canyon wherever it was that you felt safe the relief oh yeah that grand canyon is another good

example like i was on a trail that little kids were running and siblings chasing each other and suddenly i got the fear and had to scramble into the woods and like crawl down like the girl

from the ring on all fours you found a television you crawled out of it someone put a vhs tape again andrew i just have to say if if i've learned anything from this process it's that the feeling is the feeling and it doesn't matter if you know because i was saying

the whole time I was incredibly safe but I had the feeling and you were incredibly safe at the Grand Canyon but you had the feeling and like the feeling is the feeling yeah and like I just I just want to say I see you I see you my friend because like that was ultimately really amazing but rough at times and um this doesn't sound like a huge sales pitch for this I would say go do this if you're interested at all it is no I don't mean you I mean the listeners I don't want I don't want my new friend leo hearing this and thinking i'm trying to dissuade people from from from taking advantage of this opportunity i am so glad that i did it but i also would say i would have never completed this if not for the television component like if i just like if becca and i just got tickets for this i would have been like i'm gonna be one of those people that just calls it

good at 50 feet so i have a question that i want to ask but before i ask it i have another question i want to ask how long did it how long did the climb uptake probably an hour hour and a half okay it's not as bad as i thought i thought it might be a little bit longer and then coming down maybe a half hour minutes oh really oh so really speeding down it's pronounced the difference okay um my question for you is and i'm wondering if this sort of changed a little bit maybe going up and going down but once you at any point this is my real question as a coping mechanism whether it was going up or maybe once you already kind of like we're coming down and still very afraid but seeing the sort of light at the end of the tunnel were you envisioning were you getting through it by envisioning what you were going to do later that night when all of this was done with you like were you imagining that moment because for me i think i would lock on like just get through this and then once you get through this you will be home playing your stupid video game where you play soccer with remote control cars or whatever you know what i mean i would be putting myself somewhere on the other side of this i should have tried that i for

some reason didn't use that technique um and some of that had to do with the fact that the rest of the night was a little up in the air so i so to speak hey oh i had um gotten a hotel room in salem um which was sort of close to where we were filming but then i was going back and this is so boring but to answer your question i wasn't sure if i was going to use the hotel room or not and And so I didn't have – what I didn't have was a clear picture. It was also like at this point, it's like 10 o'clock at night. I didn't have like a I'm going to go get dinner with Becca and I'm going to eat – like I'm going to order the cheese sticks and it's going to feel really good or I'm going to sit in my living room and watch Dateline NBC. I didn't have a clear enough picture of what the rest of my night looked like in order to like get into that fantasy. But I wish I would have because it probably would have helped me.

For me, I think it would have clarified what I was going to do because for me, like I – and you know me. There's nothing I look forward to more than the end of the day. As we were discussing the other day.

Nothing you look forward to more than surviving another day.

I was getting, like, notes from people. I feel really bad for grousing on the show the other day about somebody proposing that we have a meeting for my volunteer group at 8 o'clock at night. That just seemed really late for me. And I heard from a lot of people who were like, that's you, man. If you have a bunch of kids and stuff and you're going to soccer practice or whatever, that's life, man. You don't have time for volunteer activities until after 8, which is fair and which is why I chose not to have children.

Well, because everybody made those people have kids.

Well, no, I don't. I don't I don't I mean it's it's fair it's fair enough and I realized like just because I I want to get on with my day doesn't mean that I also realize but how how lame that joke is for me

considering we do live in a country where they are literally trying to well yeah birth yeah

depending on what friggin state you live in anyway um I didn't mean to derail us so much but uh yeah but for me like if I was up in that tree and then maybe like I'm climbing up and I don't know what the rest of my evening is going to be I am envisioning by the time I'm coming down from that tree or nearing the top of it i am so envisioning the end of my day that i would have been making the decision like i were staying in that hotel room or not even thinking about the fees for room service or whatever it is or we're going to go to that restaurant downstairs and have of course i'd be envisioning probably having a uh a gin and tonic or something like that as well like I would just be immediately envisioning my reward yeah I think I was just so again I really

enjoy the parts of this that I enjoyed I enjoyed as much as I've maybe enjoyed anything and probably because the stakes felt very high so I really liked parts of it but the parts of it that I was not liking I was literally just trying to survive in my mind yeah so I was not but but but but I know exactly what you're talking and I use that technique a lot for other things things that where i feel like my life is less in danger where i'm like if i can just get through this week of you know live wire tapings and this film shoot and whatever it's like saturday i'm going to be mowing my lawn which i did by the way the other day and it was spectacular it was so warm on friday yeah it was beautiful and you timed it with the game right

