Muse

so a ghost walks into the bar and the ghost is like oh and the bartender is like oh god oh sorry i you're a ghost with the sheet i thought and the ghost is like that i'm a racist and the bartender's like yeah you should probably do like a printed stephanie and the ghost is like tom bartender's like i haven't seen you since we went on that date all those years ago what what happened? And the ghost is like, I died. And the bartender's like, well, I guess that explains why I never heard back from you. And the ghost is like, oh, well, um, I, I actually, uh, I actually had like, like, like, like a week ago. The bartender's like, it's, it's fine. You water under the bridge. And the ghost is like, that's actually what killed me. the bartender's like really and the ghost is like no it's just a dumb joke uh it's a car accident and the bartender's like well regardless it's really nice to see you again the ghost is like it's nice to see you too what do you say i buy us a first round and we catch up like old times and the bartender says well i'd love to but you don't serve spirits

T-B-T-L

we're not it's just that kind of tune well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's an audiophiles nightmare my name is luke burbank i am your host hi i'm luke coming to you once again from somewhere in san diego county california california got sunshine california got fog times here in this part of san diego was filming in julian california yesterday and it was beautiful sunny skies uh and uh it was just lovely and then becca and i were driving back from there to here where the airbnb is which by the way easily 80 less scary last night sleeping here A bottle of half of wine didn't hurt either Maybe I anesthetized my fears Ooh, that could be the name of my follow-up to my memoir The Luke Burbank story, anesthetize your fears But anyway, as we're driving back from the beautiful blue skies of Julian, California We realize that maybe this is some kind of weather pattern Maybe it's June gloom Maybe it's just the part of San Diego County we're in But it's actually kind of raining right now That's okay, though. It's warm and dry here inside episode 3,951 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. There was a cute thing happening on TikTok where a young woman in New York City found this very designy, I think it's a Rocher Bobois couch that somebody had just put out on the sidewalk. They were just giving it away, and she Googled it on the spot and found it was a very expensive couch, and her dad and her brother and her boyfriend helped her haul it back to a warehouse and clean it up and she was all excited. And then the internet got involved.

This is why we can't have nice things.

And now she is having to defend herself against scurrilous accusations of being basically like a person with low morals and low hygiene.

It's not that it's dirty. It doesn't stink. It doesn't have an odor. It's literally clean. It's just the stains.

that are on the couch okay so we will get into that also the results are in and one of the following things is apparently the most trusted brand in america sharpie realtor tupperware velcro

weed eater whiteout band-aid taser uh we'll tell you which one it is what if it was taser

uh we'll talk about that and a bunch of other things with this guy the longest running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, their grace, their splendor, and all that intricate rigging. A lot of times I'll just dial him up before the show and I'll just say, and he knows exactly what I'm talking about. He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. I would like to take a little bit of a risk here and chat. Not about baseball, Luke.

but about humanity as it plays out on the baseball diamond. Do you think I can get away with that at the top of the show? You certainly can't. Without getting angry emails?

It's not a sports story, it's a story about humanity.

It is a story about humanity that is related to people who play a sport and what happens while they play these sports. Yesterday, did you watch the Mariners game by any chance?

I did not. I was eating an incredibly delicious dinner that was cooked by Becca, And I felt that if I were to start talking about Marco Gonzalez trouble in the first inning against the Oakland A's, it would really ruin the mood. Yeah, no, as a matter of fact. So it means I was watching game day on my phone.

I almost I almost send something out to the sports text chain. But I was like, oh, you know what? You're in that nice Airbnb. Nobody else is chatting right now. I don't need to get into that. So if it means anything to you, I actually thought about you pleasantly not watching baseball yesterday. So, yeah. See, I told you, this is a story about humanity. Anyway, so what happened in the eighth inning of this game? I'm going to give some details here, but not to get into the weeds of baseball. In fact, I'm going to be very strict about us not getting into the weeds of baseball, but I just want people who aren't following baseball or this game to understand what I'm talking about. But in the eighth inning, well, the Mariners are playing the Oakland A's, okay? And the A's are having a terrible, terrible season. They're in our division. At one point, I considered them rivals, but they are just really sad right now. And it kind of makes me feel bad because the team is probably moving out of that city. Fan, I don't know. It's just really sad. As much as I love the Mariners winning and they need wins right now, there's a weird dynamic as I watch these games against the A's because I also just feel terrible for the A's who are just so sad right now. The Mariners are winning in the eighth inning just by one run, and the A's have a reliever named Trevor May. Now, that name did not mean much to me, but what I was learning during the broadcast is that Trevor May, this guy who's just supposed to probably pitch the eighth inning grew up in the Seattle area or the Pacific Northwest area big fan of the Mariners growing up might have even been with the organization at some point for a minute I'm not sure does this name ring a bell to you by any chance it's not ringing a bell at this very moment he's a pitcher though he's a pitcher he's a reliever for the A's yeah so he's just going to go out there and pitch one inning try to get them out of a little bit of trouble he throws a pitch that hits our batter ty france in the kind of wrist area it's like a 95 or 92 mile an hour ball and now ty france gets hit by balls all the time but often usually in his torso he's a tough guy he kind of crowds the plate a little bit he gets on base that way a lot but this is one that hits him directly in the bone misses all padding it's like right like right below the it's kind of like oh it just looks like the most painful place to be hit with an object going that fast he literally falls to the ground I've never I don't think I've ever seen Ty France go to the ground like this and he lays their face down for a while it is such a bad looking pitch and Trevor May the guy who hit him with the ball looks ashen he looks so sad about what he's just done he's like I didn't mean to you can tell I think that might even be the one he leans over And clearly screams the F word He's so mad at himself for hitting Ty France The announcers then say That Trevor May Has not hit a pitcher since like 2019 or something He's gone

He's gone 126 Really you can't say hitter if you're hitting the ball

You said pitcher

Oh I'm sorry he hasn't hit a batter He's gone like 126 outings without hitting anybody And now he hits Ty France He generally likes Mariners And he hates himself Ty France ends up Getting removed from the game They put a pinch runner in for him Then there's another I think maybe two Hitters later

Then they send Trevor May's mother in to pinch hit

And what do you think Happens I don't know if it's the next batter Or as I like to call him pitcher Or maybe two later Trevor May does it again He plunks I want to say it doesn't matter he hits somebody in the in the ribs and he again is so mad at himself and the announcers are like this is bananas like he never hits anybody also he's been kind of on the injured list or he's been missing a lot of games he was just reinstated right before this game tonight this is what I'm getting at with all of this today I'm reading the Seattle Times write-up of yesterday's game and it's by Ryan Divish one of our favorite Mariners writers he's just the best And he, again, really gets the human.

