Muse

How did you two meet?

Interesting. Uh, we met at a Hillel mixer, a function. Oh, in college? Yes, a singles, and he was there trying to pick up every girl imaginable.

I was pretty swinging in those days. Yes. I was in the band, okay? The girls were pretty interested, you know, with the guitar. They liked that.

Like a rock band? Not true.

Jewish folk music, Jewish folk songs.

Oh, like what songs?

Um, Gefiltefish Blues Um, My Freaking Back is Killing Me And It's Making It Hard to Quell

Uh, what was the name of your band?

The Hipsters

TBTL They're irreligious and worship only the meme They have no respect for what previous generations have built They're Snapchatting themselves stupid and they go to an artisanal dentist.

I'm sorry I don't want to go to Serendipity and drink frozen hot chocolates with your uncle's girlfriend who is a stewardess named Elodie.

Unlike you, I've always assumed I'd be a failure anyway. That's why I plan to marry an extremely rich woman.

We've become great friends. I mean, close. We'll just sit in the front room and we'll sit there. He'll walk, he'll go to the front door, kind of knock on the door and then sit down, then I'll sit and then he stands and he's out in the front and then he'll come in. We just sit there And he'll stand, and I'll sit, and then I stand, and you sit, and then we're both looking at each other, and we're just nodding, like a couple of nodders, right?

Well, all right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Guess what? You just got into cool guy zone.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Back away, banana breath. What the hell did you just eat, a banana? Coming to you from the Riverhouse studio perched high above the mighty Columbia River, where it is just...

Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful.

Blue skies, watching various birds on the wing. It is quite a scene here. Now, the problem is it's also quite a construction scene here. And we've got a lot of people doing a lot of stuff. Concrete is getting poured later. All kinds of heavy machinery and equipment. is being activated so hey want to hear the most annoying sound in the world i am going to try to uh be handy with the mute button to keep it from getting too annoying but uh you know if you hear stuff going on here just think of this as a theater of the mind now that time i just had to burp i muted it because i was burping not because of any construction uh by the way this This is episode 3,960 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Apple made a big old announcement yesterday.

Attention, everybody!

About their new virtual reality headset. It's called Vision Pro, and they seem to think that it's just going to be a default setting. We're all going to be wearing these someday.

Isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheets?

I mean, they are $3,500. And I call me old fashioned, but it just that's a shocking price point for something that you would think they would want a lot of people to purchase. But obviously they've, you know, got their business people looking at it and they've decided that there are enough people that will pay three thousand five hundred dollars for one of these things to make it, I guess, profitable. We will talk about that. Oh, and speaking of questionable ideas around profitability. I had a cup of coffee this morning. I should say I had a shot of coffee this morning that was related to something we have been talking about a lot on the program. Tastes like soot and hot water. I'm hooked. I just had to mute myself again. Not so much for burping, but this time for sniffling because, my goodness, here in southern Washington and the greater Oregon area, it is just high, high grass season. and I guess it's like some of the worst I guess because it was wet in the spring that means now there's even more grass and pollen and things that make people like me have allergies this time of year I've already taken a flippin Zyrtec today and it is making absolutely no discernible difference so my point is we're really working against a lot on this Tuesday but we're going to make it with the help of this guy the longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

It's Don Bondarly, king of the dirty songs!

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Hey, Luke, how you doing? I got a lot of construction going on over here, too.

So, you know, we'll just have to put up with this today. I think the listeners are fine with this.

Are you watching like a Bob the Builder video on YouTube?

No, we're just putting some new flanks on the shiggle shacks. I can't even pretend. Oh, yeah, flanks on the shiggle shacks. You're going to really want to make sure you point those outward facing

or else the water is going to run the wrong direction.

I don't know. I just found some sound effects online. I like that. Well, honestly, here's how I ended up doing that. First of all, not well. no actually I was into it

I like it when we have some kind of sound effects and ambient noise and things like that

well when you mentioned that you have some construction sound I was going to suggest at the top of the show well let's just mask it with some other like ambient like we could be on the Star Trek Enterprise this show like there's all kinds of sound effect videos we could just like put ourselves somewhere I just wonder like is it a good idea for the first two minutes and then it gets old I mean I am 100% willing to do the next segment with you on the star trek enterprise i love the idea of the star

trek enterprise needing them to pour concrete into some cinder block walls yeah we can do both so as to create more structural support and so the tie downs can get anchored so exactly you can take out a header i would love it if that's the actual sort of construction needed on the enterprise you

hear spock in the background saying is this where the bidet plug goes isn't that something that is

is a concern in your construction project we're not even there yet i'm in the the main house if you will and again when i say main house that sounds like there's a big fancy house and then there's like a smaller quarters adu or something it's they're pretty much the same but um you know the the place that's the future home of tbtl that's the place my dad and i have been working on um and that is where uh we're we're at the point where we're having bidet related conversations now the place i'm in right now and i'm in the the one room that can actually um it's you know sort of uh inhabitable although you know i brought all that stuff down from the storage locker andrew the storage unit so now it's in here i've never you know i'm i would say i'm privileged to not have a not be a person who deals with hoarding tendencies but i kind of think i know what it would feel like i mean it's very organized in here but it's like there is a small path from the kitchen to where i'm sitting and talking to you and everything else is boxes and i own a shocking number of guitars for somebody who doesn't really play guitar there are like five guitars in this room you have a guitar for every chord you know

no i know four chords and i have five guitars well you need an extra you need i mean you never

know i may learn c sustained but um so yeah i'm i'm in this tiny little room and of course as often happens uh when you and i are doing the program and then there are people around who are not part of the program the biggest issue for me today is not even just the construction noise it's um the deep embarrassment about various people walking in and out of the house hearing

me host one half of this program will they be walking in the room or just no the room this is

do you have a door i am is this is my sacred space um and i don't think there's any reason to come in here but uh it you know this is a very small house that i'm in so the room that i'm in is very close to the the like front door which is wide open and people are just going back and forth with all manner of uh equipment and jackhammers and things like that now that being said oh yeah i hear him i'm i'm just happy that we're making progress out here you know what i mean like i'll deal with the um and i guess the listeners will have to deal with i think my allergies are going to be a worse issue today than the construction noise but i'm just i'm overjoyed to see that stuff is actually happening like for instance you know there's the structure of a deck built out here which is kind of like one of the big elements of this whole project but there's no decking on it but because some of the guys are going to have to stand on it to work on this putting in these big sliding glass doors they've put a bunch of temporary like plywood down just like old leftover pieces of like plywood off of some other construction site but even that is so exciting to me like it's not even the deck it's not even the stuff but a chair on it now i could stand on it i could put a chair on it it's like maybe we'll just leave it this way i don't know i'm running out of money fast so this might be the decking that we have but little things like that are bringing me uh what you might say is a sort of irrational amount of joy out here but i am I am very happy. Now, can I tell you a quick, I think story would be overstating it. But this morning, as I was sort of heading on my way up here, I stopped off at the Starby's to get a little coffee. And I couldn't help but notice that they had a big kiosk set up.

This was the Starbucks in Vancouver, Washington A big kiosk set up With a big sign on it For Oleato The olive oil coffee

So that's a test market then Because they haven't released this at all the Starbucks Or even most of the Starbucks yet

I must have stumbled upon I must have stumbled upon Like a beta A beta sequence

Or I've missed a beat I mean at first I know that they said just a few Like there were going to be some in Italy, some in Southern California. And I thought – Some in Vancouver, Washington. Well, that was the headline. And then those were the others that were listed. Yeah, but maybe they're offering it everywhere now or expanding it out. I don't know. But anyway, it sounds like you got a little oily today.