Thank you.

too wasn't that sorry about that i cut you off there i don't know if we're having audio problems too but um the uh you didn't you didn't you have the opportunity on friday to like mow your lawn right as the game was beginning or was i just putting yes i did well it was it was i mowed the

lawn and then listened to the game sitting in a lawn chair oh nice you got it done before that nice nice which is uh great other than the fact that the mariners by the way i had it completely wrong i told you they were gonna go two and one in toronto one and two well i thought we were gonna get swept so anyway that was uh that was my saturday and it was um it was pretty intense but i would again it i would recommend people do it because i guess the last thing i'll say on it is i did feel a sense of like i guess a less shame no accomplishment well sure like when it was all said and done i did feel kind of good that i pushed through this like intense feeling of wanting to not do this anymore like I'm just I don't I'm not a very determined person in a lot of ways like if something isn't fun I just don't do it usually but like I felt pretty happy that I encountered what I thought was kind of like a wall and then I kind of pushed through it and then I was on the top of the tree like because I didn't know there was a period where I didn't know how that was going to happen I was like I don't physically have the ability to do this I'm really frightened like I was like this is just not I was trying to rewrite the story in my mind like the news story i was trying to be like could it be a thing where it's like the correspondent only goes halfway up the tree well that's what you know that's what i was sort of

thinking too like i was thinking in i don't know the ins and outs of the production and everything but like could it have been some scenario where they're filming the sunset because the crew made it up there but then they and then they tilt the camera downwards and there you are still 50 feet from the top and they're just you know like kind of making the joke on you because you couldn't

enjoy the sunset which which i was seriously trying to figure out how does that play out like when i did that swim in san francisco and the water was super cold i was also getting pretty tired in the water and i was trying to think of the ending of the piece and i was like what's a more funny ending if i have to call for the rescue boat which is going to come get me or if i swim out and around this pier and come back in i i was both very tired and cold and also thought it was a funnier ending i couldn't figure out a way that it was a better ending for me to not make it to the top of the tree yeah and i desperately wanted to i was trying so i was writing for my life in my brain trying to think of a funny ending where i don't get to the top but couldn't i couldn't make that happen so anyway that was my weekend 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

We did not get to the Denver International Airport story, but it will still be a weird-ass place tomorrow. Yes, it will. We can talk about this. It's a really great piece. Like, yeah, it turns out that my issues with Denver International Airport are not the common issues with Denver International Airport. People think the Illuminati is running it. There is a lot going on, which we will talk about tomorrow. In the meantime, any emails or V-mails that are of interest?

Yes. So this is a voicemail that I want to share with you from listener Zach, and I just want to remind people where this came from. I don't know if it really even matters that much, but you were talking about seeing somebody, I believe, in L.A. with a Seattle Mariners hat, and you sort of interacted with that person briefly, and they looked more surprised. You were kind of like, go M's or whatever. Or I think you said, did you make a prediction of what the series was going to be that weekend or something and maybe made it a little bit more complicated than it needed to be?

I think I might have said something about pitching.

it was like way too sporty right way too sporty and it kind of took the the person off guard a little bit um and then we got another voicemail from a listener who was wearing a mariner's hat but somebody confused it with a brewer's hat or a brew crew hat and he was confused exactly did you hear rick riz say brew crew like a million times when the brewers were in town yeah um uh by the way this is a true thing on my baseball video game the mlb the show the latest version of it i don't know if you saw my text message this weekend but like you can play the brew you can play any team right and you can play like the active roster and so the mariners are so bad and i'm really bad at this video game i'm learning how to play it that like i just was not even putting i wasn't even putting back to ball i was just so bad and i'm like i gotta play a better team here i'll play the brewers they're really good this year and then i was like oh look i forgot the brewers were actually the original seattle pilots which was a team here for just one year like back in the 60s right late 60s they played at sixth stadium which is now that that i think lows there are lows yeah yeah where doers get baseball done and anyway um god how do i get so far off track already anyway this weekend i was playing the brewers but

I was dressing them up, if you will, in their old pilot's uniform so I could still sort of represent Seattle while I played a baseball team that is actually watchable on my video game.

I don't mean to just delay us as well, but like, was it last weekend? So not the most recent one, but the one before that where what were you wearing? And somebody asked you about it and you were like, see, oh, you see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps.

