Muse

Hey, fellas. So it's Adam from Chicago now. But just calling because I want to read you a list, which is always the best type of voice I can get. These are items, or I should say products or brand names, that people use as generic terms. Okay. Ready? Ready? Jet ski. Bubble wrap. Onesies. Jacuzzi. crock pot, fluffernutter, breathalyzer, zamboni, chapstick, kleenex, ping pong, popsicle, q-tips, that's the one that came to mind first, rollerblades, scotch tape, sharpie, realtor, Tupperware, velcro, weed eater, whiteout, band-aids, taser, exacto knife, dumpsters, the list goes on. There's 40 of them. I'm only going to read that many. Okay. I love you. Have fun. If you want the rest, just give me a call back and I will pull up the list and recite it. Okay. Thank you.

Hey, you checked out the new Rush album? I've got to say it rocks pretty heavily and that's coming from a guy who's seen Hendrix live. I'm sorry. Who are you? I was asking

myself that same question and i did not like the answer no it's funny yeah no that was good

hey we have the same taste in words they think you're awesome they think you're number one they

think you're the best wait that didn't even spell anything did it let the filibustering begin

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just

might be too beautiful to live not gonna mess this up not gonna mess this up here we go ready

hi my name is luke burbank i am your host cup of coffee in the big time coming to you from the hollywood broadcast center right here in portland oregon where uh we are looking at some great skies but it's decently warm outside got to get a little jog in this morning Listened to M83, had some big thoughts. Got kind of spiritual out there around mile four, mostly because my spirit said, why are we doing this right now? But anyway, we're off to a good start here on episode 3939 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

And we've got an update on the story we brought to you the other day about the mystery of maybe 500 pounds of pasta dumped in the woods of New Jersey.

Pasta, play a hater.

And we'll tell you why that pasta was where it was. And also we'll explore the origins of this drop, Pasta Playaheater.

Pasta Playaheater.

Used to be a big thing on the show. I went looking for that audio this morning. And upon finding it, I was reminded of the larger context. And it's kind of amazing, at least to me. So we'll talk about that. Also, should I use AI to try to solve my issue of 11,000 unread email messages?

This is a serious message.

And, to tell you, the evidence of the over-reporting on AI was on full display this morning, and I'll explain why coming up. Plus, we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Hello, Al-R-U. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I don't know if starting the show with a list is a good idea, as that listener indicated. It seemed to work for listener Adam. Let's start also with a quote from me today. I'm going to read this directly. This is a quote. Rip did a lip. It's your birthday. Rip did a lip. It's your birthday. So that's a quote from Tim and Eric. Happy birthday. What are you doing there? What are you doing? I know you were really much downplaying this one. You're only you're forty forty seven.

It's kind of it doesn't feel you know what I was really thinking today was forty seven almost feels like it doesn't count. Somebody has a great – is it Patton Oswalt that has a great riff about birthdays, about which ones you should celebrate?

This does not ring a bell to me.

It's not to be confused with Gary Goldman on how these states got their abbreviations. One of my favorite things to play about every two years. Patton Oswalt has a great riff on birthdays that, like, the ones that you should be allowed to celebrate. And they're basically, like, the biggies. And he has this great kind of – I don't know what you'd call it – system for deciding which ones actually matter and don't. I think 47 would be on the list of things, of ones that are maybe not quite such a big deal. You're sort of not 45, and you're kind of getting close to 50. What I was really thinking about today is, what do I want my 50th birthday to look like? And I don't mean the party, like, I just mean, what do I want?

want to be in my life in two years because that feels like a big number to me five zero feels like i mean that is unless i turn a hundred i think turning zero turning 50 and turning 100 are really let's be honest the three biggest things that could probably happen so i was really i'm already glossed my point andrew is that i'm already glossing over head yeah i'm glossing over my next two birthdays because the because number number five oh that's that's the one that I'm gonna I'm gonna make a whole thing out of it on the show when it happens if we have a show by the way one of my goals we still have this show when I'm 50 and you might

be broadcasting it from the top of a 300 foot tree do you know that you were talking about this last week how you for a CBS story climb by the way billboard it not that not that

I was gonna push it any harder but billboard uh show idea off the table now that I have the fear yeah yes doing a show from atop a billboard yeah because i when i forgot how scary it can be to be a hundred feet off the ground i was like let's just do that and you were like yeah not going to work with my fear of heights and i was like maybe i can talk him into it now i have

no part of that myself because i was thinking well you can be up on the billboard and it'll be really fun if i'm down at the foot of the billboard and we just have a tin can with a string now you and

i were down i'll lower down my my um you know whatever bathroom situation ends up needing to happen. I don't know if it's a bucket or something. I can just lower it down to you. No, no, no, no. Would that get you up to the billboard? Now we're both

just at the bottom of a billboard, and I think this is now really funny. It's not even our billboard. It's just a random billboard somewhere in the Pacific Northwest that you and I decide to live beneath for a week. That would be amazing. And we just talked to each other.

Wouldn't that be a perfect indication of kind of where we're at in life? Yeah, I'm just like, well, we had the idea. You're going to be 47. We're not into we have low T. We're not risk-taking anymore. We're just kind of like, you know what? At the foot of this Oh Boy, Oberto billboard somewhere in Magnolia is fine for us.

And, you know, like, you know, we hitchhiked one time for a TBTL-a-thon. Maybe, like, we plan another one of those, but instead of hitchhiking, we just drive our own car. Or cars. We just take two cars across the country so we can each listen to our own music. That's how these things sort of tend to temper with age a little bit. The separate bedrooms of podcasting.

like we just have well we sleep better if we have two bedrooms and also just like the least

adventurous like even us okay driving across the country in the same car like okay well then you have conversations but now i'm just in my car listening to the b52s in donovan you're in your car listening to m83 like we do meet up every now and then we meet up occasionally for an early dinner of too much tuna right oh with this guy out of the way it's all gonna be 360 i watched I just said it in its entirety yesterday, by the way. That's the sketch that that audio is from. That sketch is great. Yeah, Kroll Show. I didn't realize J.B. Smoove is in it. I don't – is he one of the people on the court?

He's one of the good basketball players.

It's been so long since I've seen that. Anyway, well, happy birthday. You know, I got some emails and text messages from people reminding me, hey, it's Luke's birthday today. I didn't forget, by the way. I did remember because we talked about it last week, but also a lot of people just concerned that I was going to forget.