And this time it was on purpose. No, well, so what happened was I'm standing in line. I'm waiting to get my coffee. I just note that they have this this display for the oleato. And then a guy comes around like the manager of the of the store and he's got like a thing of samples. And he says, would anyone like a sample? Now, I'm curious about your thoughts on this. I don't know if there is a person who avails themselves less of samples in just regular life than me. Now, I'm not talking about, like, Costco, because, like, kind of the fun of being in Costco is they've got all kinds of cool samples. But, like, in normal life, if I am at a place and someone comes around and says, would anyone like samples of this? I think about 98% of the time I just say no.

Well, then I guess I'm the guy giving you a run for your money because I've never had a sample at Costco either. I don't go for that stuff. Oh, really? Yeah, I don't go for samples either.

Oh, see, like I said, to me it's, you know, my parents, they'll have their entire lunch. At a Costco, just comprised of tiny and not so tiny pieces of, you know, kielbasa or something. I just, you know, I consume a lot of food every day, but it has to be at the time and the kind of food that I'm wanting in that moment. I'm not a grazer in the sense that, like, if someone walks up with, like, hey, would you like a sample of this cookie? And I had no thought about having a cookie. I go, ooh, I'll have some of that. Like, I just don't. I'm not into surprise food generally. Yeah, me too.

drink or even if somebody's just offering it to you in like a social way i'm not talking about being at like some sort of a you know a mixer with hors d'oeuvres i just mean that like often i don't know if you're in some sort of scenario where somebody's like here have a cookie or whatever like if if i am uh i don't even know maybe i'm volunteering on the weekend and there's extra cookies or what have you like i'm just not i'm just not into it and i wonder if part of it for me is that like you said there's like listen i love to eat my food but i wonder if it's because maybe i'm a bit of a glutton anyway like i'm not just gonna sit like i have no desire to have a little bit of kielbasa standing in an aisle at costco like that seems right so unsatisfying to me well i have a giant kielbasa that i cooked on the grill this weekend that was literally i saw the picture on instagram i could not capture how big that was that was the girth seriously like listen I think I don't I don't think I have to uh really emphasize my bona fides on this here but like I've eaten a lot of kielbasa in my life this was by far the thickest kielbasa I've ever even laid eyes on it was a masterpiece so anyway I'm happy to eat that at home where nobody's watching me and I put I put my shame cloak on and I just go to town underneath the shame blanket sure um but I don't want to like yeah there nothing is appealing to me about just having a little bite

of food in you know in a grocery store right same for me generally so my so of course when the manager comes around he's got a bunch of little like dixie cup size starbucks cups and he goes would anyone like a sample i was like oh no thank you um because i was there to get the kind of coffee i wanted to have i'm just not interested in something that was you know and then he goes and he takes a step past me goes it's the new oleato and then i was like actually because i

knew that it would be content for the show yeah and i would be a little curious about that myself i don't know if i'd try it or not it sounds pretty it sounds bad to me but um i guess we'll find out

what you think of it but then it was like he must just think i'm like the world's number one olive oil coffee enthusiast because what kind of person says no thank you and then you're saying to someone else completely it's the new olive oil coffee and then this person's like actually no i actually i

I mean, not to take away your point, but I will take away your point. I think that that shows the power of marketing. I'll bet you that's not – I'll bet you a lot of scenarios like that. Do you want a sample? No, thank you. Oh, it's this thing that you've read about in the Washington Post and on the Today Show or what have you. And so there is a built-in curiosity there. I think that's a victory for marketing.

Well, I wanted to explain – no, no, no, no. I've been doing a podcast where we've been shit-talking this for a few months. And so I see an opportunity to come to basically. basically uh fill the first 20 minutes of the show that seemed like a lot to explain to the guy in the starbucks so i just said actually i will have one of those and then he kind of laughed again thinking probably thinking exactly what you're saying which is like the marketing worked and um what they had done and i'm guessing that this is one of the options it was an oat milk oleato okay yeah so i i think they have a few different kinds and i'm guessing one of them is oat milk and to be totally honest with you the main flavor that i tasted was oat milk which i don't hate i don't it's not my favorite but also it's not gross to me like i can you know i can tolerate it i for a little while was trying to figure out if there was some kind of dairy alternative to put in my coffee for a long time i just didn't have any any milk in my coffee and then becca explained that actually in what she's read like uh black coffee can be a little corrosive on like your teeth and stuff and actually a little bit of milk is kind of useful because it sort of it cuts that a little bit cuts the and that was all i needed what's that cuts the acid maybe a little bit something like that yeah and that was all i needed to go headlong back into adding half and half to my coffee you're like i like it anyway you're like whipping cream yes please thank you you're welcome teeth you're welcome outside bones um so uh so anyway i'm not anti-oat milk but what i will tell you is that the oleato that i had with oat milk which was again a small amount i took like three sips of it mostly it tasted like oat milk and then it tasted a little oily and i did not find it to be pleasurable yeah that's that's kind of exactly

how i picture it now i always forget that it's you said these are lattes right like i guess i

always i drink just black coffee i don't well it looked let me put it this way it looked more foamed up than like a black coffee but it didn't seem like a full-on latte if that makes any sense

yeah um i've never had oat milk so i don't know if i like it is it like almond milk is that a dumb question i like almond milk a great deal i think you'd like oat milk i mean you know what

it tastes like i'm not trying to be funny it tastes like oats okay so a little bit earthier than almond it's a little earthier than like you know half and half or even almond milk but like It's not an unpleasant flavor at all. In fact, apparently you can get one inch of steamed oat milk because that's Becca's go-to when she'll get some kind of latte or latte if we're talking about Walt. Sure. But I didn't mind that part, but I did pick up a little bit of the oil. Ooh, that was a double sneezer, Andrew. How's that mute button working?

Yeah, so that one works. i will say one snuck through you said you muted yourself at the beginning of the show but we heard

the sniffle but that's okay ah um you know seriously i was standing there in my bathroom this morning looking at how impossibly small the allergy pill i was taking was and it said do not take more than one per 24 hours and i was really tempted to just do two because it looks so small You're like, you can't look so small. And you know what? I don't think I was wrong because I'm having a total allergic moment here.

I don't think I want you to be my doctor anymore. Andrew, your bones have completely disappeared and your blood is mostly root beer. You're the doctor who gives out prescriptions based on the size of the pills. Although it does raise an interesting question.

It's like, sir, I'm going to need you to stand up. hold on let me get eyes on this yeah no i'm gonna get you a bigger pill yeah we're gonna need the biggest pill it really i'm telling you these particular like generic allergy pills that i bought at some point they just they're teeny they're like half the size of a tic tac and i stand by my i stand by my prognosis andrew i i stand by my diagnosis i needed more than one of those because i'm still sneezing and sniffling out here how long do those last too those are like

long-term pills yeah 24 hours yes i don't usually take and that's why i didn't take two because i'm

also very i don't take a lot of prescription medicine and i get real like nervous about it like i don't like it's why i also don't like edibles because i just i get nervous about ingesting something that i don't know like what it's going to do over how long it'll last yeah how long it'll last like i don't know if i'm going to grow horns if i take two of these allergy pills

or what yeah no i was thinking that when i brought that up like those long-term things like i'm usually i'm pretty much a rule follower but you know with advil maybe you take a third one or whatever because you have an extra bad headache or or what have you but anything that says oh here i'll mask that and yeah looks good guys yeah buttress those joints sulu

warp speed uh captain we haven't uh changed out that glue lamb yet it looks like somebody's Sabotaging the system, is that good?