the game i learned that this guy trevor may there is already enough drama with him being really mad at himself for hitting two batters one of whom he's removed from the game and is now day to day like he's in this article he's talking about how he's going to reach out to tie france and make sure he's doing okay and how terrible he feels do you know why he he'd been uh on the il well since april for anxiety issues oh my goodness i never saw that coming and i'm just like oh my god like this guy looked he just looked so upset with himself i mean i just don't know if i've seen a pitcher look so upset with himself and then to find out that the reason he'd been missing a bunch of baseball is because he struggles with anxiety and i was like that's just something and i know that we're talking more about mental health issues in sports and there's a lot of podcasts dedicated to that and it's an important topic but like somehow like i don't know i'm just watching a baseball game i never think that oh this person who's on the mound feeling terrible for hitting somebody also deals with anxiety to the degree that he has to miss work you know work

that is precious i'm sure and i i think it's it seems like a mildly positive sign that the i'm assuming that did they mention in the broadcast that he had been on the il but not specifically why in other words they say he you know returned from the the injured list recently or anything

like that they had been saying that he had just been reinstated before this game and i'm seeing now that he was out since april so it wasn't it was just over a month it looks like that he was out and i don't know if but when you're missing if you're technically on the il or why he was missing it but whatever he was on whatever list he was on he was technically reinstated right

before this game last night i just like the idea that the announcers were treating his the condition that he was dealing with and what he was facing as an injury uh-huh sure you know what i mean they didn't say like they didn't say he's he's just back because he was you know really nervous about throwing the ball like it's like an injury to someone's mental health is an injury to them uh in the way that your ankle could be an injury or anything else so i do think that that's in a bizarre way sort of progress if they were treating it like what it is which is he's dealing with a

health issue you know yeah exactly and if they had said that you know that it was anxiety related i didn't hear it but i don't i don't think they did um it was actually angie main tink and i always say her name incorrectly i think it's tough for me to say but um she's she's been on the tv broadcast lately i think she's doing a bang up job luke honestly i think that's a better better than Mike Cameron? I don't even know Mike Cameron. Is he one of the voices that just goes over my head? Better than Cammie? This is where

it stops being a story about humanity and starts being a story about broadcasting.

Anyway.

Thoughts going out seriously to that guy Trevor May. I really hope that he is able to find somewhere in his heart to be kind to himself because obviously, I mean, for a bunch of reasons as a pitcher, you just don't want to be hitting batters because you just don't want to put batters on base. If you're reliever your number one job is don't put anyone on base in the late innings of the game so i'm imagining that was part of why he was frustrated and then you know i'm sure there's a component of it being his hometown team as well he is from longview washington right longview right um i

just one other really good line from this piece really i mentioned that ty france as you well know luke is a batter who gets hit uh quite a bit he kind of crowds the plate a bit um but i love this writing from again ryan divish in the seattle times uh jp crawford is being referred to here the shortstop crawford and france are best friends on the team it left the mariners shortstop a little bit shaken but relieved quote i tell him to get out of the way every time and he never listens to me like i love that jp is just like i keep telling my friends stop crowding the get out of the way i don't like jb's just like nervous in the dugout watching his buddy ty at the plate and ty is never listening to his words of caution yeah i'll tell you uh were i to be in the majors

the the sort of um quick notes on me would never be doesn't get out of the way of the pitch like i mean i remember vividly um it was when i played in north central little league this is the the level of baseball where there's not even a pitcher's mound it's just you know the kids are pitching it's not coach pitch but it's you know it's it's it's very little league i was probably in like sixth grade seventh grade or something and they would have tryouts for the all-star team every year and um i was uh i guess invited to those and some dad or coach was pitching the bp the batting practice for all-star tryouts and in fact maybe it wasn't even bp maybe it was just the literal tryout and he accidentally beamed me in the back between my shoulder blades and I dropped like a sack of newspapers

And I, when I tell you, Andrew, I cried tears in front of a bunch of kids, a bunch of boys my age, just like I could maintain zero chill. I think that was probably the worst I remember ever getting hit. I'm sure the ball was going under 20 miles per hour. It wasn't underhand, but it was like it was it was it was a lob toss and it hurt so bad. I do not understand physically how these players are able to just eat a pitch like that. And obviously, Ty was in a lot of pain. He got hit in the wrist, which he has a history of wrist problems, by the way. So that's a good place to get hit if you're Ty France. But I don't understand what sort of mental jujitsu these Major League Baseball players do when they get beaned and they don't even flinch. It's like, how do you train your body to not react to that?

Yeah, any sport. You know, they always say as a kid, like, you know, the coach, don't be afraid of the ball. It's like, no, I am afraid of the ball. Like, this is something we need to address on day one, coach. I am and will remain afraid of the ball. I don't care if it's a soccer ball, a football, or certainly a baseball. If I were to play baseball, I would probably try to, like, get some comically long bat, like, just so long that I'm, like, way over. What do you call the little warm-up box where you're on the on-deck circle? i'd be like in the on deck circle swinging this ridiculously long bat because i wouldn't want to

get anywhere near the plate uh i wondered about that recently i was thinking what i wonder what the rules are around what you can do with your bat this is where it stops being a story about broadcasting and starts being a story about bat technology like because you're i don't know if there were really i mean you can't cork your bat the bat has to be made out of wood and you can't you know, stuff it like with something that's like Albert Bell did when he was a Cleveland Guardian, who we called the Cleveland Indians at that time. But like, I don't, I don't know if there are rules, because I wonder if the rules about what your bat can be are just based on physics. In other words, you could be allowed to have that bat that you describe, Andrew. I mean, you have to be in the, you have to be in the batter's box. You have to be in the batter's box. But could you have a bat that was like, you know, 12, like, could you have a bat that its circumference was four feet like you know those the bat you can buy like in the grocery store by the washington coast you know grocery stores get more fun the closer to a vacation setting they are absolutely like a regular grocery store is just food but if you get near a tourist destination suddenly it's mostly pool noodles yeah the smell of the store has changed to that

wonderful childhood smell of like plastic like oh right it's like like we're mostly selling things

that kids are going to harass their parents to buy before they go to the world mark timeshare in Ocean Shores. And you have that bat, that iconic red bat that's short and very fat and gives you more surface area. Could you do the wood version of that in the majors? Would that be allowed? And would the thing that stopped it from working, that it would be so heavy to swing that it wouldn't be ineffective?

Or like, what's a cricket bat? That's flat, right? Am I picturing the right thing? Yes, could you have a paddle?