Well, thanks to the people that were worried Andrew would forget. I will tell a quick amusing story, which is that our plan today, because there's kind of a lot going on and you've got stuff happening this afternoon, was to try to actually make our little dial-up connection a little earlier than we typically do on a Monday. And so normally we dial up at 10 a.m. The plan today was to dial up at 9. We had agreed upon this. It was the thing. I was on my jog starting at nine and my watch buzzes when I'm getting a text message and today be my birthday and having an extended family of very loving folks and lots of friends and a lot of really good fortune in my life and I really mean that like when you get some updates on when you get some notes on your birthday from the people that love you or at least or at least have a calendar reminder that it's your birthday it's a nice feeling so I'm jogging along and my watch is just buzzing away and i'm just thinking of all the people who love me and turns out most of them were you texting me are you all right uh you're getting increasingly worried because we i was about 58 minutes late for our dial yeah well i mean i don't i just i just hit you once because

sometimes there's a technology thing that's like sometimes we'll both be waiting for it's very rare but sometimes there's a glitch in our software where you and i are both waiting to see the other person show up on the software you know you know what i'm talking about right on this ipdtl thing

like it's happening every now and then we're like at we're waiting at the same bus station but we're at different ends of it and we're looking the wrong way exactly so i was just like hey just

in case it was like 20 minutes after dial-up time i'm like you're not waiting for me right yeah i'm not seeing you on here then you didn't respond and so i waited another maybe 20 30 minutes after that and then i was like are you okay because we've had some times where you're not okay but i also knew that you sent me the show sheet at like 7 30 so i figured if you were dead it wasn't because, like, you...

You lied to, you told the wrong person at your illegal card game what cards you were holding, like you said last week, and got stabbed over it. I figured, well, worst case scenario, if he's not okay, he probably got hit by a bus during his run.

Well, because, as I mentioned then when we dialed up, yeah, the weird thing about working with me, or really knowing me, is that if you can't get a hold of me at 8 in the morning, I'm either in a trap house somewhere doing God knows what, or I'm on a run. There is no in-between, which sounds like a pretty healthy way to enter year 47 of life.

Well, either way, you're in your underwear, whether you're on a run. Either way, I'm not wearing enough clothing for the general public's comfort. That's the only thing I think of when I think of trap houses, which is a really dark place to take it, but that the people who are counting and sorting out drugs are not allowed to wear clothes, right?

Oh, you're thinking kind of O.T. Janais, baking soda. I got baking soda.

Oh, isn't that what a trap house is? How do you say that guy's name? Or did you mean OT Genesis, I think. But yeah, like that general kind of like drug trap house.

I think he's in the trap house counting his loot and counting his drugs, except it turns out Baking Soda, he got Baking Soda. Baking Soda. God, I was obsessed with that song when I lived in LA. Well, he's got another song that really slaps that. I don't know what it's called, but the main refrain is, I look real good today. I look real good today.

There was an Apple commercial of some kid riding their bikes.

That's the baking soda. I got baking soda guy. Yes, I remember that.

Baking soda. I got baking soda.

God, I haven't heard that in a long time.

Pretty strong hits for one person. And we salute him. Speaking of strong people, I've been very – this feels like a complete out of left field thing for a Monday morning. But like the last, I don't know, four shows or something, I've probably played Randy Macho Man Savage audio like a couple of times, Which seems out of the blue I think you maybe put some In an intro package At some point

That's right I don't spend a lot of time on TikTok But somehow some It was Randy Savage that came across my radar I don't know if somebody sent it to me Or if it just came across Instagram Reels Which of course is the geriatric version Of TikTok if I understand my social media Correctly But yeah that's right I'm not somebody who like you know That's not really my world It was just funny tape but I know people like you and Camaro Kev kind of like it you have more context because you grew up watching these

Yahoo's right well this would have been the prime time too that I was really into wrestling like the maybe mid 80s I would have been like 10 years old or something and Macho Man Randy Savage was like you know he was a big star he and Hulk Hogan were really kind of like the two the two heavyweights as it were of the time but it's funny because he's just having this moment on tiktok where people are just grabbing old interviews that he would do you mean these interviews would just be basically like a performance where he's trying to get everybody interested in for instance the uh wrestlemania 3 which i you know always thought was at the pontiac silver dome in lansing but it's the pontiac silver dome in pontiac michigan And this cup of coffee at the big time has been going around, and people are meme-ifying it to where they're just drinking their coffee, but they're lip-syncing to Randy Macho Man Savage. So I was trying to find the audio because I was like, you know, we're kind of a morning show of sorts. That'll be some good audio to grab. And I grabbed the full thing, and it's just glorious. If you were into wrestling at this time, the references that he's making about Jimmy Superfly Snuka, he's being, of course, interviewed by Mean Gene Okerlund, who was like the official interviewer of all the wrestlers. He was almost as big of a star as they were in my mind. This is the full context of the tape. I just want to play it for you because it's kind of great.

Nacho Mad Randy Savage, Sarasota, Florida. Come on in. You're going to be defending against the dragon Ricky Steamboat. What's the cup for?

WrestleMania 3, Pontiac, Michigan, yeah, 90,000-plus people watching right there, and this is Ricky the Dragon Steamboat's cup of coffee in the big time.

By the way, he brought a cup of coffee with him as a prop. I figured that.

Cup of coffee in the big time, because he'll never get closer than now. I am the Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion, and I will remain the Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion, and George the Animal Steel on the outside will be no factor.

Yeah. You say no factor. Obviously, he is.

By the way, I think George the Animal Steel played, remember Plan 9 from Outer Space? Remember Ed Wood, the movie about the making of Plan 9 from Outer Space, the Tim Burton film? Yes. There was a guy who played, there was a guy who was a wrestler that the real Ed Wood used, I think his name was Tor Bjorklund or something. I believe that person was portrayed by the guy who played the wrestler, George the Animal Stealer. in my WWF childhood.

The fact or you wouldn't even brought it up. Oh, wow, Mr. Sarcasm, yeah. I don't care if you've got 23 wrestlers around the outside and it doesn't even matter. No, because I am ready and I will not let this opportunity slip through my fingers. Cup of coffee, man, yeah. Man. Wow, man, freak out.

There's no reason he yells, wow, man, freak out as he leaves the interview area. Now, this is why this is interesting to me, Andrew, because what I thought in a way that I thought was unrelated to all this recent Randy Macho Man savagery that's been going on, I just saw this another TikTok video pop up that was taking me through the life of some baseball player, some guy who had been a phenom in high school, maybe even won the state championship and then had been like drafted in the minors and kind of bounced around and kept almost getting up to the show. maybe got to the majors for a half a season and then hurt themselves in any way. It was some guy named Randy Popoff. And, of course, the reveal at the end is this is Macho Man Randy Savage. Macho Man Randy Savage was a very good baseball player before he was ever a wrestler and was kind of on the periphery of being in the major leagues. Now, what do they call it when you get up to the major leagues for a week or a weekend? It's a cup of coffee. Right. And I love that buried under the Randy Macho Man Savage persona of the crazy hair and the Oakley sunglasses and all of the whatever is a guy who's still deeply rooted in baseball. Because what I can tell you is almost no one watching this press conference with Mean Gene Okerlund had any idea what the reference cup of coffee at the show even means.