bad um anyway good job we masked that that was all theater flawless flawless anyway was i saying

sure good stuff what was i talking about things they'll offer you envision pro is you could just be in a house that's completely under construction but it'll be totally convincing i you know i

haven't read that article i saw some i i've already seen memes making fun of this announcement but i haven't seen the announcement itself yet so this will be a wild ride for me today as well let's do

this let's take a quick break i'm gonna go shotgun about six to seven more tiny allergy pills go find

the biggest pill you can find in the house and take it vibrate back here like mr burns in an

episode of the simpsons when they shoot him up with every kind of every kind of medicine he's

like a floating spirit or a glowing spirit after that right exactly um but i'll be a very nice

version of me uh we'll do all that in a minute here on tbtl hello and welcome to top story Big news from the Apple announcement yesterday that they are rolling out something called Vision Pro, which is their foray into the augmented reality, or I should say probably virtual reality space. It's $3,500 for this headset. I haven't watched one of those meetings in a while, but I was just watching, I guess, clips of it. and like how do i say this with in the words of ringo peace and love peace and love but there are some real apple fan people out there because the level of enthusiasm in that room maybe they're all apple employees or maybe they're just like people that their whole personality is like obsessing on apple stuff like whoever it was on stage tim cook i don't know what part exactly i'm assuming this was all tim cook tim apple like tim apple i'm sorry tim apple was on stage and uh because you couldn't actually tell who was on stage you could just hear their voice but then they'd say like and also you have all your apps right here and then you'd hear like people going in the audience it's like all right everybody okay i'm sorry to do this but everybody wants

everybody's like the tim robinson character that wants to be caught on mic in the in the audience right yeah everybody's like i want oh i want tim apple to hear me oohing and aahing over the

new google glass tremaine's jewelers they're uh they'll rip you off watch will explode and springs will go everywhere anyway i was just like it just was kind of funny because i feel like apple has gone on such a journey from being i mean still i think i i use their products you know pretty much exclusively i still think they do some really cool stuff but don't you feel like a little bit of the sort of like the the shine of like the iphone and the steve jobs is this kind of mythical figure i just feel like the whole thing is they've kind of come back down to earth

a little bit would that be your perception of it i mean i think so but i this is one that i will say that my perception is probably to be taken with a grain of salt because i'm not i don't even use apple products and so i very much feel like an outsider of those conversations and so yeah it's a little bit hard for me to tell from a marketing standpoint it does seem like in the past decade it has shifted from this sort of um from this sort of we don't need to tell you about the functions we just can show you these like kind of floating images of an idea of technology and and space and design and then over again i'm going to say the past 10 maybe even 15 years you saw them competing more globally i feel like with android and so they started focusing on hey look our camera's really good and this is really good and so apple has gotten a little bit more pedestrian i feel like is that kind of what you're trying to describe in the way that like it markets itself

i mean they're just i feel like there was a time when these announcements were breathlessly covered because it was like the new iphone is out and this one will save your marriage or whatever like there was just and then they kind of hit some sort of technological ceiling where it was like it has eight cameras whereas the old one had seven like it just stopped being you know from like no iphone to an iphone existing is just like a quantum leap but then just like but it has more memory is not as like exciting and yet everybody in the room was like oh i see we're very excited about these like not only are you probably not the the right person to be weighing in on this because you're an android feller but i'm not because i'm not really a virtual reality person like i don't have oculus i haven't i've never owned any of those things already that some of our friends have that if we've had enough to drink we'll get strapped on at some point late in the night someone's pretending to be a bird flying around paris or some shit and everyone else is just laughing at how silly they look with the head headset on i guess there

Thank you.

are some uh improvements to vision pro over like what else is currently out there right now um a guy named jeffrey fowler in the washington post actually i think it was two two writers jeffrey fowler and chris velasco were kind of reviewing this thing and they were saying that you know it's actually one of the things that apple is uh really pushing with this is that you can control everything with your hands your mouth and your eyes so let's say that like you're like the driving crooner and you just can kind of like you can just put your head closely up against the fedora and just right on top of the cigar and then no wait a second though hold on

hold on hold on i was we can't we we can't simply veer off into i think you should leave every five minutes but like how are we talking about virtual reality my brain also went to i think you should leave but not that sketch there's literally a virtual reality sketch which might be my favorite of the entire series what remind me of that one it starts off as a game show like a supermarket sweep and then the tim i'm sorry the tim robinson character has to put on virtual uh virtual reality locks up but then he doesn't know how to act within virtual reality he locks up he physically stops breathing because it's so overwhelming to him and he doesn't quote know how to move the body and then when they take off the headset he now can no longer operate his own body because they got into his head he's like how do we ever breathe how do we ever move i think it's actually one of the more philosophical i know probably i didn't like it it's a little high-minded oh i love it it's so creepy but like uh these uh i guess the the thing

that apple wants you to be able to do with this is like you can put it on like at your you know desk at work or you could even on an airplane or whatever and you don't need to have like you can operate all of it the reason i thought of the the driving troubadour the the sketch where he's got this kind of like hat that's like glued to his window and then this cigar so if you're looking from another car it looks like he's like wearing a like a fedora and smoking a cigarette because i feel like those weird motions that tim robinson is doing in that sketch you're going to be doing that if you're wearing one of these because you like grab your app and then you pull it like it's a string and then you do all this other stuff and i feel like i think the biggest barrier for me around all of this is just looking ridiculous like i just don't think i could be in public doing it and um because i'm just so embarrassed now one of the things that they've supposedly really improved with this this particular offering is they've made the the the sort of line between you're totally in the world of the goggles and there's other people in the world that you're talking to they've made that line a lot more sort of permeable in other words if somebody walks up to you like somehow the glasses it stops just being a thing where you're trapped in this world and you can see like you can see out into the real world with these they have this other feature that i saw a picture of which was not convincing which is it projects a digital version of your eyes on the outside of the goggle so so if you're doing this andrew and i walked up to you i could see your eyes i could see your eyes or a com like a digital version of your eyes so that i don't know somehow you and i are not so cut off from each other or something oh that well that sounds

that sounds like a great solution that sounds natural right oh absolutely don't just take the

goddamn things off the other thing that i think is just do you ever like look at it or or consider a piece of technology and you can you're already laughing about how silly it's gonna look in 10

years yes i think about that with vr all the time i'm gonna start using the uh acronym vr it's kind of cooler there was a commercial that was in heavy rotation during a football season i'm gonna say maybe four years ago now around there and they're showing a bunch of people using some technology brands products and it might have been a samsung commercial and one of the shots is like attractive young people and maybe just one person on a uh on a bus and she's wearing a vr headset but it's all i mean it's like the big clunky kind from just four or five years ago but and i remember watching that commercial and every time just thinking like i cannot wait for that to be a meme in 10 or 15 years it's going to be like the walking on the beach with the giant cell phone

they're so huge and that so the thing that i think is going to be fairly mockable of this uh about this is they're like and it has a battery life of up to two hours oh yeah that's gonna change it's got some brick ass thing that you wear but it's not part of the eyeball part

just like our old camcorders and cell phones back right i just the idea that anything that's

battery powered that we're trying to pitch you that you will just be using kind of like as part of your daily life. yeah and that you know we've made a we've made a hidden camera so small it can fit in this oversized novelty cowboy hat right like that homer simpson has to wear into the quickie mart like it has two hours of battery life that's a that's a joke that is a joke amount of time for anything like you're gonna go on an airplane and you're gonna i mean you can plug it in so i guess there's that but just like that's one of those things that i was like oh we're gonna laugh about this someday that it has up to two hours of battery and you're dragging around a battery like anything

that's supposed to be kind of aware and i understand it i mean that's the power sources i think the thing that is like i mentioned like with the cell phones back in the day you'd carry a briefcase of a battery around but like look it's portable you know but something that is like wearable technology that is supposed to be like more sleek and hey it's supposed to be really it sounds like you know luke again you're catching me up on this is this all vr or is it also like augmented reality sort of like google glass was like sort of like you can walk around the world and sort of see like oh there's a restaurant uh two blocks away without having to look at your

