Muse

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as you prepare to go back and deliberate, I would just like to take one more opportunity to let the evidence speak for itself. They say a picture's worth a thousand words. I think we can all agree this one's worth at least two thousand. This one's also very good. It's framed quite well. Could arguably be upwards of three thousand words. This one, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not gonna lie to you. I'm not here to lead you astray. this photo is a little blurry this one's worth about 25 words maximum but if you take a look at this one this is this is actually a photo of me i'm not sure how this got in here but i look great you can see here i i cut my ex-husband out of it this one might be worth no more than 25 words or so here's the defendant again not a great photo 50 words max this is actually me further after the divorce when i'm i've got a bit more color back in my face and my smile is reaching my eyes that's about 9 000 words you can see that i'm really coming i'm turning my life around i'm coming back from the heartache in this one i can't i can't show you that photo if you do if you add up if you do them if you add up and do the math of all the photos there's a lot of it's a lot of words in here i'll give you a chance to look those over take a good look at those actually could i have the one of me and my ex back it's a really nice photo of me i need this for a dating

profile tbtl i was shaking my tongue was shaking my head was shaking my arms were shaking and my

legs my feet too well he bit all the he dogs and winked at all the she dogs the town never knew such a hullabaloo as that little dog raised till the end of that day oh i see dirty monkey

not okay. But dirty monkey dance? I don't know, man. You know, it's just living truthfully in imaginary circumstances. Have a good show, dummies. What you do is so important.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Now we're going to look at a place where hipster culture and world events collide. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host,

I say that does the trick. That'll do it.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where it's another...

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

I've been feeling like we're getting some bonus days here in the Pacific Northwest, some bonus nice days. But actually, it's still summer. I guess Friday maybe is the first day of fall. So it stands to reason that we should be getting these pretty, pretty days like we are right now. Now, one person who won't be able to enjoy the beautiful outdoors here at the Madrona Hill studio would be Bubbles Burbank, my cat.

It's time for cat massage.

I don't know what would happen if I turned her loose. She is now. She is here. She has arrived. She's in the house. I mean, literally, she's in the house. Like, we got out here last night, and she hasn't been here since I started living here full-time. She had been here for stretches, but I don't know. Something's going on. She's in the house, and she refuses to come out from under the couch. So come out here and hang out with me while we do the show.

I'm mad at you, Dad!

I keep trying to explain to her that it's more fun when we do these things as a family, but I think she's acclimating right now. So that's what's going on with her. What's going on with me? Well, I'm excited to bring you episode 4034 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We've got some food news today. Welcome to food news today. McDonald's is looking to phase out free refills for their fountain drinks.

God, just let me drink.

And I want to talk about this. This is something that is near and dear to my heart. I think it was a big upgrade in all of our collective experience when the restaurants of America, particularly the fast food restaurants of America, just said, you know what, we're going to let you drink as much of that soda as you want. Was it good for our bodies? Probably not. Was it good for our pocketbooks? Debatable, because there's wild numbers around what a cup of soda actually costs, your 7-Elevens or your McDonald's. But anyway, they are going to be phasing it out We'll tell you why they say that's going to be happening Speaking, by the way, of delicious, delicious beverages

Cup of coffee in the big time

This guy is finally getting a cup of coffee in the big time He's the longest running Cobra of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships Their grace, their splendor, and all that intricate rigging He's Andrew Walsh And he's joining me right now Good morning, my friend I was hoping you were talking about me When you started to say speaking of delicious You could have gone I'm

I mean, you could have gone with, or a tall drink of water, since we're talking about a tall drink of you, a tall drink of me, yeah. Hey, this, I'm sorry to make this all about me, this cat situation, this bubble situation, now this is interesting, so Bubbles, your cat, who's about two years old now?

No, about a year. She turned, actually, well, no, a year and a half. How long ago was March? When did Schubert dip come out?

When did Schubert dip come out? Because we didn't get bingo until October, and I feel like you had bubbles for quite some time.

Here's what I know. Her birthday is in March. So she turned one last March. So that's like...

That's birthday, though, which you did not celebrate, like, in your house, right? Birthday was...

Well, that's because I come from the Christian scientist background. Also, she can't get a blood transfusion. There's a lot. But you know what? I feel like I make her stand out in the airport with those flyers, Jehovah's Witnessing. I've brought together the best elements of all of the fringe religions.

Yeah, and she does not say the Pledge of Allegiance, I believe, right?

like my class she adds born and unborn at the end of it um okay so no here's uh what i was going to

say so however old she is she's a relatively young cat still but as you said has been living with you in the city has lived with you in a couple of different apartments in the city i think um but neither here nor there but has come out to the new house that you've been working on several if not many times and has had a good time and has run around but is there something about But your permanent move that she is somehow picking up on and is therefore suddenly trepidatious, I would find that fascinating.