Well, I was sort of wondering about that, too. I had forgotten that. I think you and I talked about that off air, right? He doesn't explain it. Yeah. Well, I mean, is that not universal or you don't get it? I mean, I sort of feel like you get it from the context, don't you? Or maybe I'm just –

I think if you were to survey 100 Americans and ask them what does cup of coffee at the show or cup of coffee with the big time, what does that mean? I would guess that fewer than 15 percent would actually know. That's just but I have no science. Maybe we could start a poll. I just think I first of all, I love it. I deeply love it as a thing. But I to me, I think you have to kind of know enough about baseball to understand that that's a term that people use. Oh, we got a cup of coffee with the Mariners or whatever. I don't hear that in other sports because they don't have the same kind of minor league system. I think of it as being a fairly esoteric thing That I love that Randy Popoff A.K.A. I think that's his last name A.K.A. Randy Macho Mad Savage Was just like bringing out And now it's making the rounds again And he has his background as a baseball guy I don't know why that charmed me so much this weekend But it did

Well I have one observation And two questions I think In that order Suddenly I'm somebody who is standing up At the end of a book reading At third place books I have more of a question than a comment More of a comment than a question But then two questions And it'll be in that order And then it's going to be like that And it's just going to show off how well read I am As I recognize you from the stage And allow you to have your moment You're basically having

Cup of coffee in the big time

Okay, one quick thing about the cup of coffee thing So he gets it out twice at the beginning there And then, you know, he's brought his prop At the end, as he's winding down in the 60 seconds Or however much tape you just played He brings up cup of coffee again And by that point, the train has sort of left the station. Oh, he's dropped the cup. But it's like he just had to come. He's not even holding the cup at that point. Oh, okay. I was going to say, he's like, well, this whole thing was built around this cup of coffee. I'll just say cup of coffee.

Which he made the mistake of throwing or dropping for emphasis. And then you can tell that it's like a plastic cup. It's not like he got it from the hotel, you know, like whatever restaurant. And it's not glass because you don't – or it's not pottery. It doesn't break. Like then I'm thinking as I'm watching it, like imagine Randy Savage, not as the macho man, but as a guy named Randy from Florida who had baseball dreams. And he gets up that morning and he knows he's got to go down to the they've probably run out of ballroom at the Hilton in Lansing. And he's got to do his he's got to get all amped up and do pushups and probably some amount of cocaine and get ready to just like go crazy and hype this thing. And he has this idea of like cup of coffee. So, like, does Macho Man go to the restaurant and get a cup of coffee or get a cup for it? Does he send an assistant? Is he disappointed when it's actually kind of small and plastic? I was way overly fascinated with this, as you can tell, based on the way I'm talking about it.

Okay. The more we go on, the more – so it was originally one comment, two questions. It's still one comment, but now I have three questions. Okay.

Don't Google one comment, two questions.

Okay. So now I got three questions. Actually, that's a good show title. One comment.

Okay, so do you remember – I'm going to build up to these. Do you remember, out of just curiosity because it went by quickly, what did mean Gene say when Macho Man said, oh, Mr. Sarcasm? Because I was thinking like, oh, God, I don't want him calling me Mr. Sarcasm. What did he say? Was he actually being sarcastic? Do you remember in the tape?

Let's just listen again. It's only a minute long. I think we've all got time. So here we go.

Macho Man Randy Savage, Sarasota, Florida. Come on in. you're going to be defending against the dragon ricky steamboat what's the cup for

so mania three pontiac michigan yeah 90 000 plus people watching right there and this is ricky the dragon steamboat's cup of coffee in the big time yeah cup of coffee in the big time because he'll never get closer than now i am the intercontinental heavyweight champion and i will remain the

intercontinental now i want to say he does actually give a little context it would i still think it would be confusing if you didn't know the backstory which is because you'll never get closer than this so he is a little bit kind of giving an explanation but again i think you need

some prior knowledge to get what a great reference champion in george animal steel on the outside will be no factor yeah you say no factor obviously he is a factor you wouldn't even

brought it up oh wow mr sarcasm i disagree i don't think that's sarcasm i yeah i don't he's

He's just challenging him or he's just following up.

I feel like maybe in high school, Macho Man focused more on athletics than English class.

I was just curious because he said, like, you know, because I just sort of listening. I'm listening more for him. Then he says, Mr. Sarcasm. And that really stood out to me. I was like, wait a second. What was the what was the question? I didn't pick up.

It was more like it was more like Mr. Good journal. Insightful. It was Mean Gene saying, well, if you the very fact that you're bringing up George the animal steel indicates that he is occupying some part of your brain space exactly okay now okay so

that's one comment one question so far i still have two more questions uh my second question which i'm i don't know if this is going to be too long to answer but something just occurred to me so this i always would recognize this guy's face i don't know that i knew his name until i started talking to you on tbtl about wrestling related stuff but mean mean gene or mean gene is it Aukerman? Not like Scott. Aukerman. Aukerman, okay. Why is he, so his whole thing is he's, you know. Aukerlund, sorry, Mean Gene Aukerlund. Okay, but well, I'll just, going forward, refer to him as Mean Gene. He's a smaller guy with a mustache, kind of nerdy. How did he get the name Mean? That seems weird to me. You would think, oh, there's somebody involved in wrestling. Their name is Mean Gene. You'd expect that person to be big and bulky and one of the wrestlers, but he's not. He's like this small diminutive guy. Why is his name Mean Gene?

Well, I'm on the Gene Okerlund Wikipedia page. God, we are super serving maybe one to four P1s on this. Like somebody who got up this morning and was like, I would love a deep dive on Mean Gene Okerlund. We're all learning here, yeah. Sure. This is a birthday present to myself. By the way, according to Wikipedia, he went 5'9", 5'9", about 2'12". So, yeah, not an overly, you know, enormous, hulking person. Eugene Okerlund was born in Brookings, South Dakota. He went to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and became a disc jockey at a popular radio station in Omaha. And he was called Gene Leader. That was his radio name when he was working in Minneapolis. He was a radio guy. W-D-G-Y. I wonder if Gene Leder ever crossed paths with the guy we met at Mancini's Char House who kept talking about the claw Baron Von Raschke. You and I ran into a guy that is the unofficial keeper of all things wrestling that moved through the upper Midwest of Minnesota. Let's see. He was with the AWA. He filled in for the he was a ring announcer for the AWA. and then when the awa ended he moved over to the world wrestling federation i think it was just kind of one of those wow he actually sang the national anthem at the inaugural wrestlemania oh wow okay all right he also notably teamed up with hulk hogan to face wait they actually

let him in the ring see i was wondering if he had a background in wrestling like what did he have or you know like professional wrestling the style of wrestling it's possible he got the

nickname from hulk hogan it says oakland's interviews were memorable mostly notably those

involving hulk hogan who began his interviews with well you know mean gene i see it was okay

so i wonder if if he wasn't like i don't think you can give yourself the nickname mean gene but maybe i mean this was an era where every one of these people at every level i mean the managers the bobby the brain heenan jimmy the mouth of the south heart like everyone at every level of this had some kind of wacky nickname so it was only a matter of

time before gene okerlund got one i am looking here i'm finding photos of him as a younger man although he never really looks like a young man i'll be honest with you um of him in a radio booth in 1969 in minnesota but um oh man i would kill to find some old uh archive like tape of him some like sound checks but okay i'll i'll let that uh thread go my last question is this is the stupidest question of the bunch but you know how sometimes i explain things to you that like when i get one celebrity in my brain i it i can't conjure another one there's like certain people or facts that sort of take up the same brain space and once i'm focusing on one i can't think of the other this is we're talking about macho man randy savage here who's the woo guy the one rick flair the rick flair the nature boy i can never keep i know they're very different personas but But I can't, well, again, because I didn't grow up steeped in this, I can't really keep them apart. All I knew about wrestling as a kid was that some of my friends had the rubber wrestling toys. And for some reason, whoever had Hulk Hogan plucked his nipples off.