phone or your watch well the problem is it's the when the way you see out of the goggles or through the goggles is a series of cameras so it's not like you know the google glass was a pair of glasses and you could walk around and then it could do some things but you're looking through lenses you're not in this case so one of the things was if you want to type on a conventional keyboard you have to look down at the keyboard and you have to hope that the glasses are registering what you're doing in the real world i'm sorry the cameras are registering that and sending it back to you fast enough that there's not some weird latency you know what i mean so like i i don't think i would want to walk down the street with one of these just trusting that the cameras are are sending the information to my eyes and my brain as quickly as my eyes would

just see the information this is also how they get you right like they start you trust these things and then you start to believe okay everything i'm seeing is real but then they start feeding other images in there they get you walking uh towards the place where they're gonna gather us all up and send us to the moon yep exactly if you're lucky you go to the moon yeah no that's a lucky bunch no i mean because i'm a virtuous person i put myself on the moon rocket i like

that you and i don't even trust side mirrors anymore we talked extensively like we're gonna be like can i trust what i see in a mirror right and then the well speaking of kind of things that are uncanny i guess one of the things that this is supposed to do is um or it's a way to like facetime with your friends but let me try to find the exact this seems like it would be pretty easy to like facetime with somebody else right i mean this is like a digital product and you already have facetime on your phone or whatever your version of it is right it's just like a video conference thing it seems like this would be really easy to do but i guess there's some kind of avatar that gets created let me see if i can get to the um let's see uh they basically they were talking about how when you're talking to your friends on this thing oh one other thing by the By the way, the reporters from The Washington Post said one of the improvements of this particular headset was it didn't – it wasn't overly hot. Like it didn't get super warm. But they also said – and this was – they went to a demonstration that was completely like coordinated by Apple, right? This was like Apple said, come down and we'll put this on. You can write about it. They said that they didn't feel like the headset was warming up too much, but they were also ushered into a room that was noticeably cold. i love apple people put just putting a meat locker together so that as the as the the vr headset is raising your temperature it's only bringing it up to like the normal room temperature

they're like this vr makes it seem like i'm inside of a meat storage locker with sides of cows hanging from the ceiling no that's actually where you are right now that's what we need right to keep these

things from exploding on your face uh one of the things yeah i can't i'm trying to find it in the article one of the things that they were talking about was oh another thing by the way can you imagine like being tim cook up there and how hard they coached him to never accidentally called the

metaverse because that's like zuckerberg owns that i'll bet you i wonder if that's that word

has come out of his mouth even more than three times they call it spatial computing apple is into spatial computing andrew not the metaverse um but one of the things that they that they mentioned was that if you were talking to your friend in this thing your friend would be represented as some kind of um uh some kind of like a avatar and that the like the avatar's mouth and the words that were being said were like out of sync so it was really kind of uncanny and weird but i just i don't understand why if i can talk to you on my phone right now let's just

imagine we both have iphones i could just facetime you and now i'm talking to you and i'm looking at like pretty much real-time video of you i don't understand why use filters on that too right if

you wanted to screw around and look like a bunny rabbit or something you could do that on facetime

right right but why would you why would i not see you just andrew in my vr headset why would i have to get some weird avatar of yours and then what you're talking to me but like the mouth isn't

keeping up with the words you're saying i don't know for sure i don't follow this stuff closely and like i said this is the first i'm sort of like hearing about the features of this but my guess is the idea is you're sharing a virtual space it's probably more like you guys are in some sort of virtual room or i guess in this case we are in some virtual room together like instead of me being in my studio and you being on your tractor and we're having a quick conversation um although that sounds actually more interesting to me um like we could both be in some sort of a maybe a a space cafe having tea you know we could be on the enterprise when they're actually putting the new subfloor yes um by the way i do have a correction here um from the only person who hears the show live and that is uh my partner genevieve who's outside the door right now who texted me about a half hour ago to tell me it's not the star trek enterprise it is the starship

enterprise okay um uh the construction workers here have a lot of notes as well yeah well that

is true that's right v isn't the only one listening live today yeah this okay let me i don't mean to

belabor this but this is what they wrote they said our worst experience was with the digital avatars that represent vision pro users during facetime calls the movement of the lips didn't match the voice of the speaker and blinking seemed erratic

like somebody who's trying to communicate with their eyes like the words aren't like coming out of the mouth correct apple is holding me there's like a bunch of blinking going on yeah that's

upsetting now okay for all of this you know talking about how maybe it's not for me so much I have to say, the idea of watching a basketball game or a football game and getting to just be hella immersed in it, that's not appealing to me.

Wow. Yeah, if the technology gets to a point where you can kind of roll back your own instant replay but then kind of choose the angles and get in. Like the way like when I play my my silly football or baseball game, you can, you know, control playback if you had a great play or something and you can control all of the angles, zoom in, zoom out, you know, 360 around, whatever you can like really dig in. If you could do that with a real life sporting event, like you just pause your own playback and get to examine, like whether or not somebody's foot was over a line, that would be amazing.

right and like for instance in this very house where i'm now sitting there is not an actually a great place for a tv because the whole thing is oriented towards this river and i don't want to put a tv in front of like uh you know the the view but there's just not a lot of other kind of like ideal wall space for it now this wouldn't really be that social if it was multiple people But if I was here by myself and I just wanted to watch the Seahawks strap this on, I wouldn't even need a TV, right? I mean, it doesn't say anything about if that's actually integrated into this. But, like, that's the part of it. Like, the idea of not having to have a television screen, like, just having these goggles that I could just put a strap on and then anything I'd be watching on my computer or on a TV screen, I'm now watching it but even more immersive. That part is a little bit appealing to me.

Yeah. Building around televisions is ugly. And like, that's one thing I don't know much about it, but like there was a, you know, there, that's why certain houses built before a certain time are, are different, like living rooms are set up differently because you didn't have to accommodate the omnipresent television. Right. And now you go into places and like there, well, where does the TV go? Like, I kind of love the idea of a future where we don't have it as like the centerpiece of a living room or a family room. That's something that Genevieve and I have always tried to avoid in our living spaces. Like you walk into the main room and there's the giant television. Genevieve is especially against big TVs. We got like the second smallest one on the market and she's still angry about how big it is. Oh, really? Yeah, it was a whole thing. I'm glad to have a slightly bigger one because when I do play my video games, like games and stuff are just built for bigger TVs now. You know, it's not the same. And so whatever.

Well, what about that for you? Like, I mean, again, I don't think you're going to drop 3,500 on this, nor am I. But, like, you really do like to play certain games. I mean, wouldn't it be more fun for you to be more, like, kind of absorbed into that world?

Yeah, maybe. I'm not sure. You know, also, I'm going through a weird phase where I got this new Xbox, you know, a few months ago. And I told you, like, for two weeks. I got super obsessed with this, like, soccer game that you play with cars, right? Right, sure. And maybe it's just summertime or whatever, but, like, I cannot. The other day I was like, go play with your Xbox. You paid for that. And, like, I'm just not in the mood to play video games. I love that you're your own mom. Yeah, I'm just, like, instead, like, I'm just. Go outside and play with your Xbox. I had a bad back for a while. Maybe I didn't, like, and so it hurt to sit or get up and down or whatever. And so maybe just, like, I've just been wanting to play darts or putter in the kitchen or putter outside. Like, I just, I don't know. maybe it's just summertime but yeah during during a phase where i'm way into video games i could see this being fun i i have very little experience with it like you said i've been over to camaro kevs i've flown like an eagle over the streets of paris and or a dove over the streets of paris and i i wrote a horrific um train car into some sort of clown haunted house thing did you ever play that game over at his house i've only done the bird one yeah and so that's my that's my experience with vr and i i really when i was messing around with it there was a you know room full of people around me and i did have to ask like if i had this myself would this be appealing to me like okay genevieve's out at the eagles i'm gonna just strap into my vr for the night i don't know like i it doesn't seem like right now it doesn't seem like a hole in my entertainment