You know what? You know what? Let me I forgot about that. Yeah, let me play this voicemail for you, and then we'll return back to that. But anyway, so we had one listener who also had sort of a confusing interaction with a stranger regarding his sports logo on his hat. And then we get this voicemail from Zach.

Hey, friendos. It's Zach in Queens. My wife worked in film and television here in New York City, so she was all over the city any time of day, any time of night. And in 2007, during the World Series, she was headed home in the middle of one of the World Series games. Now, my wife is originally from the Boston area. And at the end of the subway platform where she was getting on dog tired, she saw a guy wearing a Boston Red Sox hat, and he had earphones in. So she assumed she was listening to the game, the World Series game, on his phone. and she figured he was a fellow, you know, displaced Bostonian in New York and was excited to find out the score. So she walked up to him and asked him the score and kind of shot her a quizzical look and went, huh? And she said, the score, do you know what the score is? And he was still confused and she pointed at his hat, Red Sox, the score in the Red Sox game. And he looked at his hat and he smiled and nodded and went, oh, pointed at his hat and went B and then pointed at his chest and said Morris Love the show

Power out That's what I need to do if I'm ever wearing a baseball hat for a team that I don't know shit about A. Andrew Are you an A's fan? No. I feel bad about what's happening to the A's by the way I was going to make a joke about the Las Vegas athletics but that actually hurts it actually would are they going to vegas is that i did not i mean i'd always you know i always heard that the ownership there was terrible um and that they just like kind of abused their fan base by just having like the worst stadium ever and not investing in it and then making threats of leaving and now apparently they did apparently the team i don't know the details on this did just confirm some sort of huge land and development deal in in vegas they're gonna those long as much as you know there's a baseball rivalry there although right now that their team is so bad there's not even a rivalry like you know like that is such a long suffering fan base for what the ownership has done to them like well not to mention that the

Oakland Raiders are the Las Vegas Raiders now and the Golden State Warriors don't even play in

Oakland anymore it's ridiculous it is are they in are they in San Francisco because I feel like I saw the yeah because I saw that building right before it officially opened I think for the Golden State Warriors who advanced yesterday I believe right so yeah good stuff create 50 points Oh, that's right. Is that the highest scoring? Is that the most NBA? Oh, for him. Okay.

Yeah, no, Jordan has had like, Jordan had 63. Famously, the flu game. He had the flu and he scored 63. Oh, really?

And that was his most, I remember the tear. Of course, I know that from the meme. Because is that the same one where he's crying? I think in the playoffs, that might have been his high score for the playoffs. Am I right that the tear meme comes from the flu game because it was actually water coming out of his eyes? Or was he actually emotional? I'm confusing two different things.

You know, I don't know. I know the meme you're talking about. I don't actually think I know what game that was from. It could have very well been the flu game. It could have been something else. I forgot that Michael Jordan played for the Chicago White Sox.

Oh, I knew he played baseball for a little bit. I wouldn't have known the team.

I forgot he got to the majors because he played for the Durham Bulls for a while, I believe. And I know he played. I mean, obviously, to play in the minors. But then I forgot he got to the Major League level And got a couple hits It is the weirdest thing to see him in a White Sox uniform Rounding the bases

Was that just something that bubbled up on social media? Probably on TikTok or something But anyway It is a long-running Kind of joke Kind of observation on this show That I would always be too afraid To wear anything but a Seattle Mariners hat Because I couldn't tell you about Any other team in the league Like, I'm so bad at actually knowing what's going on in baseball, except for what's going on in Seattle. But the other day we were doing the show and we had a dazzling donor, Donna, dazzling donor, Donna. I think I might be right about that from Baltimore. So as a tribute to Donna, I put on a Baltimore. Orioles ball cap during the show not that anybody could see me this is a podcast but you didn't mention it on the program solidarity exactly and I also I have this um I have this this I mean I love that Baltimore logo I love this hat my friend Tiara got it for me she's in Baltimore um but I'm too scared to wear it anywhere because I don't you know I'm a Mariners fan and I identify as that as such but also I don't want somebody to come up to me and start talking about the Orioles I wear this hat out of the house accidentally forgetting that it's still on my noggin right and I am at the grocery store I'm at the QFC on Holman Luke which is becoming more and more of a geographical point on this podcast and I am throwing some things in my cart and then I'm looking Genevieve wants some sort of like bullshit cheese I hate picking up cheese because I don't know anything about cheese I don't want to think about it in my grocery runs but I'm being a good boyfriend I'm picking up her like fresh mozzarella or whatever it is by the cheese case i love now the cheese is the enemy because