Something is going on with her. Now, everybody, please, the people who have many thoughts about my cat rearing decisions, just, you know, try to don't come at me too hard with all the various opinions. So the thing that happens, if we talk about the cats, our cats, on the show, and we're sort of slightly leaving it open for feedback, there will be a lot of feedback. And it seems like a lot of times the feedback is slightly contradictory.

I just get a lot of people saying, hey, you're doing a great job. You're raising a good cat. Must be nice. Also, you're a tall drink of water. That's the kind of stuff that I get. Anyway, go ahead.

So Bubbles has been out here a handful of times, but you're right, never as like, hey, here's where we live. And one of the things I was waiting for in bringing her out here was a couple of, well, one, I wanted to try to put down a coat of paint on all of the sort of plywood floor in the house. Now, that's all going to get covered up by some other kind of flooring, but that's still months away. And it was just a big, giant, dirty, dusty thing here. And I wanted to try to have it slightly more under control. So I had to do that project. That's done. And then the other thing I wanted to do, down in the basement, and this house was built in the 1930s, and the basement is just, is one of those real crummy 1930s basements where it's just cement and can be a little dank in the wintertime. And it has two different openings that go under parts of the house, right? so it's like a concrete foundation and then there's a couple of holes cut probably so that somebody could get access if they needed to get like under the the sort of front area when you come in through the the door there's a little porch kind of thing you can get under that porch like barely if you go through one of these holes anyway i wanted to plug these up because the last time's bubbles was here she liked to hang out under the house and it's kind of dirty and dusty and sketchy down there so of course i didn't get around to plugging up those holes last night I entered my Swift era last night, Andrew, I'm proud to say

Your Swifter era? Sorry, I was thinking Swiffer I've entered my Swiffer era, what a terrible joke What are you talking about?

I went and saw a bunch of Swifts fly into a chimney in Portland with Becca There is this very cool, interesting thing There's a place called Chapman Elementary School That's in northwest Portland and for some number of years and for reasons i don't know if they really understand why or not this huge school of this whole they're not a school a flock of swifts this time of year for a period of a couple of weeks they all thousands of them thousands and thousands each night they they come out of this chimney in this elementary school they fly around they eat a bunch of bugs and then they all go back into the chimney and then they sleep there for the night and then they come out the next day and so many people turn out to watch this there was i couldn't tell if there were more birds or people watching the birds but it was like this whole school the like grassy area it's just full of people in lawn chairs like drinking a beer and like watching these swifts

do their thing it was really cool do they sort of swarm almost do they do that thing where they kind of like looks like the wind is almost pushing them around yes and they're kind of doing it and

they go in waves so there's there they're sort of flying in this almost like a cyclone pattern but as a group, and that's presumably when...

they're eating the bugs and then every once in a while like one of them will break off and one of them will be like i guess i've had enough mosquitoes i couldn't eat another mosquito oh put a pin in me exactly i'm trying to intermittent fast and so like a few of them will start going down to the chimney and then like a few more will follow and then you'll see like a significant number of them all go down into the chimney i guess for the night but then there's still a bunch of them flying around and then over the course of this more and more of them are going down we didn't stay till the very end i did say it would have been very satisfying to watch the last swift go down to the chimney to hang out like you know for the night like like you just can watch it go from there's 15 000 of them to there's a thousand of them to there's 500 to there's 20 to there's larry larry's the guy that just always shuts the bar down yeah he's not even that old but he's just got an old soul then finally he's just like okay and then larry's like okay i gotta call it and then he goes in and then everybody cheers because like the last i don't

think that's how it works but that was in my imagination hey listen i um don't usually do this but this is weird and i know that we're going somewhere with your story but i just got an email like in this very moment that said andrew you're a great cat dad love what you're doing over there but i think you meant stick a fork in me i'm done and not poke a pin in me i'm done or whatever the hell i just said to say did you i thank you for just going along with it but i believe i said poke a pin in me i'm done just for the record that's not an expression that people

say when they're full of food I don't think although it's not any less gross than sticking

a fork in me no it's not any less gross but it's also just a weird thing for me to say and it just

was living in my head so it would work by the way I just want to point out yeah I think my guess is that stick a fork in me I'm done would mean you're cooking something right like a a cake or something I'm unusually use like a toothpick but there are certain things that you're baking and the way you figure out if they're baked is you stick something in them and you pull it out and if it batter comes out on the toothpick then it's not done yet right don't you think that's probably what stick a fork

you know what you just said makes more sense for some reason i always picture meat but what you said makes more sense knowing that toothpick rule i'm not a baker i don't bake many things but um i do know that toothpick rule and it sort of fascinates me you could put a pin in like if it

was clean i mean you'd like wouldn't want to you want to make sure you'd like lit a match and then like you remember being a kid and like if you're gonna have to try to pull a splinter out or something yeah and you'd have like a sewing needle and it'd be like the part that felt really really like macho was the lighting a match and then burning the sewing needle so that it was sterilized before you went in to do a little surgery on your thumb or something good news for people who love

Andrews um this is maybe that's a show title um not that it's a competition I was ready to go along with it but I just did a very quick google search and I'm on a place called grammarist and it says it means it's derived from the practice of sticking a fork into a piece of meat to test

whether it's thoroughly cooked okay so there you go so so but it doesn't say put a pin in it no put

a pin in it you're 50 right that's a meeting talk that's what when I'm in a meeting and somebody's just kind of gets caught up on a topic and they won't move off it. Sometimes I'll say, stick a fork in that. We'll come back to it later.