life you know but i also want to be i want to be careful just from from my standpoint of not being totally dismissive because i do i can see a world in which let's say somebody is either maybe you know homebound like physically not able to leave the home or just kind of like they live alone and they really want to make some connections and like this idea of you put on this this kind of you know sensory full sensory experience thing and all of a sudden you're seeing all your friends and granted the weird avatars in their mouth doesn't really match their their speech cadence but whatever it's just like i could see this being something that really makes somebody feel more connected to other people or like they can go to places that they maybe wouldn't be able to otherwise like it's like i don't think it's a terrible idea i just i'm surprised that apple has decided this is going to be where they're going to like try to really you know make their next great sort of impact on the world because lots of other folks have tried and they've all run up against the same problem this article points out it's just like the technology isn't quite there uh people don't really like wearing these things around other people who aren't wearing them like there's just it just has and and it what the the ultimate review from the washington post was it's not that much better than the other ones to like make it some kind of breakout hit like it's just like the other ones a little bit better if you're in a meat locker but not like it's it's not transcendent it's not like oh my gosh everything else every other version of this sucks because this is so good it's just like anytime there's a new version of anything that comes out it's going to be a little better than the one before and that seems to be according to these two folks in the post kind of where apple landed now let me throw one last thing out there was something that they mentioned as a kind of um hypothetical i guess that uh wouldn't work because the battery life is only two hours but i do think having one of these on an airplane if you can get over the embarrassment of having one of these on your face on an airplane because there's also like a set i don't know if they have their own headphones built into the thing or for 3500 they better or if you're supposed to put in you know your apple branded airpods or something but basically like you can really change your perception of where you're at And the idea of, like, oh, God, your middle seat, it's like a cross-country flight. Like, is there anything worse? But now you strap on this thing and you put the, you know, the whatever earphones in and you're, like, in a magical place that's far from here. Like, if there's anywhere I want to be transported out of, it's the middle seat of an airplane on a long flight. And this seems like something that could really do that, actually. Like, it could really make you feel like you're not where you are in the moment. Sometimes you don't want to be where you're at in the moment.

You could put yourself in the cockpit, and you can make a bunch of plane noises with your mouth, and you could pretend like you're flying the plane, and then nobody will ever want you to sit in the middle seat again, and then you win because you annoy everybody around you. Or, Luke, just watching a movie, too. Right. If you don't want, like, yeah, maybe transport you into a magical place, but also maybe just, like, I want to watch a movie on this airplane. I don't want everybody to see what's on my laptop I don't you know I don't want to get uncomfortable during a scene that is totally appropriate but maybe not appropriate for everybody around me you know what I mean like if it's especially violent or or sexual or what have you like that would be kind of a I still think so now I'm getting a sense of these things I picture them much smaller so they're still in the general size like we haven't made a lot of improvement on that exactly they seem very similar to the sort of other ones that you know

we've all seen ads for and maybe used here or there and again if somebody if you're listening to this and you absolutely love love your um oculus or your whatever you call it vr headset thing i mean that's awesome i'm not i'm not trying to say that there's no value to these i'm just also i one of the stats i saw in one of the articles was that apple's goal is to sell 900 thousand of these which i guess i just don't know how much apple sells of stuff but like man $3,500 that's That's that's some real And also like for me The other problem is I actually do worse I know that what Apple And a lot of these tech companies want to do is Make it so that you don't need any physical Hardware you don't need a real keyboard anymore It's all just like you can just Twiddle the air and it'll You know send your email or something I don't like that stuff like you know I used to have a Blackberry and what I loved About my Blackberry which what I wish my iPhone still had was a tactile keyboard there's like you know for typing my text messages i was sending in 2005 like i still do not like the iphone's interface for typing a text message it's still almost every word i type is the wrong word like i don't want to go to the point where i'm just like i'm standing there with the goggles on and i'm like it looks like i'm directing the boston philharmonic but really i'm just trying to like order a sub on doordash like i don't like that feeling i like this is probably old man yells at cloud but i like the i like being able to physically type into a keyboard and stuff like that like like typing on a you've probably never typed on an ipad but it is a thing you can do and it's deeply unsatisfying the weird thing

unless you guys have it now um that like the small feature that androids have that seems like such a game changer to me that i i don't know if you guys have it or not yet on the apple side of things is the swipe keyboard technology um that's that's a whole other language i'm gonna learn spanish before i learn oh no i mean if you had it you would find it like if you're gonna spell the word the you just sort of put your thumb down on the t and then you drag it to the h and you drag it to the e and you let go and it kind of knows that you just like instead of having to go tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick on a virtual keyboard the sliding thing is is huge for me i loved my blackberry that was like my second cell phone i think it was um it was sort of ox blood red luke and uh it had the hard keyboard oh i love that thing then i got something called was that a work issued no it was just nope it was just my like because i had a i had a flip phone for my first i was very late to the cell phone game oh i see you mean it was the second

phone you got i thought it was like yeah i'm sorry yeah how are you having two phones no i

didn't get a cell phone until i was 30 something like it was i was what year would have been 2005 I did not have a cell phone for a long time My first one was a flip phone And then after that I upgraded to a Blackberry With a hard keyboard, which I loved But then everything became kind of touch screens around that time And so I, not unlike me learning how to play the Was it the, oh shoot, the baritone As a transition instrument between the trombone and the trumpet I transitioned between the hard keyboard and the touchscreen by getting something called a Google G2, which was it looked like a touchscreen phone and it worked like a touchscreen phone, but it was pretty thick. And then you could kind of slide the top off and hidden underneath was a hard keyboard when you wanted to send a serious email. Yeah, there was something called a sidekick that had that, too. Oh, I loved that thing. That was pretty cool. I would still take something like that.

I swear to God, I like that. The feeling of the buttons. you know i need to have a talk with somebody at apple maybe even steve apple because steve apple steve apple oh that was another thing they said they were like and there's still there was something they were saying about this this headset and it was like building on some of the technology that steve jobs developed and i and i wanted to say i bet you that's not great technology anymore like god bless the guy and he was obviously you know instrumental in that company and then in revitalizing that company but like if you're using like what i i heard this on npr this morning it reminded me or it sounded to me like they were saying that like you know they went and they found like some blueprints he had drawn up you know like some schematics and they were like we're gonna complete this and i was like you probably have better schematics now i mean it's been a

long time right yeah like you know just by virtue of age yeah exactly like that's not a slam on him

at all it's just kind of like i don't want to use thomas edison's design for a light bulb anymore And it's cool that he invented it, but we have better light bulbs now. No, the thing I was going to say, I have to talk to Tim Apple about, sorry, is for some reason when I am typing text messages, which is almost all day long, the program, whatever it is that Apple uses, thinks that I love nothing more than to type in the word.

f-i-r like as in like a douglas fir tree like i can't think of the last time when i had use for the word f-i-r what i do try to type what i'm trying to type all the time is f-o-r like i'll be over there in a minute for the thing we talked about like it turns out f-o-r is a very very useful word and it's one that i'm typing constantly and the reason i know how often i'm trying to type f-o-r is because it changes it to f-i-r every single time or my fat thumb hits f-i-r but there should be there's got to be a way to teach it i'm never trying to say f-i-r there's no world in which i'm talking about a fir tree as much as i'm talking about i'm going

to pay you for that thing you just totally told on yourself dude it's so obvious that you're setting up drug deals i'll be over there in a little bit for that thing that we talked about Are you kidding me, Luke?

What are you getting up to? Listen, I cannot be blamed for that thing. For that thing. For that thing you were doing. It also just really makes me a whole different person.

Like, hey, man, you got my money for that thing? Hey, what are we doing this for?

Show title?