of forcing you into the situation where you had to show your baltimore bona fides my cheese my enemy and then like and that's a show title i'm writing that down and then this fella who looks

like a stereotypical security guard like kind of a i mean all kinds of people are security guards around seattle at all kind of businesses these days so i don't know if there is a stereotypical one but we're talking about a large man so i'm about six one six two this guy's a couple of inches taller than me he's just beefy white guy probably in his early 60s late 50s mustache uh and and you know and then geared up with like whatever the heavy you know black heavy security guard uniform is not just like a t-shirt or whatever he's got like a vest on he's got things hanging off at whatever and i see you know and he's just kind of got that cop stance right and uh he comes over to me while i'm looking for some sort of fresh mozzarella it's the size of a fist genevieve told me and uh he comes coming and i like i instinctively always still feel guilty i know i'm just like the most innocent looking pudgy middle-aged middle-class white guy but i always assume security is going to harass me for something because that's how i always felt in high school and um he comes over to me and he kind of gestures and he's like you're you're not and then he i don't know he didn't complete the sentence but he somehow gestured towards my hat and suddenly i remember oh shit i'm wearing a baltimore orioles hat i don't know anything about baltimore i'm like oh no i i'm you know i'm wearing this uh i'm wearing this in honor of a friend i think i said Oh, my. Really makes it sound. How do you explain? Yeah, I do a podcast and we had this donor like there's no way to explain that. I'm like, sir, are you a dazzling donor? Sir, have you signed up for the new TBTL newsletter, which I would really encourage everybody to do? By the way, we got about fifteen fifteen hundred people signed up right now. We're trying to get back up to our high watermark of about fifty three hundred. So. Oh, geez. Yeah, we need some we need some folks to sign up.

But anyway, so you just blurt out Kevin Costner effed Cal Ripken's wife. Basically, yes, except I couldn't remember Cal Ripken's name.

It was awful. I mean, I started by saying I start and Luke, it was so bad. I don't even want to be honest with you. I thought about telling you this story in ways that I that I damn it.

Why is this happening at the end of the show? This is so much better than my climbing story.

I honestly have been practicing like, well, can I leave this really embarrassing part out? because but then it's like well that's not that's not good podcasting you just must debase yourself and be honest but I couldn't think of Kel Ripken's name. ABH always be honest. Okay so I start off by saying you guys are supposed to be good this year like I do know a little bit that like they are kind of I believe the Orioles are somewhat similar around a similar trajectory of the Mariners maybe a couple of years behind but developing a farm system bringing up young people I know they have some like really young hot phenom that they brought up a few weeks ago who ended up up not doing who ended up not doing really great in his first outing on the mound but you know i don't really know names um i can't really bro down so i try to kind of keep it at that level but then he's he's kind of going a little bit more in detail and then i can't think of the name cal ripkin and all i can think of is our friend sam dingman's podcast and of course i can't even rumor the rumor which I couldn't think of the name of that but I just want to say Cal Ripken and I did bring up like the guy Kevin Costner allegedly but the thing is and this is the most embarrassing part for some reason in my head in this moment I'm describing Cal Ripken Jr. as a pitcher which makes no sense because the one thing I know about the one thing I know about him is the streak that he was out there every single day and pitchers are not out there every single day and the guy is like he starts listing every famous Orioles pitcher and I'm like oh my god no and he's looking at me like more and more incredulously he's like I've named every pitcher from the past 30 years and then I'm like oh okay Cal Ripken he's like he wasn't a pitcher he was just like the guy ended up arresting me is how this story ends uh-huh not for shoplifting the fist of cheese but just for being in fact that was a genius move to distract him from the

cheese you were stealing oh actually receiving a call from the king county jail luke do you want

to know and this is the best part of the story maybe so good that it's going to sound like i'm making it up luke i did end up stealing that cheese i totally on accident and i even thought later if i should go back to the store so that interaction happens i finish my shopping maybe five six minutes later weirdly small unrelated dazzling detail the security guard then goes on the loudspeaker of the store and starts telling people that if they drive a certain kind of car they got to move it now or it's about to get towed i never figured out what that was all about um i'm doing self-checkout i get it was you know about as big of a shopping haul as i will do for self-checkout i'm trying to move really fast i bag up all my stuff i'm leaving the store the security guard is now standing by the door looking down at his phone i say a pipsqueaky go owes as i pass him and he looks up at me like he's already forgotten the conversation he's like oh yeah get out of here kid and then oh by the way he was a baltimore cop for 30 years by the way he starts at one point during the conversation david simon he really was he starts telling me the safe places i can go in baltimore he's like you'll be fine in the downtown core area and then he starts telling me some famous fish place i gotta go and i pretended like i'd heard of it and i don't know why um and then i said that that fish that fish place that you recommend that was a starter in