Wow. They put nipples on Hulk Hogan?

I believe so. You can picture the rubber, I mean, the classic rubber wrestling toys, right? Whoever, I don't know if it was Tim Cassida, Don Mora. I don't know who it was. Sounds like a Don Mora move. I don't know. Many serial killers started out, by the way, torturing Hulk Hogan dolls Yes, exactly I think Don might have struggled with some things He was the one, well, whatever He was the one who, like, if his Lego One time I was playing with his Legos at his house Did he get it sawed on his Lego off? It was a four I don't know what you call him, a four bumper And he goes out into the I think he used a hatchet But maybe it was a saw And he turned it into a twofer Instead of a fourfer anyway um there those are my that was those are my uh three questions in the comment well again

i think that um this was probably of limited interest to most of the listeners but i thoroughly enjoyed it and i'm the one that started it by playing all this randy savage audio this morning but again in the uh words of whoever the heck this was and i don't even remember the who where did this even come from it's my birthday today so i'm gonna play as much savage tape as i want to

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Rip-diddle-ip-dip-dip, it's your birthday.

Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we will update you on the pasta mystery. Are you familiar with the other day I said, you don't have that pasta playa-hate-a tape, and I got the sense that you were a little bit unfamiliar with what I was talking about. Do you know the whole story of pasta playa-hate-a on this show?

Even when you played it at the beginning of this show, it did not ring a bell to me. I thought I was hearing it for the first time.

And you're going to find this almost as interesting as I find Randy Macho Man Savage content. So we'll do that coming up here on TBTL.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dazzle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the wonderful, generous folks who are supporting our program with a dazzling amount of dough. And I was texting with our friend Bean over the weekend, Andrew Oh, good Of Cup of Tea and a Chat Wonderful podcast that I think you should all listen to and support Only slightly less than you listen to and support TBTL That's right But Bean and I were talking business Because, you know, he and Allie, that show is their own independent production And he was saying, how are you feeling? And we were going back and forth And I was just saying the thing I'm saying to everyone now Which is, I'm very optimistic but I also have a strong sense of really how much we are actually striking out on our own. I think I always thought, well, it'll be like we're doing the show at 8 p.m. except less cyber training. And I don't need to tell you this, Andrew, but it's more involved than that. It is more involved than that, yes. And we're going to really be looking for the folks to keep – this is July 3rd, by the way. We go independent. We're going to really – famously July 3rd, day before Independence Day. It's in all the history books. Exactly.

And, you know, if we're being transparent and a little bit, you know, we're not in the middle of a fundraiser right now, so I'll try to go light here. But the truth is, you know, where we are in this process of going independent right now is starting to price out the various services and production needs that we need. I mean, it's true, right?

You mean that we're going to start doing this on two tin cans and a long string between Portland and Seattle?

Like, you'll back me up on that, right? Like most of the conversations that I've been kind of pinging you at is like, well, don't forget, we need this and we need this and we're going to need this. And it's like, you know, and I think I think it's going to be fine, but it really does put in stark relief, you know, exactly where the money does go. And we can actually talk more about that, too, you know, and be very transparent about it. But, you know, I am in one of those things where it feels like my, you know, it's just like, OK, OK, this is going to work. This is going to work. People like Sarah Vela are going to help us as we as we.

make this leap that's right so thank you so much to sarah of booth bay maine um sarah says ahoy luke and andrew back when i started listening about seven years ago i was going through a terrible time i had a kid in crisis and i truly didn't know if he would make it through his teenage years oh sarah sorry that's yeah can't imagine the stress of that um tbtl was a daily escape from having to think about all of that and it played a major part in helping me cope so thank you so much i am happy to say that although life isn't all rainbows and unicorns my family is out of crisis mode it's also a delight to me that current circumstances allow me to be a dazzling donor and i have an opportunity to give back to this cure for global loneliness i am so lucky okay enough sappy stuff love you thank you mean it p.s hello to all the main tens i'm in mid-coast main and would love to meet some of you hit me up on instagram and sarah is at orchid and then the number eight orchid eight is where you can find sarah on instagram pps if it's not too much to ask could you please play the extended version of that's a tuna bro i have that here i can oh good because i don't know if i still have it here in this little system yeah i think i can um yeah

Do check it out on your – and I'm going to – I am going to say two things before I play this tape because I also want to make sure I'm finding the right stuff here.

This feels, by the way, like it's not a surprise that somebody from – what is it called? Mid-coast Maine would love – I don't believe that these folks are from Maine, but it's part of a larger northeast seaboard situation.

Exactly. Now, here's the deal. I did find the whole five-minute version. I think I also have it broken down into the two more salient, like, two-minute versions, which I'll play here in a moment for my end. But before I do that, if you'll allow it, Luke and Sarah, if you'll allow it, two things. I'll speak on behalf of both of us. Thank you. On a personal note, Sarah, Sarah and I were emailing this late last week about her Dazzling Donor message. And I will be honest with you, I had not pre-read it. I had made sure that I had it, and I'd been copying and pasting it, and I didn't read it. And so, you know, I kind of did not realize until this very moment what kind of a serious message you had in there. So my apologies for, first of all, not acknowledging that. That sounds incredibly scary. And I can't even begin to put myself in your situation. Well, thankfully, I acknowledge it for both of us. You did. It seems to be how these things go. I'm the heart and soul of this program. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, Sarah, I'm sorry. And I'm not in a trap house.

I'm the heart and soul of this program.

If it seemed weird that I wouldn't acknowledge that. But I am glad to hear that things are going better now. Sincerely. Secondly, this is a message to you, Luke. And again, I will play this tape. But secondly, this is a message to my friend Luke Burbank on the day of his blurs. Luke, you are not allowed to even visit Booth Bay, Maine. The reason being is you will never leave. Now, if you are happy living the rest of your days in Booth Bay, Maine, feel free. Visit it. But be prepared. If you visit, you will not leave. It is a destination. It is a beautiful place where you would come in.

I don't even want to look at it on my computer, Andrew, because that'll probably. I'm going to be, you know, like by late tomorrow night, I'll be in a place called Kingston, Massachusetts, which is about an hour outside of Boston for a TV interview. And I was looking at pictures of Kingston. I may never come home from Kingston, Mass, because it is also on the water and unbelievably gorgeous. So I'm learning to just it's better if I just don't even tempt myself with these things.

Exactly. So no more travel for Luke. And then, OK, I'm going to play for you now. I'm not sure if these are beeped versions or not, so if not, everybody be prepared. There may be some swears in the very near future. This is Boston Fisherman Part 1, as it lives on my computer.