What are we doing this for? Well, it has to knock out, twiddle the air, and send your email.

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, v-mails.

Yes, Luke, the other day on the show, maybe a little early last week, I'm going to say, you mentioned, you told the story about how as a youth in the 90s here in Seattle, you and a buddy went to the Kingdome to watch a baseball game. You snuck into some better seats at one point, and you snatched a foul ball off the ground after, I believe, your friend kicked some business guys to make sure they didn't get the ball first, even though they later told you, we were going to give you the ball anyway. Jeez. Jeez. You started wondering, like, is there a way to track down exactly which foul ball you caught? Like, we know that every single, you know, obviously home run is recorded in the annals of baseball, right? and hits and stolen bases and all that, but is every single foul ball recorded as well? And so we got some very interesting emails on that and this voicemail that I'd like to start with. Ahoy, ahoy. Hold on. Do you want it with or without the Star Trek sounds? Let's see if maybe we can get rid of the Star Trek here for a second, although that would have been nice, and go back to listener Andrew.

Ahoy, ahoy, gentlemen. This is Andrew in Hickory, North Carolina. I was just listening to Tuesday's episode where you were debating whether there's a record of foul balls hit in Major League Baseball. And I'm calling to confirm that there is definitely, indeed, a record somewhere of every ball that's hit in Major League Baseball. I worked for one summer for the Texas Rangers as a TrackMan operator in the High A affiliate of the Texas Rangers here in Hickory, the Hickory Crawdads. The TrackMan is a radar system. If you look behind home plate up in the center press box area, there's what looks like a giant big screen TV, and it's pointed at the field. There's nothing displaying on it because it's not a TV. What it is is it's a radar, and that radar records every pitch, every hit, the rotation of the ball, the speed of the ball coming in, the speed of the ball going off the bat, the trajectory of the ball coming off the bat, any possible imaginable data point you can think of, it will record. And the TrackMan operator's job is to sit there and read the radar coming out of that machine and record the information into a computer. So I can confirm there is indeed a record of all the foul balls that are hit now. So I guess that's it. Thank you. Power up.

Now, we got a couple of emails from some listeners who knew that this stuff was recorded. By the way, that is fascinating. And what a fascinating job to have, too.

That's got to be how they get all of that exit velo and whatever, you know, launch angle and all this stuff. Like, I never even, no one even thought to mention, like, 20 years ago. And now they're like, can you believe that two of the home runs by the Mariners had the same launch angle in that game? Like, it's just like there's so much data out there. And that must be how they get that.

And, you know, I was just having a conversation at the ballpark not all that long ago, like, you know, in the past couple of months. It might have been with our pal Scotty. Shout out to Scotty. We went to see a Mariners-Rockies game, I think. And we're sitting, you know, out.

in the outfield and i'm i'm watching the little mini scoreboard thing or display it's not the main scoreboard but a little display that gives you pitch information it immediately puts up there what type of pitch it was and i always wondered like you know i understand like maybe announcers have their eyes on it they're looking at these pitches that's why i can never be a baseball announcer by the way well it turns out that that's information that that radar is sending immediately to them and to because as andrew the listener just pointed out like it's talking this thing can track the spin on a ball the trajectory of a ball as it's coming in so the robot knows right away if there's a curve ball or or a sinker or what have you and i always wondered like how are we sitting in this like analog stadium which is what we're going to start calling real stadiums once we're into the metaverse or whatever we're calling it but um you know how how are we in real time seeing that information displayed so quickly so it is this thing called the track man um now

because i dreamed of being i dreamed of being a you know baseball announcer but i was like i can't tell i mean you know like maybe a big old curveball like versus like a big you know an old uncle charlie like maybe that versus just like a fastball i could kind of tell because like it's you know it's extreme but every other thing also why did we why have we stopped calling it a slider

now i was about to say that sweeper i was literally about to say that i think there's some i keep on hearing everybody talk about sweepers this season it's funny how like having listened pretty intently to baseball now for the past several years how there's something new every year and i'm not talking about the new rules just like a new thing that people are talking about and i feel like this year it's the sweeper everybody's talking about the sweeper

yeah um i have an email here from our friend chris updating us or at least doing some deep diving on the uh this ellis burks uh foul ball that i got can i read you some of this yeah please this is fascinating chris says as a lifelong red sox fan who has a fondness for ellis burks from my childhood and as a baseball stat geek in general i did some quick research and i think i've pinpointed when you caught your foul ball caught i would say scavenged yes thank you In his six seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Ellis Burks played at the Kingdome plenty of times, so there was only one business person special in that time. It was a Wednesday afternoon game on Wednesday, June 12th, 1991, with a reported but highly unlikely attendance of 19,641. Okay, so interesting things about this. I have, I'm sure this is the game. i would have told you that i was like nine or something but by 1991 let's see june 12th of 1991 i would have actually been 15 so still not old enough to drive but you know old enough to um kick a businessman that's right a business or pick up pick up the uh you know it was kick a businessman day though at the park so um now uh let's see uh chris says burks was the lead off batter so unless you and your friend peter snuck down before first pitch odds are you didn't catch his first foul ball on the second pitch of the game he didn't have a foul in his second at bat in the third inning nor his final at bat in the ninth so that leads leaves his at bat to lead off the sixth inning where ellis burks hit two back-to-back foul balls with a 2-2 count on journeyman pitcher and former but by the way chris uh still current mariner tv analyst bill kruger Is Bill Kruger not – does he not do the post-game TV stuff anymore?

You know, I don't know. I thought he did.

Has he been replaced by Ryan Roland Smith?

Maybe. Because Kruger had the sort of – almost like kind of a – like a mountainous face sort of, right? Kind of a rocky face. Do I have him right? Yeah, yeah. Like a big jaw. Yeah.

And he was kind of the pitching analyst guy. And I don't I didn't even it'd be crazy if Chris, who lives in New York, knows more about the Mariner postgame show than we do. But I'm trying to remember if I'm still seeing Bill Kruger or not. Anyway, Ellis Burks hit two back to back foul balls off of Bill Kruger in the sixth inning. And so that must have been it must have been in the sixth inning because now here's the thing. I'm sure we were at that game two hours before it started, because when we were kids, first of all, we had nowhere to be with no responsibilities and we wanted to get there for batting practice we were like look if it's seven dollars for this baseball game and you get a free two hours of before time we're gonna take that we're gonna we're gonna be in that kingdom the minute they

let you in like legally you know i used to do that too like you know just like last you know last year i would if i had a free afternoon i'd love to get there super early are you not doing that as much this season um i don't think i've had the i mean i still get there early i still get there way early. than most people i think every game i've been to like maybe three or four games this year and i think um i tend to get there maybe like an hour before the game or whatever the circumstances but if i have nothing going on yeah i mean that's sort of my attitude is kind of like well they've also like shortened these games they haven't i mean really adjusted the prices um and so like yeah i i want to be there although it does raise the question like why do i want to be there buying the most expensive beer for two hours before the game i went in luke the last game i went to i wasn't able to get there super early maybe it was 45 minutes before the game or something and i grabbed a quick quick beer down by the pen and i just i guess it was a bigger sized beer and it was like an ipa so you know it's going to be like the more premium price but like and listen i want to make it very clear here i think complaining about prices at places like airports movie theaters ballparks i just think it's one of the most lame things you can do like you can and i'm about to do it by the way but it's just kind of like yes we know things are overpriced you're paying for the experience or you're not you can try to not buy as much stuff or bring your own little bag of peanuts or whatever but like i don't know like yes we know things are outrageously priced in those atmospheres having said that i'm like okay i'll take this ipa and she rang me up for 18 dollars before the before the tip and i was like and i just like i just take it away and i gotta admit i was just like kind of stunned for a second i was like how did that happen and i'm just like holding this beer i'm like this is 20 i need to not spill any of this um but anyway liquid gold Yeah, but no, I love being at the ballpark.