I mean, is there a rule that the bat in baseball needs to be, my guess would be that flat surface is very um it's aerodynamically problematic yeah i think you couldn't get although i mean that cricket ball comes in real fast too and they swing it so um who knows but yeah i was thinking about that the other day i was i was wondering if there is an actual rule about how like wide the head of the bat is allowed to be yeah and can it make an

old-timey horn honk sound or a clown nose sound when you hit the ball yeah that would be my

signature move well we hope also ty france is okay because um i feel like he was just starting to actually produce a little bit at a home run the other day as you once said and this is i mean i hope listen uh it's been very clear we've been very clear on the show we we love our friends in oakland and we don't wish ill for them as fans of the oakland a's because that's a that's a fan base that deserves better and players that deserve better from ownership etc but as you said in our text chain the other day could we work it out so we play the oakland a's just almost every game this season because all the time like i mean we are just we are so bedeviled against almost every other team in major league baseball and even yesterday when i glanced at my phone and saw that we were losing i was like yeah but um i think we'll probably i think we'll figure this one out

which apparently we did by the end yeah but again not the not the offensive eruption you would hope for against this team but still we got the win so it is what it is and so i won't i won't drag us more into um into baseball talk because i promised the listeners i wouldn't do that but i i did find that divish piece really interesting on those two different levels both like kind of jp's reaction of just kind of like just like seeming like just like just like i keep telling my brother like they're not literally brothers but just sort of had that sort of like vibe to it and also the fact that we don't know what's going on in a pitcher's head in such a mental game I find that interesting now can I Ask you about something that I don't think You mentioned yet on the Show but I'm like despite Me wasting a bunch of time before we Got here I'm very intrigued By something you have written on the Show sheet near the top yeah I can I was going

To I was going to save it for tomorrow I have a mystery sound for you well the thing is That's overselling it's not a mystery sound You'll know what it is as soon as I play it

Maybe I don't know

It's a coincidental sound

okay well I kind of do you want to hear the coincidence

it involved me setting timers it involved me recording things on my phone it involved me missing the critical moment once and having to redo the whole situation I mean we're going to be I'll be here tomorrow as well broadcasting from here tomorrow morning so we could save the coincidental sound for tomorrow we can just burn it now

it's totally up to you I'm very intrigued whether it happens today or tomorrow I'm very intrigued

Save it for tomorrow. Well, the problem about saving it for tomorrow is it's building it up way too. I'll just play it now. I'll just play it now.

Okay, good. That's what I wanted. I just didn't want to cannibalize tomorrow's show if you didn't want to do that.

Becca and I were sitting here having some coffee and doing our respective job stuff, and then all of a sudden floating in from the other room, because this Airbnb has a laundry room, was a certain sound. Andrew.

Oh, yeah. The trout.

i mean that is really extensive as far as letting you know that the uh the the washing machine is

done now did you get the brand of that so a lot of people this is the the same song that my uh new dryer sings when it's telling me that it's done and it's a samsung is that what yours is as well yeah that's what these okay are the ones that you're renting or in the rental place because some other people have said that they have different brands that sing the same song and i find that i find that shocking and what i'm wondering is are all those brands um from korea I wonder if it has to do with that maybe I don't know if I've explicitly explicitly said this on the show yet or not but we've gotten a lot of emails from people wanting us to know that it's a song called basically the trout in English I'm not going to D4L maybe but that doesn't sound like German the way I said it by Franz Schubert so that's a famous oh yes in fact I had I had that saved somewhere because we had that listener call in and sing it almost kind of note for note oh yeah yeah listener Andrea, I believe. Yeah, exactly. Let me see if I can play the actual The Trout here. I don't know if it'll... Okay. What if the dryer did this version? This I could get into. What if you're just chilling? You're catching up on succession, and then suddenly you're dryer.

I mean, Andrew, I've got to be honest with you. This is the house for that, the one that I'm in right now. Oh, you're right. It's just a big glass box. And what happens is as the dryer is finishing and this music starts playing, we can hear a little more here for, for, uh, I walk over and I pour myself a glass of tea and I put exactly one cube of sugar in it. And then I What else do I do What is the like Extremely precise thing That I'm doing while this music plays While I'm in a glass box of emotion With poured polished concrete floors Because that's exactly where I am right now

Yeah I'm trying to figure out The way you describe it You didn't read any of those Is it Eric Larson Who wrote The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series I assume you did not read those Those do not seem like I did not read those

I think Eric Larson was the guy that wrote the book about the less attained

yeah it's definitely not Eric Larson dead calm or something yeah exactly and um Stig Larson

Stig Larson right oh it is it is a Larson I think you have a Larson I think it's just a Stig Larson

hey you know what it's an Andrew Medium Wednesday so I'll take that certainly anyway they're always like drinking coffee in those books because they take place in is it um is it Finland oh geez now I'm making it worse but uh they're always just making coffee in very like calm but clean and simplified surroundings just all i mean it could be midnight and the detective gets back to his very simple uh simple but precise scandinavian scandinavian dwelling and puts on a pot of coffee

now it's either that or unfortunately what it is is

you are walking over to the basement door, which you unlock and then walk down the stairs, and then you have a bunch of people tied up in your basement.

Yeah, well, yeah, but also, though, but everything in its place, though, even in the basement. Exactly, and that's the Scandinavian way. I do admire that about those people. Yes, it's great. So it's a Swedish story, so sorry about that.

Ah, okay. Let us take a quick break. I am actually kind of weirdly excited to talk about this TikTok couch because I had thoughts. Like, it's one of those stories where I saw it happening in real time. Like, I saw the original thing and was, like, intrigued by it. And now I've been watching the kind of all of the various other elements of this story or people's comments or what have you. So we're going to talk about that in a moment here on TBTL.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. All right, we've got to thank some dazzling donors.

These are the wonderful, generous folks who are dazzling us with their donation of dough each month. And it is critical to this mission. Tell you what. And we've got to thank Ann Bost, who's in Orleans, Massachusetts. I don't know if I knew there was an Orleans, Massachusetts, unless Ann Bost was in Orleans, Massachusetts last year. At which point I bet I said I didn't know there was an Orleans, Massachusetts

I gotta be honest with you, it does not sound Familiar to me either Although there must be an Orleans because that's how New Orleans got its name It was like, oh we're gonna be the New Orleans Named after Orleans Mass Hey, you know what would be

Bon ton roulet, you know what would be fun If we had an Orleans Down here, but a new one That's my Massachusetts impression