I don't know what this is, but Jay says it's a f***ing big sea turtle. No, it's a baby wheel. It's a baby f***ing wheel, man. Holy s***, we are witnessing a baby f***ing wheel right here, dude. Holy s***. That thing is big, Jay. What is that thing? It looks hurt. I don't know. That thing looks hurt, Jay. Jay, that thing is hurt, bro. Holy s***. Look at this f***ing thing. Oh, my God. What the f*** is that, bro? Jay, what the f*** is that? Oh, man. Pull back up, Jay. Come on. Come on, bro. Pull back up, bro. We're seeing some s*** we ain't never seen before, kid. Oh, my God. That thing looks dead, man. We're going to call the aquarium or something, dude. You want to try to pull it in? Let's hook it.

I love just the biggie in the background. Yeah, exactly.

What the hell is it?

What is it? Well, get a picture of me with it anyway. It was a sunfish, right?

I think it ended up.

up being a sunfish yeah maybe that's that's probably all that sarah needs we have like just so much more and he repeats himself quite a bit but i would like to point out again not to overdo it here but we had to pay for each one of those beeps you know what i mean these are the

types of things that we're going to be those are the kind of things we're going to need a lot of help yeah exactly with financially going forward well sarah thank you so much for um supporting the show i'm glad to hear that um the things are going uh much better in your family situation and also you'll never see me in Booth Bay, Maine because I'm apparently not allowed to go there. So, maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

We've also got to thank Brant Severson, who's in Moraga, California. Where is Moraga? I don't know. You can visit there if you want. How did this California city escape my radar? Moraga, California. Are you looking it up? Is it north? I am. I am. I'm going to tell you in a minute. It looks like it's in California. So we've got that. We've got that piece of information. We've got that going for you. Oh, it's in the Bay Area. Yeah, it's by Oakland. Okay, cool. Right. It's the gateway to Danville. I don't know if anyone calls it that, but okay. Okay, right on. Well, Brant, thank you so much for supporting the program. Brant says, thanks for bringing this community together with humor. More visits from Genevieve, P. Fletch, Camaro Kev, et cetera. please huh I'm working right now I'm doing some like I'm taking a moment to not allow my brain to slip into the mode of thinking Brant would just like the show to be less of you and I talking yeah no I understand

are you doing your exercises

there was that me I said me and you me talking the way that you're supposed to do that is if you take the other person out and it still makes grammatical sense that's the one to be using right i don't remember what your sentence was i said i'm working hard to not take this as a sign that brant wants to hear less of you and i talking but if i took you out of it i wouldn't say brant brant wants to hear less of i talking i would say he wants to hear less of me exactly

right i believe is the trick on that oh yeah and somebody i don't remember if they emailed me or texted me and i don't know if it was brant or not get genevieve on to the clarify yeah i know Somebody just wrote me a note like in the past month or so that just said somewhat starkly, hey, if you're so concerned with grammar, how can you keep on saying things like me and Vives instead of Vives and I? And I didn't respond to it, but I guess the answer to that question is I'm a human being because I'm not absolutely perfect. And also, like, maybe there is something I don't think about. That is not one of those things that I say incorrectly, but I do it knowingly because I like it. It is an honest mistake, although there is probably something about the me and Vives, the colloquialism of that or whatever. It just doesn't bother me. And I know what this person's point is probably that sometimes I probably come off as pedantic and maybe finger-pointy at others. I'm trying not to do that, actually.

I think, if anything, I'm more that way. I feel like you've taken a real loosey-goosey approach to a lot of aspects of life. And I find it troubling as a person who's about to go into small business with you.

You know, I've been thinking more about I think that sometimes language, especially like the formal rules of language, even though I like being a pedant and like feeling like I'm kind of like, oh, well, oh, that's not true. Like, you know, when I say, well, did you use it or did you utilize it? And I used to come at it from that angle. I sort of feel like, well, there is sort of an argument to be made that people kind of wield language as a sort of barrier to kind of, you know, kind of have an us and us versus them sort of attitude towards, I don't know, various people in the world who maybe came up differently and had different educational experiences or what have you. So I'm trying to not prioritize things differently. Yeah, exactly.

just like care about it and versus don't care very much i think for me usually it's about something else in other words if somebody i i if randy macho man savage said it you know well me and hulk hogan i would be like fine with it hulk um because i love randy macho man wouldn't it be how is there not a wrestler called the grammarian there was to heal but Their thing was just correcting the grammar of the other wrestlers. Can you imagine in the Pontiac Silverdome, 90,000 people, and then just a guy comes in with the typical glasses with the piece of tape on the middle, and his deal is to just correct everyone's grammar.

But is he actually really tough, too? Like he's kind of a secret tough guy.

I feel like that would be such a great heel turn in the milieu of wrestling because I just don't see that as a group of people who are overly obsessed with I before E except after C. I know that's not even the same thing, but you know what I mean? Just like rules of grammar.

I know that there are a lot of strict rules also about wrestling, especially WWF slash WWE wrestling, but it would be fun.

He could have some sort of a club as a weapon or something, but it's in the shape of, I don't know, like a semicolon or some sort of like, I don't know, some sort of punctuation or something that kind of refers back to. Like a question mark. I was picturing a question mark, too. That's like a question mark.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like it.

Anyway. Well, there you go, Brant. You know who couldn't have brought you that content? Genevieve. Well, probably everyone on the list, honestly. Genevieve would have had the semicolon covered. P. Fletch just knows about everything, and Camaro Kev knows more about wrestling than I do. So I guess to your point, Brian, we should have them on more.

Fair enough.

Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. I think it was Friday's show. We talked about this mysterious case in Old Bridge, New Jersey, where somebody dumped a bunch of pasta in the woods. And kind of this place that I guess people tend to dump, you know, old washing machines and things like that. And and then the it got rained on, which made it look like it was cooked. And so there was some slightly erroneous reporting that hundreds of pounds of cooked pasta had been dumped in the woods. And then there was in the article that I was reading from, there was this local kind of I'm going to say quasi city official because I never quite figured out. If this person had an actual job with the city of Old Bridge or the county. But for some reason, she was called out. I don't have her name right in front of me, but she was called out to the to the scene of the pasta and then took pictures of him, put it on Facebook and kind of became this whole big thing. Like, where did this come from? And I mean, only like minutes after we got off the air, Andrew, I started seeing updates on the story that could advance. Like if we would have recorded, if it would have been another day where I was blithely jogging or in a trap house and we would have started an hour later, we probably would have had a lot more information about where the noodles came from. I guess the answer is that a person had was was sort of taking care of or cleaning out a home where his mother had lived. now it's interesting the headline from nbc for new york that you sent me is a military veteran moving out of his mother's home after her death seemingly found a stockpile of old food that she kept in the house now how is the military veteran thing relevant yeah i don't know i was sort of

wondering the same thing whatever i don't need it's interesting how people identify people in the newspaper right and sometimes it is and again i'm i'm i'm hesitating here because i don't want to get into some sort of social issue but sometimes like it is somewhat problematic or maybe fraught would be another way of putting that you know what i mean like if you know sometimes they'll say mother of two did this or something happened to her but the parenthood has nothing to do with it but it instills in us a feeling of of maybe humanity or if the person has done something wrong of of betrayal of bad motherhood or whatever you could say irony of irony in a way potentially Yeah. And so it's an interesting thing because you are somebody I know, like both in TBTL, but also more maybe serious or even more, more public or platforms or whatever. Like you love details. Details are interesting. But then also sometimes when headline writers throw that in there, it can also be manipulative as well.