Oh, yeah. I mean, even to this day, if I had, you know, if I had tickets and I didn't have to be anywhere, I just sitting in whatever they call that stadium now, T-Mobile, and just listening to Tom Hut 1, Hut 2, Hutler just, like, announce various things I don't care about while the smell of hot dogs wafts about. Have you developed any kind of rules or theories around the kinds of concession situations that you're sort of like rooting for versus not? And by that, I mean a lot of the concessions at like T-Mobile are like a volleyball team or a marching band or like some kind of community organization where in order to raise money for their particular thing, they all go down and like work the like hot dog stand thing, the concession stand. And everyone doing that is always really nice because it's not their real job. so they're just it's kind of a you know it's a fun cosplay for them but they never have any idea how to do any of the things because they've only worked there for an hour and then sometimes you get a concession stand where it's the people that do it for their job and they're often much less chipper but really effective at their job because they do this day in and day out and i'm always like it's fun to meet the you know the the fast pitch softball team from mount si that's always fun but give me the grizzled real concessionaires who are just like uh you know just like are jamming it out and keeping the line moving and they know exactly what's going on it's always like you go up to the one that's being run by a community organization it'll just be like four bags of the nacho cheese out but not in the machine slap the bag somebody was like somebody didn't know how to install it and now they're waiting for like the supervisor who works for the stadium to come by

it's like it's just madness it's absolute madness but i don't i never know what i'm i think i usually end up just getting like the the grizzled veterans anyway um i don't know where they put the volunteers but i don't think i usually know before i get in line you know what i mean i'm just getting in line for whatever food i want as am i yeah i just sometimes i get up there and i'm like

oh that's why this was a disaster because we've you know we've got again and they're all lovely folks and and uh and i i salute them and i support the fast pitch softball of mount psi more than you could ever know but um but sometimes it's just like huh no one here has any idea how any of this works because uh we're just here for the day but um you know what i've been doing lately i don't

know if this is interesting but we're pretty deep into the show this again is sort of unlike me like i'm not the type of person who kind of alluding to what i said before gets super worked up about the prices um and then tries to life hack my way around them i'm just kind of like listen it's the experience in fact i should probably be more have you thought about bringing your own hot dog in your sleeve and then just trying to casually eat it during the game lunch um i do think they let well they do let you bring peanuts in i know you can buy peanuts in a bag as long as they're unsealed and i they used to let you bring outside hot dogs in as well which i never really got into that as i guess a pain if i pay four more dollars for a hot dog like who cares it's going to be an expensive day anyway but what i've been doing lately and i don't think this comes from trying to save money although that is a bonus to it is i've been arriving at the ballpark you know again like an hour early or something and quickly stopped And maybe I've been going to more Friday night games. I'm just hungrier at that time. And I'm like, I'm getting kind of hungry as I get off the train. Why don't I just stop at one of these concessions outside the ballpark? I'm there to people watch mostly anyway. I'll just buy one of the cheaper hot dogs outside, sit down at the picnic table, all to myself. People will never sit next to me. That's one nice thing about just, like, being me. You have your VR headset on. I've got my VR headset, and I'm watching other virtual baseball fans.

I love you just eating a piece of cardboard. You're eating some random thing. You're eating a foam finger, but your eyes are telling you it's a hot dog.

But no, I just have this pleasant little, like, I just kind of, like, wharf a hot dog down in five minutes or whatever, sitting on a little picnic table in Hot Dog Alley, which is that area, like, kind of out, that's what I call the area.

Yeah, we recorded there once.

Yeah, exactly. And, oh, that guy we interviewed, by the way, Luke, remember Joe? Joe's famous hot dogs. He had, like, a- Seattle dogs or something? Yeah, and he was kind of, like, he was a bit of a character, and he had an online presence and all this stuff, Some people seem to be pretty loyal to Joe's stand. He hasn't been there in a while. And I asked somebody about it. I think, again, it was Scotty, second shout out to Scotty, who said, oh, yeah, during the pandemic, when all this shit shut down, he got another job somewhere like Amazon or something. Ended up being a really good job. And now he never went back to making hot dogs anymore. Out of the hot dog game. Yeah, totally out of the hot dog game. But anyway, yeah, that's my move. I'm like, you know what? I'm pretty hungry right now, and I don't need to eat my hot dog in the stadium. I don't need to like –

See, that's where we're different because now maybe – if you're going to have two hot dogs, so maybe you have one outside, so then you're only hungry enough to have one more inside. But the sitting in the seat, in the sunshine, the noise, the smell, everything of the stadium, and then taking a bite of either the hot dog or the nachos. For me, the pleasure is being in one of those seats and then eating.

Well, for me, the first hot dog like tempers the kind of like regular like it soothes the savage, you know, because it's getting kind of near a dinner time. Then let's say I'm getting up to the ballpark around six or whatever. And I'm like, oh, I'm kind of legitimately hungry right now. I'll eat the hot dog, kind of relax with the hot dog. Listen to the pregame show on my headphones. Watch people kind of pile in. and then once i once i'm in there once i'm in there then usually what i want by the second or third inning is my snack which is usually like peanuts or popcorn and then i can sort of because like i enjoy eating peanuts and popcorn more like finger food like something to do with my something to do with my hands while i'm sitting there in the seat but i don't need to be kind of jammed into the seat and trying to dress my dog with you know it is a terrible system or the or the

nachos for that matter like i because i'm i'm always getting like too much stuff and then i've got this like rapidly deteriorating compostable nightmare that the nachos are in and i'm trying to and it's like it's losing structural integrity and i've also got like a king beer which weighs over eight pounds right it's like a whole situation and then you get in your seat and then you're it's like when you're on the airplane and you're trying to like you have your laptop out but you're also trying to like maybe eat the mediterranean tapas box or something and then

a bunch of people and if you're at the aisle which i prefer to be at the aisle um but you're constantly getting up and sitting up sitting down sitting up sitting down you know one of the first I guess the first game I went to this season it was also a little bit cool outside and a lot of us were wearing kind of heavier coats and I'm sitting next to like you know kind of between two big guys and it was just like everybody was a little bit uncomfortable in those seats it's not usually my experience at T-Mobile Park but I'm you know this particular day and again like it was just kind of nice not to have to worry about those things you're talking about like kind of like really having to like dress up my dog or like satiate my hunger i like to just nibble but anyway

i'm just repeating myself and i think it's funny though because like it's funny because like you're you couldn't be more right like i'm like i gotta be sitting in the seat to do this and then as i reflect back on it's like it's pure hell yeah no nothing about it is ideal but it's like and you put in the soda maybe in that like soda holster on the back of the person's seat in front of you And then someone's kicking it It's a nightmare I don't know why I like it Because on paper it makes absolutely no sense But it just, I don't know It takes me back to my childhood in the kingdom Oh, that's not even true We didn't even get hot dogs Are you kidding me? We would go to the Mariners And we should wrap things up But they're about to start pouring concrete around here It's going to get real loud But we would go to the Mariners Like my dad would take me to the Mariners once a year And it would be because my grandma worked as a bookkeeper at the YMCA downtown, and the Mariners were so bad in these – it was sort of like this season, Andrew, but with fewer expectations going in. The Mariners were so, so bad in the 80s that it would be the kind of thing where it would be like someone at the Y would have free tickets, and then they'd be like, does anybody want these? I got these Mariners.