You'll know when he's doing the accent

Ann says, I started listening to TBTL in 2014 when I left a corporate job to start the lonely life of a freelancer. One thing I really missed from corporate life was the random conversations I'd have with folks at the office. Listening to Luke and Andrew each day and going back into the archives when needed made me feel like I still had some work friends around, even if they didn't respond when I added my two cents to the conversation. Oh, we hear you, Ann. We're just ignoring you. these days i'm a less lonely freelancer but i still rely on luke and andrew's conversation as part of my day for the laughs the quote top stories uh i will add when we get to them and the lovely community of tens that's really that's the as i say on this show too often that's the secret sauce of what's going on around here are the tens uh and says i'm happy to contribute to keeping the pod cart going and want to say thanks for everything friendos as maria bamford's mom said what you do is so important could we have ever known andrew when we when you threw that into some kind of audio waterfall as i used to call it um which i don't think is even a good way to describe it but that's what i used to call the top of the radio show stuff when there would be multiple drops not that not tbtl but more like ross and burbank and stuff or the luke burbank show but anyway when you were putting that maria ban who would have known that would become sort of a a rallying cry or a way for the tens who are donating to compliment us or at least i guess

what encourage us yeah it really and it lives in my head too sweetie have a good show what you do is so important i can't say that i don't go through my life sometimes like thinking that as well what you do not not about myself just so you know but just generally speaking that is one of those it sums up a lot of it sums up a lot of good stuff and by the way one quick thing about ann as well um ann and i are getting closer and closer to being colleagues i'd like to point out that ann has not just contributed financially to the show but has also been emailing me and checking in with me on some video editing stuff because ann is a videographer i believe and certainly a video editor nice and as i'm taking on more of those responsibilities as we leave apm she's been helping me out so i really appreciate that to the degree that it sounds like i'm

starting to cry now i'm going to mute my mic and thank you so much for supporting the program luckily the next thing i'm going to say doesn't involve andrew talking it just involves him

pressing a button maestro how bad was that if i can jump in here i mean could you really hear it

i was clearly losing it but i wasn't sure how bad was it when you did the joke or when you were trying to um power through could you hear it it wasn't a burp this time it was just like a

gravelly voice i just meant that in the mulaney oh yeah um could you hear it was uh i could hear but not it wasn't it wasn't terrible it wasn't terrible it felt pretty bad you know i think i already did that a couple of times this show because you and i are using a new little system to talk to each other which this morning proved to be slightly complicated but one of the things that's slick about it is that it allows me to press a button on my keyboard which then mutes my microphone yeah it's a cough button which has been a topic of much conversation on the program what I think

i've learned though andrew is the source connect screen has to be the primary screen on my computer

for the shift to work sure yes that makes sense because you can just literally push the button on the keyboard which is nicer than having to like kind of grab so i think i had my drop the

screen that i put my drops off of i had that one primary so i'm pressing shift and i'm going i'm thinking that i'm just a real cool customer but actually it's not muting the microphone so apologies i didn't hear it y'all had to hear me clearing my throat um we have to thank patrick

reddington of citrus heights california i just like patrick's pronouncer on his name yes

reddington like james spader in the blacklist would you have ever known that did you ever watch the blacklist i watch a lot of ads for it during football and i get the sense that james spader is like kind of a bad guy but he's now a good guy and but the good guys still resent him but he always cracks the case that's my sense of what the black i think in the early days of the show they were doing in the in the promos they were doing more explaining that like james spader was once a master criminal but now he's decided to help yeah the but there's a lot of shots where a lot of scenes where it's like people are the The powers that be are scratching their head Over James Spader's unorthodox

Methods absolutely and he's got to prep Those jurors in order Wait hold on wrong show What is that bulldog that's the secretary

Thank you Patrick For the support in Citrus Heights California that sounds beautiful And like you're going to get your daily vitamin C Yes and you're probably your Vitamin D it must be if it's Citrus Heights it's Got to be a sunny place to grow all that Citrus Patrick says Oops, sorry for treating this Like Luke treats cybersecurity training What? I would assume that means that this came in pretty late Yeah, it's probably Patrick realizing He had not submitted this message I want to just say to the dazzling donors If you don't feel like submitting a message You also don't have to The last thing we want to do is make work For people who are already being Incredibly generous with the show So please do not feel that you are obligated To do this if you would like to Send a message or promote something that you've done etc that's why we have it but i just really hope this doesn't feel like work for folks yes exactly i agree um this is my first year as a dazzling donor and yeah i did it for the tonight pants hey that's pretty cool that's nice for us to hear because when we when we're trying to come up with ideas for the um the the tbtl-a-thon thank you gifts the that's the perfect that's like that means it worked that means the tonight pants were a cool enough idea and they were well executed enough by our friends over at apm that somebody like patrick was like yes i will move up to the dazzling donor level because those pants look boss except for the next word in his message kidding gotta start pre-reading these so this is pretty much the nightmare scenario where we work so hard coming up with ideas our colleagues at apm work so hard at executing it And it makes it doesn't move the needle even one tiny bit.

I like to think maybe it's in between those two somewhere. I think he was just trying to say that he donates because he wants to support the show. But also those tonight pants were bangers.

Also, do you think I have some kind of special condition of hyper focusing? How was I reading that sentence? And I got to the end of the word pants and no part of my eyeball looked at the next word. I mean, that's not really how reading works. Right. I mean, I think typically when you're reading, you're sort of – as your brain is digesting the word that it's digesting, your eyes are on to the next word.

Yeah, especially when you're reading out loud. Like I got to say, sometimes I do it terribly, but when I'm doing it well, it feels really good.

We're still talking about reading, right?

We're still talking about reading but out loud. like when I was zipping through an email kind of a lengthy email from a listener about returning carts in the grocery store yesterday I knew we were short on time and so I was doing a lot of like kind of editing on the fly but also trying to read very quickly and I realized like I was finishing up sentences while my eyes were already on the next paragraph and I gotta say I mean I don't know how it came off on the air but like in the moment I felt like I was in a flow and like that idea of being able to like kind of be looking ahead and making decisions while your mouth is still saying something a few sentences behind, is quite the rush. That's the biggest rush I get in my life. You climb 300 feet. God, you are an adrenaline junkie, aren't you? I like to climb medium-sized trees and then read out loud from the top of them.

Patrick was kidding about all of that, but he says he does love supporting us, and he tells all his 45-year-old guys about TBTL. I get excited to listen every day.

It's the only podcast about cats, garbage anxiety, minor gripes that are worth complaining about all day, and the weather. We've covered a significant portion of that today. Certainly the weather piece. I came in hot with that about the weather difference between Ramona, California, and Julian, California, who both sound like they could be characters in the Beverly Cleary universe. One of them is.

One of them is, but Julian could definitely be like a classmate or something. And while we're on the topic, I'm just going to say, like, in the past five minutes or so, maybe because of the dazzling donor messages from Ann and Patrick, the sun has come out outside my window. It is starting to look like a beautiful day out there, folks.

This is the irony of this trip down here to California is that, you know, it's southern Cal. It's near San Diego. The thought was, oh, we're going to get some beautiful weather down here and leave the rain and gloom of the northwest behind. It's probably been like 85 and sunny In Portland the last Two or three days

I actually don't think that's true I don't know but if it means anything to you

Good I want everyone to suffer

It's been a few days Nobody's going to talk about what the weather was So just pretend it was awful

Exactly And Patrick wraps up by saying You're both great and add a little joy To every day Don't be mean to my friend Andrew Do you think he's telling me that or you that

No, probably me, but, you know, you could take a page.