the 80s right started it was a designated hitter right who played in 8 000 continuous actually a dh could do that so my joke kind of falls apart but i i literally waved to him and say go as i

leave um and i push my cart right by him and then it's not until i'm unpacking my bag or bloating my bags into the trunk of my hatchback and I look at the cart and what was in the back of the cart that I never rang up but a fist of fresh mozzarella that was sort of like in the cup holder of my cart it was the perfect crime had I wanted to steal this cheese which I didn't want to do I'm not a thief I almost went back in to pay for it but honestly my it was all of the awkward interactions I'd already had in that grocery store I couldn't go back in and I said maybe I'll go back and pay for it another time but

you know what i would say donate figure out what that costs and donate that yes exactly right exactly so oh my gosh that's amazing now was if i know vives she was not mad that you stole the cheese no i don't really run out of the music and we've done that today yeah good point i can't

remember if i told her that i think i maybe i need to tell her like me we're we're we're all i mean

And peace and love to Rold and our other listeners that work in the grocery industry. I'm not trying to encourage theft. But if you didn't do it on purpose, there is something that just feels like a little, I don't know, a little miracle. By the way, Jim Palmer, that's a good go-to Orioles pitcher because remember he was also the underwear model? No. Remember our childhood, how he was, I think it was jockey? there would be billboards with a baltimore oriole pitcher jim palmer just in his underwear no i don't remember that at all i know that didn't joe namath do something like that too that's all maybe um jim palmer underwear it was a whole situation i'm gonna send you a picture of like it was probably one of the more formative notions of like a almost nude male body that i had as a kid these jim palmer jockey ads they were just like i'm taking a picture and sending it to

you so i'm seeing this now i'm actually on an mlb.com article um that is the headline is jim palmer and joe namath former underwear models attend nationals cardinals game

oh well what a story i'm sorry that you went through that but it did confirm all of your about wearing anything non-Mariners Luke it's literally as far as I can remember except for

wearing that minor league um San Jose Giants yeah no not Quake San Jose Giants same name as the as the San Francisco Giants um they also have a pretty cool hat that I got in a minor league game aside from that which I wore maybe two or three times outside the house I don't think I've ever Worn.

another MLB hat outside of the house and because I'm afraid somebody will ask me about the team and literally the one time I did it for one errand I left the house for maybe 45 minutes that day I get into a prolonged conversation with a former Baltimore cop and Orioles fan in the

cheese section of the QFC that's amazing it's um bunk from the wire

yeah i'm trying to think of like cop makes me miss the wire so much damn right i'm trying to catch up on trying to catch up on barry by the way you gave up on that right i'm in the i'm nearing the end of season two now yeah i i i had a hard time rooting for him

eventually oh yeah definitely just got so bleak yeah but it's really bleak the weird thing is

maybe i'm just a too dark of a person but weirdly i didn't get really invested in it until it started to kind of ratchet up that emotional part of the story. At first I thought it was sort of I don't know. I just couldn't grasp it. I couldn't get any purchase on the show until things started to get really dark and then I was like oh I guess I'm here for this.

That's so funny how our brains work so differently. I was like I like it when it's funny and Henry Winkler is adorable and then as the murdering happens I'm like I don't like it as much and that was your access point. It's rough though. Anyway. Happy Monday. But Noho Hank is a once-in-a-generation character.

Vince and I are working on this project this weekend, and because I was watching it, she's maybe been dipping in a little bit more, and we're both just do every conversation somehow ends with us both doing a terrible imitation of Noho Hank. It's okay, Batty. And it's a terrible, I mean, it's just a terrible, it's the worst imitation, but once you get it in your head, you can't get rid of it. I know.

All right, that's going to do it for today's program. It's okay, Andrew. That's a worse I just did a worse NoHo Hank

Addy

Let's get out of here Let's go Alright thanks for listening everybody We'll be back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio for you In the meantime Have a great Monday Take care of yourselves And please remember No mountain too tall

And good luck to all I was going to try To do it next Here take this loony

Buy yourself a bag of milk

All right. Love you, Mom. Go to Bones. Power out.