Mariner tickets for tonight. Maybe they got some of them because of being a charity organization, like X number of free tickets. And it would have to go through so many people saying no before it got to the part-time bookkeeper, my grandmother, Virginia Burbank. Virginia. I got some free Mariner tickets. It doesn't make me think I'm better than you. Once a year, my grandma would get these free tickets to the kingdom, and then she'd give them to my dad. And then me and my dad would go But we would stop at the I think it was the Daggs There was a place called Daggs on Aurora I kind of mix up the Daggs and the Herfies Daggs Mascot was like a Buff cow and then like Herfies Just had a real hyper realistic painting Of a cow in it It's a classic

The Daggs versus the Murphys man That's like one of the longest standing feuds In American history

It's the Hatfield and McCoys of burgers We would stop Whichever one was on Aurora We would Basically my dad and I Would stop off This would be my birthday present By the way We'd stop off We'd get a burger And then we'd go to the game But it was like And it was super fun And I look forward to it all year It was actually They're actually really Really good memories for me But it's funny to think That like My upbringing was not like Oh we're gonna go to the game And then who's Okay what do you want Hot dogs What do you want You know Cracker Jack What do you want Like it was like We would never buy Whatever was being offered at any place we were at because i was under the impression it was over eight thousand dollars

which it now is actually yeah which ironically it now is but all that money goes back into the

team so that's great that is it's really good uh we're able to sign robbie ray we're able to pick up um i i don't want to do this right now that was a rough we don't have to talk baseball but that was a it's been a rough week it's just and it's just you know i i i often wonder is it worse to like lose some heartbreakers by a run uh in extra innings or is it worse to just absolutely get your teeth kicked in from the word go and i've decided it's worse to have your teeth kicked in like the dominance asserted over the mariners in the last week by the new york yankees and the texas rangers has just been it's been it's been tough yeah it's been really tough like it's just it's an indication that this is not a team that can compete with any of the better teams in baseball you know you throw the oakland a's at us we all right but you throw any decent team at us and we're our our issues become very clear very quickly yes it's been demoralizing luke but would

it make you feel better to know that i am currently in first place in my division it does fantasy baseball people love hearing about people who hate baseball talk love fantasy baseball talk

well they love fantasy it's a world of fantasy baseball you know what honestly i'll take any w related to any baseball any friend of mine who likes mariners baseball like that may be ultimately the story of this season is that your fantasy team overperformed while our mariners

underperformed hey before we go this is totally unsports related this is a totally different thing but something you just said reminded me of something I wanted to ask you. This is a quick social experiment. I'm going to bury it here at the end of the show. Nobody will ever hear it. Thank you for your patience in putting up with this. Luke, when I say these three letters, what do you think of? ALW.

Well, I think of you because you sometimes sign things that way.

Ah, interesting. Okay. Because I do, I guess I do some, that used to be my signature in email, yeah.

So that's, but if I hadn't met you, I would think American League West.

Ah, interesting. OK, so it does come back to baseball. Here's why. I was listening to Comedy Bang Bang last night and they were talking to they were talking to the character of Andrew Lloyd Webber played, of course, by Lord Lloyd Webber. Yes, Lord Andrew. In fact, somebody called him Andrew, and he was very put off. This is Paul F. Tompkins' character, of course. Anyway, and at some point, Scott referred to him as ALW, and it was, like, one of those things where you're, like, walking down the street and somebody yells your name, but they're talking to somebody else, but it's just like you. I was like, ALW. Like, it's just, like, I've only heard that in the context of my name, but I'm like, but that's only me, right? And I started thinking about you. I'm like, if I heard the initials, I guess, LCB, that would be you, right? Luke Christian Burbank? Like, that doesn't stand out to me. LCB Sound System is quite known in some parts. Maybe that's the show title. But, like, that wouldn't strike me as, like, oh, LCB. What do you think of when you think of LCB? I don't think I would think of you right away. And I wasn't sure if I was being, like, super, like, because they're my own initials, ALW sounds so much. Like, I just identify with it so much. But I wasn't sure if other, I don't know. I can't explain it I wasn't sure if other people Think of me as ALW Or if it would take a long time To even realize Oh those are Andrew's initials

My guess is that Like most of the folks From the Eagles Oh by the

the way maybe we can talk about this tomorrow god bless them and i mean this i don't mean this sarcastically but i mean they are hunting me down like a dog to get me to finally join the eagles and they're moving heaven and earth god bless them it's very sweet i've got to do a zoom i have to do a zoom initiation within the next two weeks or my uh whole thing expires but and do they keep your money or do they give it back oh i don't know i don't want my money back i just want to be a member and i've made it hard on everybody i think anita has passed me off to the other people she's like i can't deal with this guy anymore but um what i was going to say was i bet you the folks from the eagles if you said alw they wouldn't put it together with you but because you and i have emailed enough and i've been on enough sort of emails you know to multiple recipients that you've sent i've just and maybe you're not using it anymore but i do remember the time when you were using alw more but that's just because i've been on a lot of emails

with you yeah you know you're right i was i signed every email as alw for years and years and years and years at some point i shortened it to a because you know i'm a busy guy can only get to

the ballpark an hour over the course of a lifetime you save over eight minutes i but i like the look

of alw i'm going back to alw yeah man i'm doing lowercase yeah all lowercase i always sign a lowercase a i feel like an uppercase a you're gonna think i think too much of myself i think

I mean, I'm going to be totally honest with you. An uppercase ALW would be a little much. Just like an uppercase LCB would be a little much. I think a nice lowercase says, hey, you know, these are my initials, but I'm not getting too crazy with it. I don't think I'm better than everybody else. By the way, Josh Rogers sighting on Morning Edition today. Oh, really? Yes, I thought of you. Oh, because it is. New Hampshire?

Yeah. Who's, is it DeSantis already? Chris Christie. Christie in New Hampshire making his announcement.

Chris Christie going to do in New Hampshire or something, but I thought of you.

Also, I think Christie made his announcement there, right? Oh, is that what it was? I think so, now that you say that, yeah.

It was pretty funny, though, because they had this great reporter on also, a different part of Morning Edition, who I actually don't remember from my days at WNYC, but I guess it's somebody who's kind of covered Chris Christie a lot. And it was just so refreshing, because they were like, does he have a chance? And he's like, not in hell. He's deeply unpopular. Nobody likes this guy, but you know what? It will help him get higher profile, basically speech. He'll get more money per speech. There's these things that happen to you positively after you run for president, even if you are polling it under 1%. It's just a resume builder, and it sort of redounds to some amount of good stuff. I mean, good being good for Chris Christie, but it was great because you just rarely hear this on NPR where no one was even pretending like this is a legitimate candidacy. Now, remember, the last time I said this, it was about Donald Trump. So I don't know.

Well, this is the stupidest question I think I can ask, but it'll really show how little I've been following this. And it's also like numbers at this point don't mean a lot. But like, well, who is the front runner? Is it still Trump? Because like we're talking about Pence.

It's not even close.

OK, so it's still it's still Trump and it's not close.

okay yeah because yeah it's which is you know very uh hard for i think people like us to wrap our minds around that after all of this he would it would be you know like desantis is i think obviously the the next closest and i don't know what the latest are but it's not like it's not neck and neck it's like desantis is is way way in the back so i don't know i just think it should be like it should be like a royal rumble they should just get them all in there and then they all fight and what they do is they all team up on Trump initially I mean physically fight I mean you put him on stage you got Nikki Haley you got Tim Scott you got Mikey Pence you got Chris Christie that was like how WWF was when I was a kid they'd have a Royal Rumble and they'd be like everyone want to take Hogan out or something because like he's the biggest threat so you get everybody teaming up on the whoever the champion is get them out of there throw them out of the ring and then you know take it from there yeah that sounds

I mean it sounds like that's the future of democracy actually does sound like the future of that party but oh god oh god okay uh well

on that note hey we did it let's go ahead and question wrap up this tuesday edition of the program what do we do i have some incredible news we're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you so please do join us for that in the meantime have a great tuesday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all I should not have brought up baseball. I understand. My mistake. My mistake. You got to know your crowd.

Power out.