Thank you so much, Patrick and Anne. We just would not be here without you. That is a known thing. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. I saw this TikTok the other day of a young woman in New York City. Her TikTok handle is Yafavemanda. I'm guessing her name might be Amanda. And I think she either is or aspires To be some people's fave

It might be mine by the end of this story

I will tell you this Andrew I went on a whole journey with this From when I saw The original video of her finding the couch To Kind of siding with the people That are saying ooh gross To kind of having Manda my fave Again we'll start with Some of the original audio This was the TikTok she made where she finds the couch Now me describing this visually Will do a little good But I'll try anyway It's a couch that's very modern It's kind of a It almost looks like a jelly bean Like a giant jelly bean but it's tufted And it's a very electric color of blue And it's made by a company called Roche Beauvoir I could be saying that wrong It's like R-O-C-H-E-B-O-B Something French And she finds it On a sidewalk and is pretty excited about it here is a bit of ya fave manda hi guys this is me finding an eight thousand dollar couch in the

middle of the street here's a quick story time by the way sorry it's a little blown out this was the

audio that was in the phone that was then on tiktok pouring raining and i was walking home and i saw

this couch in the middle of the street and i called my dad begging him to come pick it up because i couldn't just leave that couch there he told me no it was not possible but then he surprised me and showed me that he did pick up the couch and he had it in his work office but the couch was very dirty so he said we had to clean it so we got all the things we needed to clean it some soap water a vacuum and that's my sister using a little machine thing and i was very interested in how that worked because i think she was doing it wrong but i see that was me scrubbing my life away to make sure this clothes gets as clean as possible now let me just uh add a little bit of

context and narration they're using a very very like um sort of what's the word i'm looking for consumer steamer type of thing like it's not you know so there's some tiktok videos where people are doing like industrial rug cleaning and stuff and this is not that at one point her sister is literally vacuuming the couch with an upright vacuum and they do have a steamer but it's not one of those you know something you'd rent from the store that's really gonna deep clean it it's more like a little handheld kind of small unit yeah which which probably doesn't even actually

use steam you know i always refer to them as steam cleaners too until like you i got one and we talked about on spotless it's like an extraction cleaner right it kind of sprays the liquid down

then sucks it up i bet you that's exactly what it is because in a minute here you'll have her you'll hear her say this was the result and it was gross and they're just showing the like the water that was extracted but it's not quite as dirty as i would like it to be if that makes any sense that's funny because those things i would like nasty i would like that thing to look like chocolate milk and it just looks like water that's got a little cloudiness to it which makes me think the other stuff is maybe still in the couch but anyway here she thought it was a good idea but

that's satisfying right they're very satisfying and then i got tired so i let them do all the work look how dirty it was this is the after we had to let it dry and we let it dry for a few days and this is my boyfriend and my dad bringing the couch into my apartment we didn't know if it was gonna fit into the elevator but it ended up fitting perfectly this is my couch that i had before and then this is the after the couch in its full glory looking really nice and fit

perfectly in my apartment so that's the initial video that's got like 52 million views now okay um on tiktok uh and uh you know i will admit that when i first saw it my thought was i probably personally oh it had been out in the rain too i think that's mentioned maybe quickly in the clip for me any sort of like picking up furniture that has fabric on it were i to do it it once it starts raining that that that ship has sailed for me right like if i'm driving around and it's raining and there's a couch outside it's like uh that's that couch is is gone uh it is gone from this world it is it is crossed over into valhalla we can never no one can ever use that couch again or that chair if it's you know something plastic obviously that's a different story so i was a little stressed for her when i realized that this couch had been out in the rain and she was gonna you know try to save it but then by the end of the video it was just so cute that she had you know she's a young person i remember being that age and finding something that seemed really cool to me and i noticed by the way that there were still some stains on the couch um but it was like she and her dad had done their best to clean it up and she was stoked about it and i i think i was feeling generally like positive for her like what a fun little find for her well the internet got a hold of this of course and everyone started creating parody videos where it's like people pretending to be the person who had put the couch out and describing all of the heinous things that happened on the couch that she had found uh npr joe hernandez writing for npr.org has a pretty good piece after a tiktok user rehabbed a couch from the curb a bed bug expert urges caution now listen this is the thing I found this piece to be very enjoyable I do think Joe's thumb is slightly on the scale Joe goes on to describe the original thing the audio that y'all just heard about Amanda finding this couch in New York City and then talks about this basically a video that Amanda had to put up later after everyone was saying this definitely has bed bugs you're going to have bed bugs Amanda had to put up and I'll just play this for you too this response video explaining uh that she doesn't think it has bed bugs and also other things about the couch as to like why somebody would have maybe thrown it out

hi guys this is a couch update the first thing i'm going to address is how long was the couch outside it was outside for less than 24 hours when i saw it was pouring raining the next day in the morning i went to go pick it up well my father went to go pick it up for me it was brought back to my dad's workplace we cleaned it and it sat in his workplace for over two weeks and like everyone's saying oh you know bed bugs form within a week two weeks it was sitting there for two weeks if there was bed bugs we would have seen it for everyone by the way i just love this

kid we would have seen it like again and you really if you're watching you're getting even more just like it's this is this is a person with really their own personality going on multiple

levels and i'm here for it i only did one round of washing i only recorded five minutes of the whole process that i took to clean the couch like for everyone saying that the couch was throwing out because of bed bugs or whatever or whatever species or semen sorry anyway back to what i was saying i personally think it was thrown out because it has a lot of rips that i've covered with pillows and it has some stains i don't know if you could tell it has some stains there and it has like a few tears over there that's what i think it personally was thrown out y'all can think whatever y'all want everyone still says it looks super dirty this doesn't that it's not that it's dirty it doesn't stink it doesn't have an odor it's literally clean it's just the stains that are on the couch everyone that's not from new york saying oh my god they threw it out for a reason they threw it out for a reason it was thrown out in front of a very rich building so i took the opportunity and brought it in rich people throw out all their furniture all the time because they get new furniture every other year so i saw the opportunity and took it but that's pretty much it i think i addressed all the topics that a lot of people were commenting and i could just tell who has bed bugs and who don't

her final her final retort is she can just tell who has bed bugs and who don't um now this is where i think joe hernandez may put his thumb on the scale uh a bed bug expert urges caution well joe reaches out and interviews a guy named uh jim fredericks who what do you think jim fredericks job is andrew he's senior vice president at the

the National Pest Management Association. Oh, okay. Would you be shocked to know that a guy who works for the Pest Management Association would err on the side of caution when it comes to bedbugs and the like? Or what I should say is would maybe overstate the potential for such things because it also happens to be where his bread is buttered. At low levels, this is Jim Fredericks, at low levels, bedbugs are sometimes hard to detect. And so you may not even realize that you have a bed bug problem until the bed bugs that you've brought in with that couch have kind of blossomed into a full-blown infestation, maybe even in multiple rooms. Fredericks continued, you know who could help you with that? The National Pest Management Association. No, he didn't actually say that part. Like, I feel like this, like calling someone up, it's like saying fires can be dangerous according to fire expert. And then you call Smokey Bear. It's like, yeah, of course, the guy at the pest management place is going to tell you that you never know with bedbugs. Of course, he's going to say that. What if he's just like, you know what? You're overthinking it, bro. That would be amazing. I would love him forever for that. He'd be like, you know what? People get really freaked out about this stuff. It's most of the time. It's not a thing.