And I think that what I'm showing here is my sort of like underlining bias towards the, you know, the sort of military industrial complex and the way it seeps into every part of our lives. And I'm not saying I don't think we should have a military and I'm not saying the people in the military, some of whom are listeners of the show, aren't doing a great service. But the way that that gets sort of trotted out and the way that every football game or as you sent the pictures of the San Diego Padres uniforms over the weekend that are just like completely like camoed out because San Diego has decided. I mean, I know there's a big naval installation there, but and other military folks nearby. It's like that's the that's the lane the Padres have really leaned into.

And it's just every I would say that those uniforms are kind of ugly, except they're saved by the huge T-Mobile logo on the sleeve. Or no, it's not T-Mobile. It's the Motorola, I want to say. I happen to be watching the Sunday Night Game. It is so – yeah, I tried to take a picture of the TV at Teddy's and sent it to the text chain. They're hideous uniforms, but then also they just have this giant corporate logo on the sleeve.

So I probably, if they said a pet veterinarian moving out of his mother's home after – Like there's if there'd have been a different kind of vet, I probably wouldn't have even noticed. I've been like, oh, this person works with animals and they found these noodle. Like somehow the detail about the military service, because in my experience, that seems to be something that gets trotted out, I think, sometimes unduly to try to give us a sense of someone's. inherent morals or something i think my brain red flags it in a way it wouldn't red flag other equally un uh related information about a person i actually i think it well i do know that i mean

i guess what we're saying is there's maybe a little bit of of bias for lack of a better i'm trying to cop to my own bias yeah but the thing is i think i know you well enough to because it did it struck me too i didn't it didn't strike me in a way that made me flinch but just sort of like huh interesting connection and i gotta say if it did say a veterinarian said that it was his mother's home and she was stockpiling during covid which is what one neighbor sort of presumed i still think i'd be like why are you mentioning that they're a veterinarian i also why did i pick a

word that i have so much trouble saying well because i was i led us there by saying a different

kind of oh yeah but anyway so like i think i think we both would have questioned it if they identified the person in any kind of any kind of line of work that has nothing like literally nothing to do with this story it would be more interesting to know the proximity of how close this son lived to his parent is it somebody who's in the neighborhood is it somebody who lives near the creek or river where these were dumped now it does say in this thing we're reading

from that he was moving out of his mother's home after her death so okay it sounds like he lived there but you've already kind of alluded to this that there was a neighbor um named keith rost who says i mean i really feel like he was just trying to clear out his parents house and they were probably stocked up from covid he said maybe it's a generational thing my grandparents always had a cupboard full of cans and pasta just to be safe now let's just also quickly sort of i i guess uh allude to the fact or or be a cognizant of the fact that like if you lose a parent or your parents And then you're tasked with trying to clean out the home. That's that is tough, tough stuff, you know, and, you know, I don't want to it's it's taking this weird turn because it's somehow involved a bunch of pasta. But it is like picturing anyone, be they a veteran, a veterinarian or anything else, having to deal with that moment of real the intersection of grief and hassle that comes when when people pass away. And then you have to deal with the details of the life they lived. That's a serious thing. And I feel bad for this guy. I still do have questions, though. which is because I've looked at the pasta and it is a lot of pasta. I mean, and you you question this specific weight of 500 pounds. How would they know that? That's a fair point.

That's another thing that I think came from a neighbor, by the way, and not not to go totally on the media on this. But if I can just interject here, I was like, why are they saying 500 pounds? Like who weighed this? Clearly, they didn't in the process of reporting this bring scales out in a way that they cleaned it up or in the process of cleaning it up. And it looks like in the same way people were erroneously reporting that it was cooked pasta, it's just like some neighbor said, I don't know, 300 to 500, or they reported, it looks like 300 to 500 pounds of pasta. And then that's what everybody is going with. Like, this is one of those stories that catches the public imagination. So nobody really cares about whether or not they're being, like, just slightly decent journalists.

Right. That's a really good point because then it just starts getting repeated and no one's gone back to the source to say, do we know how much it weighed? Do we know if it was cooked, et cetera? I will say this, just from a visual test, from just getting eyes on it in the photo, it just looks like more pasta than I would ever imagine a person having in their home. It looks – the reason that there was speculation maybe it came from a restaurant originally is because it just seems like an amount of it that you generally wouldn't have around.

But it still seems I mean, I just still it still seems sort of weird to me because several things here. First of all, the way it's sort of spread out, it's like it's it's in mounds. Right. But then the mounds kind of kind of follow along the riverbed for a while. So you've got to kind of picture this as dry when pasta is dry. Sorry. Someone has heard. Don't we have tape of Portlandia, Fred Armisen talking about when you eat pasta? Yeah, that's when they're giving up pasta. Yeah. Anyway, sorry, I just got distracted by my own stupid voice. It's just like I'm picturing this when he was dumping it, assuming that we're right about this, that he was dumping it. It would have laid more flat. It would have taken up less space. I'm just like a little bit confused why it sort of spread out like this in this manner. Also, I'm like, I'm really thinking about the packaging aspect of it. If you have this much pasta, chances are you didn't just have it in those little blue boxes that spaghetti comes in at the grocery store.

I'm imagining the opening of like 700 Barilla boxes.

Right, exactly what I was picturing. I'm sure these were bought in bulk, so maybe it was in bags or something along those lines. But, like, so that's just sort of interesting, and I'm just sort of trying to picture it, like, the actual dumping of this when it was hard, dry pasta. But then here's my kind of third thought on this is, like. like you say cleaning out somebody's house after they've they've passed away or even if you're just moving like it's a chore but also part of that chore is probably going to the dump a lot you know i just don't understand why this even seemed more convenient to the person who dumped this because now you're probably ripping up pat you're probably ripping open packaging because you're not thinking about what you're doing is littering you probably actually think listen it'll absorb into the soil like it'll be fine like one box of noodles wouldn't be a problem what about two what about three where's the line chances are there was some sort of thought that went into this erroneously but like that well i don't want to litter but i'll just empty the packages but it just seems like so much work like just throw the bags in the back of the truck along with the old sofa that smells like cigarette smoke i'm casting a lot of aspersions on this person's mom and just like take it all the dump i'm still confused why this was the most reasonable thing to do i think