Yeah. I mean, bedbugs are a scourge from what I hear. Like, it's just. Are they, though? Yeah. I mean, I've heard from people who've had bedbugs and it just can be. I mean, have you had them?

Well, the reason I said that, and I didn't mean to, I wasn't trying to question what you were saying. It's, I think it's interesting that all you heard about maybe five, six years ago was bedbugs. And I'm not saying that the people who, who thought they had them didn't have them. But there was a period of time where we were all basically like steam cleaning our luggage when we got it home because we were told that bedbugs can hitch a ride on anything. and now you don't hear as much about it and i wonder if there was a combination of a really more bed bugs and b a certain kind of group hysteria okay you know what that might have

been a case of me using a word incorrectly scourge means that it's like a a huge issue that is like taking over an area or a population i meant i meant that it's a nightmare it's a nightmare situation if you person i guess i don't know prevalence and i'm not commenting on that but i know two people um who have had to deal with this before at various stages of their life one of whom is our friend well you know no no i did we withhold her name i'm trying to remember because we had somebody on spotless who was talking about it it was like just and it's a friend of ours somebody you know too i just can't remember if we should say their name but also first of all there should not be shame around bedbugs it happens um and secondly but it freaked me out because this person who got bed bugs had been staying at our house while we were out of town like right around the same time she had been watching our cats for us while we were out of town and so then i was like oh and i kind of had a little bit of a panic and i cleaned out our bed but everything everything was fine but it does sound like if you definitely do get them it is a nightmare situation for you

it can be a nightmare situation 100 yeah i've heard yeah i've heard those i don't know if i've talked to somebody directly who's had them but certainly people that have had them say that it's life ruining so i don't want to undersell that at all but i do think it's it's just kind of like because yeah it's just interesting how something like that can be something that is seems like it's the number one threat to um you know sort of life in this country at least when it comes to your linens and then it's like we just don't hear about it anymore it's like is did we fix it mostly by everybody bagging their beds and fumigating or was it a thing where there was some amount of it happening and then it was getting talked about so much that there was some amount of kind of thinking it was happening that may or may not have you know totally checked out i don't i don't know the answer to that what i do think was really happening here was people maybe even me andrew to a small degree were slightly jealous that this person found this eight thousand dollar couch and then cleaned it up and then brought it to their house and then was enjoying it there was something about it that to some people didn't feel celebratory but felt more like oh man i wish i would have been walking down that street in manhattan or like there was a reason why the internet wanted to bring this person down ya fava manda and by the way and is probably my fave man is it your fave manda i'm trying to um i'm guessing based on the tick tock here here's the the handle y-a-f-a-double-v dot m-a-n-d-a-a yeah i'm thinking that is your fave manda yeah yeah

anyway she is my fave manda i think um luke honestly and if you said this at the beginning

and i zoned out apologies but how does the couch look to you it looks like the kind of couch that If you found it on the street in New York and it wasn't totally, you know, destroyed, but it also wasn't in like pristine condition and you were 24 years old and you were still. You would bring it home. You would do your best to clean it up and dry it out. And then you do exactly what Manda has done, which is you would put pillows over some areas where there are tears. She shows there are some tears in the couch. And you would just kind of look past a couple of like stains that are just they don't look ominous. They just look like maybe, you know, somebody's hands were kind of dirty and they, you know, rub them on the couch or hit the couch with them. like the couch looks like a couch that if you were rich you would potentially think there's not any um there's not a market for this couch but if you were 25 years old you would be stoked to have it in your apartment warts and all you know what i mean that's why i'm kind of like that's why i activated this is why we can't have nice things sound effect because it's like to me this is a story of like a young person who's super stoked on some bit of what feels like really good luck to them and then the internet has to tell oh it has bed bugs and oh look it's all ripped up and oh you know like I don't know why the internet can't just let this person at least a quadrant of the internet a portion of the internet can't just let this person have their have their fun

now what was it about this video and I don't know that this is an answerable question it's just like an old person asking well I was going to say a young person but you're slightly older than me so I guess it's just an old person asking another old person who's more plugged in uh like why social media works or how social media works but is there any reason why like in other words does you fave amanda have a bunch of other popular videos as well or is this one already far and away the most popular on her feed and was there anything about it that stood out before like i sort of feel like these become sort of like cyclical right like then the slapbacks happen which give it more power and more more views etc and then like at what point did this Was there anything about it on its own that made it a very popular video before the backlash started?

I don't believe so. And actually, this is described very well in our friend Chris Hayes' podcast about TikTok that he did with a tech reporter for NBC, whose name escapes me at the moment. This is probably three, four weeks ago. And they talked about this very thing. One of the things that's interesting about TikTok from an algorithm standpoint is in Facebook, the main thing that predicts if something you post will go, quote unquote, viral is that you already have a lot of people following you. TikTok does not work the same way. You can, for whatever reason, have like all your videos have three views and then suddenly a video like this can have 54 million views. and it just it just operates differently and that's why you're kind of like in a casino you know you're playing you're just putting out videos and like nothing's happening nothing's happening and then all of a sudden for whatever reason something gets kind of upvoted I mean not really but something just takes off and um so that's that's I this is an example of that like I don't I haven't looked at many of her other videos but she's not a known person on the on tiktok before this that i'm aware of um it's just one of those things that sort of like i said takes off and now will be her identity online she will be the couch the couch now why it ended up on my feed it could be one of two things i watch a lot of videos of people rehabbing furniture right now like a lot of people who go and you know will buy something at an estate sale or whatever and then they will take it all apart repaint it you know actually a lot of stuff that vives likes to do and so maybe like it's trying to give me furniture related content or something or it could just be one of those things that got so big although when i saw it i feel like it certainly didn't have 54 million views at that point but it just also sometimes the tiktok will just drop something in your feed that is totally unrelated to anything you're trying to watch it just has gotten popular

to the point where they're like okay now everyone look at this yeah and i mean you said this came to you organically but then also

it's the original one her with the couch and I'm Andrew I'm a 47 year old man I swear to you before I realized oh the couch is a bit threadbare when I just saw that she found this couch by the way it's not even my style I would not have this couch in my house I would not have it on a plane I would not sit on it on a train no it's not even my thing I swear this is what's so crazy about maybe the human brain or specifically my human brain i thought damn that's a score that's an eight thousand dollar couch i can't believe you did that how is it that i never found an eight thousand dollar couch like what a weird response to have now it didn't go to the point where i wanted to get on there and write a comment it probably has bed bugs but i did my my initial thought was was in being intrigued wondering if it was real and then also just being like like it's like again to go back to the casino analogy it's like you're walking through the casino and someone just hit like a million dollar jackpot you're happy for them and also mildly bummed it wasn't you yeah um so but then now as i've seen this whole thing progress it's like now i'm fully team ya fave manda