it probably came down to the thought that i expressed when we talked about it initially which is i would never throw a washing machine into some sort of ravine right or like a anything like that i would probably i wouldn't now but there was a time in my life where i would have considered throwing out a bunch of food to be way less harmful to the environment assuming it will just start basically like you know deteriorating pretty quickly and then it'll just be gone like it's it came from the land and i'm returning it to the land and it hasn't gone through nearly as much processing as say a washing machine and i bet you this person was thinking along the same lines they were probably just like there's all this stuff i'm dealing with it this is the biodegradable stuff and and i will say to their credit what you didn't see was a bunch of boxes so in other words exactly they didn't i mean i know you already talked about the unboxing but it's like this person wasn't just throwing garbage or even edible food held within garbage out into the world they were i think in their mind doing something they thought was less bad than throwing out now here's the thing i will say though too and we talked about this as well the first time and and you were saying it's not quite as easy to give away food as you might think and you work with this organization that uh you know helps feed people who are unhoused and you've talked about sometimes people will call you up when you just give you stuff but it's kind of random and not helpful or if you were to have extra stuff like dealing with it is more challenging than people think i would but i would submit that one of the things that you probably could take to a food bank would be pasta in the box like famously it's one of the things that you can give and that

have an amazingly long shelf life yes but it does have a shelf life right and so if it was stamped with a different if it just said best you know if used by i could see an organization saying we're not going to mess with that like we're not going to be we you know we have a policy in place that we don't give away food that is beyond the used by date i could i could see that i don't know i mean but again maybe that's a lot of work and then you're calling around you're calling around you're finding somebody i got all this like i don't know what to do with all that i i don't know but i mean again this person ended up with it by the river as opposed to like i say the dump which again you might have to pay like what did i pay the other day i think we talked about like 30 bucks 30 to 300 pounds like maybe you don't want to pay 30 bucks but it's like i don't know like the whole the whole decision making process on this seems very odd to me let's talk though if

we can about pasta player hating because that's the real like part of this story that day two has jumped out at me and what it is is this audio drop that i'll play one more time from a domino's pizza commercial that was a drop that was played often on our show when we were still a radio show So this was going back many, many years. And it was from a TV commercial that I only rewatched. It's probably been 10 years easily, if not longer, since I've thought of this commercial because I didn't have the audio. And so I started Googling pasta play a hater. And I finally ended up on this Domino's pizza commercial that we were obsessed with. And it's pretty great, Andrew. I think anyway, what it was, was an attempt by Domino's to start, I guess, making inroads in the pasta department. like they wanted to try to get people to think about ordering pasta from dominoes in in addition to just pizza and so what's happened in the commercial is like a family has ordered some some delicious pasta from dominoes but somehow along with the pasta is their new pasta promotion logo which is basically like a piece of i don't know if he's penne or fusilli whatever the longish imagine a long piece of penne pasta right that's the one that's kind of flat but it's like kind of then on the edges it's a tube oh okay oh yeah okay gotcha yeah but but it's the tube the penne is the tube where the ends are angled and there's another one okay yeah there's another one where it's not angled and i think it's more that one but i don't know what that kind is called okay so that just imagine. Yeah, okay. It's a tube.

pasta okay but he's like he's like a little claymation guy and he has like a thick chain around his neck and he's a wrapping piece of pasta oh no and the family is horrified like the dad everyone in the family except the one son who thinks it's kind of cool is rightfully terrified of this wrapping piece of pasta that's come into their home environment leading the mom to absolutely beat the shit out of it with a tennis racket it's i'm gonna play it for you it's so funny i don't i don't understand how it's and also it took me a long time to find a version of it that wasn't just someone pointing their phone at a tv this i feel like we have lost that we've lost our our shared history on how great this domino's pizza commercial is i don't know if it really works as audio but i've just explained to you basically what happens here we

Why can't we ever agree on what to eat? Check it, yo. What's the pasta pasta from Domino's? Five varieties of oven fresh yum. The whole family's down. We're all getting some. This is tight. Pasta dude. Uh, pasta dude. Yeah.

That was the mom just absolutely nailing the pasta wrapper with a tennis racket.

Pasta playa hater. Introducing Domino's pasta.

Wow. I would recommend checking it out, Andrew. Again, the audio doesn't quite do it justice, but it was a really good commercial that really messed with the conventions of these kinds of things and for a company the size of Domino's was pretty edgy. I don't think it quite got its due, so I just wanted to give it its due here on a Monday.

That's where you're going. I thought the takeaway was just like a misguided company trying to use hip-hop. Well, I mean, I think.

No, no, no. No, because they're in on the joke

I see So it's a bit more knowing than I was Picking up on

Oh, it's way knowing, the whole idea is It's making fun of things like Poochie, you know, like the way the Simpsons had You know, they get like whatever What company is it that gets Or is it the Simpsons themselves that end up getting Poochie, the rapping surf dog Or something that's just an amalgamation Of like things that are cool in the moment Maybe he's skateboarding or something This is totally a joke about Like just weird Mascotty things that are supposed to be Cool and in the zeitgeist and whatever And they nail it also again that's why you got to see The visuals the visuals are perfect because It start it's it's set in An environment that's exactly like a thousand other Commercials you've seen for bounty quicker Picker-upper or whatever But very quickly things Turn and the looks on the faces of The parents in particular who find Their home where their children lived Invaded by some demon character made of pasta and wrapping and that the mom takes matters into her own hands and potentially murders the character i thought was a pretty funny way to try to sell your pasta to people i don't know if it worked i don't even know if you can still get pasta at domino's but

i thought it was a good ad 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 emails or v-mails yeah one quick voicemail here

Just a little story. I like it when listeners tell us stories. And this is listener Maria, I believe. And we had a dazzling donor the other day who mentioned dandelions. Oh, it was Aubrey, right? Actually, there was no mention of dandelions in – I'm sorry, Luke. This is embarrassing. Is it Aubrey or Audrey who lives in Akron, Ohio, and we follow her and her husband on Instagram and they have the beautiful home?

Oh, oh, oh, House by the Lake. Yes. The Teal House by the Lake. Anyway. I'd have to go to my Instagram.

We went to Instagram. I mean, just the most beautiful photos on Instagram. I'm not joking. As they take care of their house and do various projects in the yard, and they take the most beautiful photos of them, great Instagram follow. Maybe we can get more information on that in a second. Either way.

I'm scrolling.

That led us to talking about dandelions a little bit on the show because there's a beautiful photo of dandelions on the Instagram page.

Which you, I think, what was your comment?

And then my thing was like, because I'm always talking about pulling dandelions in my yard, which for some reason, it's really interesting. People have a strong reaction to that. I get so many emails. Even this last time I said, don't email me. And all these people emailed me. It is Audrey. Okay. I think I said Aubrey at first. My apologies, Audrey. um but um actually do you want to give the instagram handle in case people want to follow it yeah it's uh teal house on the hill nice teal house on the hill um honestly i'm not just saying a beautiful instagram follow um but anyway a lot of people are like no dandelions are in or you can do this with dandelions or why do you want to pull them and i guess the answer again is just sort of like well in some context dandelions look great in some of the not so great areas of my lawn the where it's already not a super good look, the dandelions kind of look ratty. So that's why I'm obsessed with picking dandelions and not letting them take over my yard. But anyway, all of the dandelion talk led to this voicemail.