Because, again, I remember I didn't ever have anything quite this cool happen to me in terms of a find. But, you know, again, when you're that age and you're not overly picky and you're also maybe not obsessed, overly obsessed with like, I don't want to say hygiene. There's nothing unhygienic about this person, but it's just like at 24, 25, it's just such a different world. And like if you find a cool couch that you're stoked about, your brain is like, how do I make this work versus what is wrong with this so that I should not engage with it? I feel like part of getting older sometimes can be sort of seeing the downsides of things more than the upsides of things and being like, oh, yeah, well, it's got those tears and it's got those stains. And God, it probably has bedbugs and you keep walking like I'm just I'm happy for this person that she's still or at least was still in that phase of life where you're excited about things and you're trying to figure out how can I make this work versus why shouldn't I do?

Yeah. Genevieve used to have something. She went to school at Wellesley in Massachusetts, and we started dating right after we were both out of college. So this was pretty current at the time, and she had a bunch of stuff in her apartment that she would refer to as getting a dirty Christmas, which was like the end of the semester when all the rich kids would be throwing away really good stuff and just be piled up outside their dorm rooms or whatever for, I guess, the staff to come and take away. And so she and her friends would go through and, like, grab a bunch of, like, really good stuff. One thing that really irritated me, though, was I found out that some body pillow that she kept on her bed was from dirty. Some body pillow that she kept on her bed was from Dirty Christmas. I was like, what the hell? I was snuggling with that thing. No, no, no. I don't take anything. That does have bedbugs. Yeah, I wouldn't take anything that. She's like, it's from a Wellesley kid. Like, it's fine. I'm like, still, though. I would never take anything that is fabric in nature. Some of the best things around our house Genevieve got from the side of various roads, including some really nice chairs that Genevieve got and then paid a decent amount of money to get them refinished. Those orange ones? Yeah, exactly. They need to be reupholstered again. But we didn't keep any of the upholstered part of them. We kept the wooden frames and Genevieve had new cushions made for it, which we need to do again. But, hey, one two quick things on tick tock. First of all, I just really enjoyed hearing that tape, like all the larger issues aside. And I don't know that I have anything larger to contribute. I just loved hearing your favorite Manda. And so, like, that's just fun tape.

And I would encourage you to continue to bring me into the world of tick tock on continue to study the tick tock habits of women in their early 20s.

It's just great tape, and it doesn't have to go anywhere, and also I just don't sit down and watch a lot of TikTok. Occasionally, somebody will send me a TikTok, and then once I'm in there, the app won't let you go, and so then you start flicking through, and that, by the way, is how I landed on the tape that we played at the beginning of today's show. That was great, by the way. I thought that was great, too, and so I want to give credit to the person who it is. It's a comedian named Madison Sinclair, and if you want to follow them on TikTok, it's Madison Comedy, at Madison Comedy. And I think that Madison does a whole bunch of kind of humor like that, like kind of like taking simple old school jokes and then adding tons of unnecessary background to them. But this is the first one that I heard, and it just it just got it just really got me. I thought it was great.

You know, I would we should probably we'll talk trusted brands tomorrow. Yeah. But but the thing about TikTok is it is both something that I need to really think about my relationship with because I can tell that there is a way that I look at it. That's sort of, you know, self-soothing or filling some kind of, you know, moment in my day where I could be sitting and just thinking about life and thinking about myself. But I'd rather not be doing that. So I'd rather just be endlessly and mindlessly scrolling. So there's that side of it. And it's also, you know, run by a Chinese company and who knows what the data situation is, etc. A privacy situation. But it also is really something that keeps me connected with lots and lots of people. Or when I say connected, it gives me a view into the world of so many people whose world I would not have a view into. You know, it's like there's a lot of it that's that's pointless. And there's all you know, there's so many reasons to, I think, accurately say that we spend too much time looking at our phones and I spend too much time looking at my phone. But there truly is a way in which for me, and maybe it's other social media platforms for other folks or whatever, I find out about the experience of people through TikTok that I would never in a million years have found out otherwise. And people of different ages and sexual orientation.

and races and you name it i just because it is such a personal medium because it's a thing it's basically in a way now i don't want to get too grand with it but in a way it's sort of like a thousand mini documentaries you know a thousand 40 second documentaries that are being made by people who are cooking some food in their house or are running after their dog who's escaped or are picking a couch up off the street it's all these little vignettes and again many of them are not interesting and many of them are um sort of cynical because it's a hype house it's you know it's these uh these these young people that are just there to to dance you know to popular songs and and uh and and ruin people's body image or something there's that side of it but there really is this component of it that i find to be very kind of illuminating about the world yeah i could

definitely see that and like um i don't know why i don't want to spend a lot of time on the app i can't explain it to you like because on the occasion that i do find myself on it it kind of it i do end up kind of mindlessly scrolling and like they're good like they make me laugh like in fact i've been listening to you know we've been incorporating more and more tape some guy i'm blanking on the name of the guy who does the right the imitations we've used him a couple of times some guy mark i think some guy mark is it yeah um and just like it's legitimately good stuff some of the best in fact it like not to go back to my chris is leaving right now it's like i i just hate hearing from old school comedians and i'm sorry to take it here luke this is so boring we'll go to the emails but like i i'm just so sick of hearing from like old comedians who are just like you can't be funny if you have the woke police or you know even a more mild version of that that You hear from people like Seinfeld saying, I won't do colleges anymore because like everybody is too like scared to say anything and you can't be funny in this environment. It's like open up TikTok, you idiots. Like people are being hilarious on TikTok without pushing the boundaries, you know, or or somehow like carrying the yoke of the truth of the stand up comedian. It's like, I don't know, like some of the best content is happening by people who aren't like making gay jokes or whatever, whatever the whatever the comedians feel like they can't say on stage anymore is.