Hey, friendos, this is Maria. I'm a Minnesotan. Audrey's message about dandelions reminded me about something that happened on the school bus when I was in elementary or middle school. Don't worry, it's not a bad thing. No trigger warning. I've always loved color, and I was kind of easily led. So we're on the school bus coming home. We've got a long bus ride. Nina, who was super cool, had dandelions. And at the time, I wasn't allowed to wear makeup. So she's like, hey, look what I can do. This is really cool. So she rubbed the dandelions all over her eyelids, and it looked awesome. this really cool yellow eyeshadow so we're all putting it all over our eyelids well i have hay fever and it's really bad so i'm rubbing it all over my eyelids not making the connection by the time i get home i have a situation on my hands my eyes are swollen and itchy and oh the itchiness of my eyes I remember was not good I don't remember exactly what my mom said when I walked in the house but it was something along the lines of you did what and you realize you have hay fever right and hay fever and dandelions are connected so anyway it made me laugh and made me remember about the dandelions on the bus and i haven't remembered that in ages so anyway love you guys not in a creepy way i don't think i knew dandelions were associated

with hay fever i don't think i did i don't think i realized it was like grasses hence hay and some amount of trees maybe but i know i don't think i would have thought of dandelions as being something that could cause an allergic reaction you know what this made me think of and by the way i'm not

going to tell the the story um which i've told too many times on the show before where i was bullied a little bit on a bus involving plant life but um i was highly allergic to uh poison ivy growing up and keep in mind i kind of grew up in you know the country kind of a rural area

i've spent a lot of time at the other house yeah yeah well i guess poison oak is poison oak and

poison ivy different in fact i well i mean it's a different plant but i i i might have actually been allergic to poison oak i'm not exactly sure but you know kind of similar reaction yeah and i would have you know seasonal outbreaks of it i'm outside playing in the yard i come in i don't realize i got it then i have a rash on my arm and it would spread and you know it sucked it was just kind of a one of those things you deal with in childhood but one time i remember it was a hot summer night and i was just like laying in bed and i couldn't sleep i remember i just kept rubbing my eyes and rubbing my face. It was one of those things where I kind of, I think I was maybe half asleep and maybe didn't realize I was doing it or what I was doing. I don't know. I was just a young kid. And the next morning I woke up, Luke, have I ever told you this? I literally couldn't open my eyes. It turns out I was having, I had come in. I mean, I took a bath every single night, but I'd already apparently, you know, gotten whatever poison of the, of the poison plant into my skin or the oils on my skin or my hands or something. I don't know. And so I spent this hot night sort of like not really realizing how much I was like kind of messing with my face and rubbing and rubbing it and probably itching it and not connecting it with that. And the next morning, my whole face was just blowed up and I was so swollen that it took me a long time to open one eye and the other eye remained closed for a big chunk of the day, if I remember correctly.

Did you have to go to school like that?

I feel like it was summertime, and so it wasn't a school thing. Again, I've told you basically all I remember about it. And so I feel like if I keep filling in the details, I'm going to rewrite history a little bit. But I ended up being fine. I don't think I went to – I didn't go to the hospital or anything. I don't think there's a lot you can do about it. My parents might have taken me to the local doctor.

Well, if they give you some Benadryl, right, or an antihistamine. Yeah, maybe they did. Isn't that all you can do?

Maybe they did. Yeah, I mean, I used to I mean, we used to live and die by the the like the the topical Benadryl stuff, you know, the pink stuff that you put it on. Like that was such a part of my childhood was taking a cotton ball, putting the pink, you know, dipping the bottle so that you'd get it on the cotton ball and then putting it on the skin. And it was always so cold on the skin that I have a visceral memory of just constantly having that pink, crusty stuff all over me because I was always playing out in the backyard.

hard i have now i got a i got a little uh lesson from my neighbor brian uh the other week about like what to

look for with poison oak in the the general area where houses are and the properties and everything and i will be honest with you i was at the time i was 46 so i was a very different person than i am now at 47 but i was 46 years old and had could not pick poison oak out of a lineup for you because of just being a city kid and hearing about it and it's like you know it shows up in a lot of movies about kids being at camp whether it's you know um the parent trap or meatballs or whatever i feel like poison poison oak and poison ivy loom large in the cinematic universe when someone goes to the woods for any reason but i feel like those were also plot lines written largely by people in cities who'd never been to the woods sure yeah my info on the whole thing is still pretty limited i just i can in my yard i now know which thing not to go up and lick wow they do look similar because

I was going to say I didn't I remember growing up and being in the Boy Scouts and living in, you know, again, rural Ohio where poison ivy was very prevalent, like always saying, like, OK, it's like three leaves that kind of like, you know, like one in the middle and two coming off the sides. But honestly, I didn't even know what poison oak looked like. And it's basically the same arrangement of leaves I'm seeing here, only the leaves themselves look slightly different. But isn't it like leaves of three? Let it be or something. Oh, yeah. That rings a bell. Now that you say that, I don't think I would. And then poison sumac. I don't even know if I ever had to mess with that. That looks totally different. Sumac for what? Can that be the show title? You know what?

Let's give people a reason to listen to the whole episode. Yeah, exactly.

Like, when did they talk about Sumac on the show? Listen all the way through.

All right. All right. Good stuff. Thanks for that.

I think we should call that good for today.

But I've got amazing news. The Mariners are back. Also, although the question is, were their offensive concerns really addressed or not? We don't know, but they did take two out of three against Houston. I've got other amazing news, though, which is we are going to be back tomorrow with more of this imaginary radio for you. So we do look forward to having you join us for that. In the meantime, wow, look, the sun's coming out, Andrew.

Yeah, it's really nice over here, too. It's kind of a nice day here. Yeah, happy birthday. I hope you—are you going to go to dinner or anything tonight? Are you going to go to that place where—

making um becca is is is gonna be making us a yummy little dinner and uh and yeah we're gonna hang out with the cats because you know life slows down at 47 yeah no that's dinner at about 4 p.m watch the cats for a while and then it's you know hit the hay at about six i keep picturing

you for nice dinners i know that there are more than one restaurant i know that there is more than one restaurant in in portland i think i think they're up to two or three now but um god damn That meal we had last time we were in Portland was so good. Noble Rot. Yes, I think about that a lot. Oh, great.

I'm glad because that was such a fun night, and that was a really fun dinner that kind of worked out.

It was so good. And I got pork, which I don't usually get, but I got it, and it was so good. And then do you remember the carrot soup? That doesn't sound like I'm selling it well, but it was like a carrot ginger soup. Anyway, hope that whatever. Well, I'm going to call that chain plans. We're going to Noble Rot. Well, I'm sure it'll be a good meal, whatever you do. So happy birthday.

All right. Thanks, man. Thanks to all of you for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Monday. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Hey, kids, it's birthday time. so join us now for our birthday ride happy happy birthday to you happy happy happy birthday to you happy happy birthday to you happy happy happy birthday to you power out