I mean, and then the other layer of irony to that is there are so many of those comedians who are complaining about canceled. That's a, by the way, a decent concept for Seinfeld comedians complaining about being canceled in cars. but um the a lot of those comedians um are also on tiktok constantly with you know with a huge platform where they're almost always talking like the new thing for all stand-up comedians is you're always on some podcast that's called like i don't know i if i'm if i make one up i'll end up just saying the name of a real one and it sounds like i'm trying to roast it which i don't really mean to do but like stand-up comics are just now very it's very common for them to be in a room with a bunch of these microphones the kind that i'm talking into anyway and they're telling some story about you know uh either to rogan or to some other friend of theirs who's got a podcast about you know some some way that comedy is not as good as it used to be and the irony is there will be 50 000 views of this video on tiktok which makes me think it's still going okay yeah right for the bill burrs of the world i don't know if actually bill burr i don't know if bill burr is a good example because i don't really know what his deal is he just strikes me as the kind of guy who would just be like ah grow up meaning don't get offended when so that might not be his take by the way so i don't want i don't want to misdescribe i don't want to misdescribe what where he lands on this stuff but it's just funny to me that you do have a lot of comedians talking about how you can't say anything anymore to hundreds of thousands of people on what is currently the most popular platform to say things it doesn't feel like they're getting de-platformed yeah you're getting

some reach 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 rightily emails females really playing the hits here today andrew says you can say things anymore anyway like about once every couple of weeks i like to take the conversation in that direction um here is a voicemail that we got from listener donna here and we were talking luke i can't remember the specifics but often on this show we will go back and talk about uh old wrestling stars oh you were talking about a macho man randy savage recently yes he's sort of he's kind of going viral with a bunch of old clips of him from the from the 80s and his wwf days um so i think that's a coffee in the big time i think that's what inspired Donna to send this

in. This is Donna from Seattle. I've called in maybe one time before, but I'm happy. My birthday, Luke, your birthday is the same birthday as my oldest son. And the way I remember my younger son's birthday is that his is the same birthday as Ken Griffey Jr. So famous people have my son's birthday.

I think that people will agree equal amount of fame between me and Ken Griffey Jr.

Yeah, I mean, you did have that catch at the wall. That is just astounding. People have still not stopped talking about it. There's a mural to you. Do you know that?

I just had a comment about Mean Gene and then Randy Savage. So whenever you say these, I actually grew up in the same area that you did, big-time wrestling on the West Coast, actually lived in Blaine. And we were the hometown of a number of wrestlers that were in the 70s. And my mom actually used to work at the Greyhound bus station. where actually the wrestlers would come in, and then that's the way that they would travel up and down the coast, either just Vancouver or down to Portland, to get to their wrestling matches. And it occurred to me that there was a wrestler, his name was Gene Kaniski, and they always called him Mean Gene, but he's an era earlier than Mean Gene Orland. And he was in 1952, but he was our neighbor. And he was also somebody who ended up being the wrestling coach at the high school in Blaine.

Can we just pause for a second and let that sink in? Can you imagine being a kid in high school and your wrestling coach is somebody who goes by Mean Gene and actually wrestled on the professional wrestling circuit?

That would feel unsafe.

It certainly would.

And then the other one was Dutch Savage, who was during also that same era. And like I said, these guys would come into the Greyhound bus station and they would, you know, that's how they would travel. And the only other fun fact is that on my brother's 13th birthday, we went to a cage match that featured Jimmy Snuka and the Sheik that was completely inappropriate.

Superfly and the Iron Sheik? These are the ones that you know When you get to Jimmy Superfly

Snooka and the Iron Sheik Those are names that I was well Familiar with and I'm presumably Now she said it was inappropriate I'm stepping on the voicemail I'm wondering If the inappropriateness had to do With what they were saying or just that Boy did wrestling really lean Into some racist tropes in these days

I think Donna might explain here Jimmy Snooka and the Sheik That was completely inappropriate because The Sheik just spit at people, and it was a kig match that, you know, for a, I was probably 11 at the time. It was just completely out of control, and we couldn't believe that this was happening in the school gymnasium. So times have changed, but those are the two wrestlers that I think of when you talk about Mean Gene or Randy Savage, And it just kind of makes me think that they just recycle the names based on, you know, the era of when the rest the next group of wrestlers that come in.

So I'm going to stop it there because the voicemail ends up getting cut off. And also, I mean, I mean, let's face it in no disrespect to anybody past or present with the nickname Mean Gene or who's come up with that name. I mean, it kind of writes itself, you know, like the idea of a mean. gene i don't know if it's an homage or recycling so much as well if now the funny thing is the me exactly the mean gene question i had for you is mean gene oakland is that what we said oakland oakland um he's a diminutive guy with a microphone who interviews big bad guys right and that's why i was asking you why his name was mean gene yeah and i didn't have a good answer for that uh there's

no evidence that he was himself a wrestler that i'm aware of and he certainly wasn't yeah like on the physical level of these wrestlers uh it might have been that hulk hogan just liked to say it i mean there could have been some irony in that you know mean gene like because he's not you know he's gonna body slam you or something so uh but i'm kind of with you my guess would be if you went to a number of regions of the country in this era in the 1970s 1980s particularly if you're getting into kind of smaller like regional wrestling circuits you'd find yourself uh kind of some similar names going on probably because they kind of like you said lent themselves to it like uh you know somebody being called the monster somebody being called the hulk somebody being called you know the body somebody being called like just i just think there's probably a lot of similarity because it was just like what are you going to call these folks uh that seems wrestling appropriate, you know, and the... There was probably a Jesse the Body Ventura in the Midwest, we know about him, and there was probably a Terry the Body Paloma somewhere down in San Diego or whatever. I bet there was a lot of overlap, but not because people were – I would be surprised if these people were as tied into the history of this and it were an homage.

Maybe. Wasn't there a well-mannered gene who wrestled down in the Southeast Circuit, I think?

Yeah, there was – yeah, exactly. A genteel gene.

oh that's so much better god damn it than genteel jean actually that that would be perfect i said down in the south too genteel jean he comes in wearing a white suit becca and i were driving

on some back road and she was like oh wow thomas pain drive and i was like he didn't he what did he do he wrote a pamphlet called what good thoughts and she goes no she goes she was he wrote a pamphlet i think it was called like good thoughts or no and i go was it called good thoughts she goes it was i think it was common thoughts i was like common sense and like between the two of us in the iterative process we got to and i was like between the two of us we have a brain

i feel like that's you and me sometimes if the three of us could go on jeopardy together and just squeeze into one little square we'd still lose but boy would it be memorable absolutely

we would have negative what would happen is i would be controlling the clicker and i would be just swinging for the fences and being wildly wrong and end up just costing us like we would be negative $100,000 by the end of our round. And I would just keep on saying, did I use that

word right? Well,

sir, you did form that in a question, so at least you've got that going for you. All right. I guess that's going to do it for today's edition of TBTL.

Put coffee in the big time Nice

Thank you for listening We will be back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio for you Final day here in rainy California So please do join us for that In the meantime Have a great Wednesday Take care of yourselves And don't forget No mountain too tall

And good luck to all

And you must admit gentlemen These two guys have really been

a thorn in your sides you know what happens when you get a thorn in your side gene it draws blood you know two big boys and they think this is all fun and games they think they can come in here and play around they're walking down a dark path from which there's no return power out