Uh-huh, right. And if I sounded distracted there, Andrew, it's because I went on my own little journey of discovery and journey of suspicion, really. So if the listeners are very, very careful listeners of the show, and maybe you've noticed this too, Andrew, I haven't had my little desk bell that I learned on the Week in Review with you and our friend Max. turns out that was originally something from you and genevieve by way of our friend broadcast barry and then i and then it made its way to me the the having a desk bell thing but anyway um i was i had done the show a couple days last week from becca's house and so i texted her i said hey did i leave i can't find my desk bell right i said did i leave the my desk bell at your place and she said no but i did notice it was on stage when you did live wire oh and i wondered why you would have it up there and the reason i had it up there is because we were playing a game with paul f tompkins and i like having a little like hey you did it you know like that was a you know congratulations you got it right so i had brought my little bell up there and what it means is when they were breaking down all the equipment and stuff which some very nice hard working people do you know long after i'm done usually i'm off stage i'm you know probably four to five drinks deep at this point and then some very nice people are like doing all this tech work and clearing the stage somebody somebody nicked my desk bell andrew

this is the theory right now well it could be so let me ask you this so is there a point and i'm saying this from my experience of doing live tbtls after a live tbtl i immediately lead.

And this is probably to the displeasure of of the listeners. I immediately want to gather up all my stuff and throw it in a bag. And with the exception of this last show we did at the Neptune, where they could not have been more chill, often very quickly after the show, there are people saying, hey, get this stuff off here. Get this stuff. We need this table. You know, we're clearing it off like we don't want to extend our night. We want to go home, whatever. And I'm always like, yeah, that's Luke stuff. I don't know, man. Put it somewhere. And it's usually like your bag and your bell and your computer and a whole bunch of stuff. and I think there was a period in our life where I would have been protective of your stuff and now I'm just like I don't know man you've been doing this a long time and none of your shit gets stolen so if that was sort of the scene and I may be wrong that it was but if that was sort of the scene when you were doing Livewire like did you come back at some point to some place on the stage or backstage and you found your computer and a cord and maybe your leather bag and everything was there and you're just now realizing that the bell was not

part of that basically and the reason by the way that and you're exactly right probably were i let me put it this way were i too at the minute that live wire is over this sounds like a very we've gotten no closer to talking about why the cat is mad at me by the way but i've still got it i want everyone to know i've still got it in my mind we're still going to get back there but this is a very self-aggrandizing observation by me because it makes it sound like i think Like, talking to me is such a great gift to the people of America. But if, like, at the end of a TBTL live show or if at the end of, like, Livewire, if I were to stand on stage, my feeling, I could be wrong about this, my feeling is if I were to stand on stage and the next thing I did after I said, hey, thanks, everyone, get home safe, was to start breaking my gear down and to be up there for 10 or 15 minutes organizing things and putting it away while there's people queuing up to maybe just chat or take a picture. or say hi. Maybe it's just how my particular social, whatever, anxiety works, but I could not abide that myself. So what I always do is I just come down off the stage and start chatting with people. There's usually maybe two or three people that want to chat, and then a few more people will get in line, and then that's how that goes. So that's kind of, I think, just always been my move for now going on however many years. Oh, I didn't even tell you about this. I was for going on 10 years, because guess what happened on thursday night doing live wire turns out it was the 10-year anniversary of me hosting that show and they got me flowers somebody handmade a tiara i had a sash that said 10 years oh wow put all this stuff wimby and uh obviously i didn't know this was happening i didn't even know it had been 10 years i thought it was maybe seven tops and i get out there to the the my little desk area and i look over and on elena's chair there's a tiara and i think what's that's bizarre why is there a tiara on her chair kind of hidden and then it's like a slow speed crash i realize when she comes out she starts saying something and then all of a sudden i just all i hear is just kind of like feedback in my head because i see to the left someone's coming up with a bouquet of roses and a sash and then it's just like i hear the word 10 and i realize oh no this is about me Which is the strangest thing, because obviously I have an almost bottomless hole that is a need for attention, but it's a specific kind of attention.

It's attention that you control. I mean, this is my whole thing with birthdays. I think even at this point, it's pretty clear that I am not averse to having attention on me as well in my own ways. Lavaged at times. Yeah, exactly. In my own vain ways, and truly so. You and I are not similar in the ways that we maybe seek attention often, but it's there. but having said that like the reason why I've always had aversion to surprise parties or birthdays or specifically that thing for the long period of my life where I would not tell people my birthday was like I felt like no I want to control this I don't want to like come into work and find something on my desk or or have an awkward moment where people sing happy birthday to me in studio c or whatever it is and these are things that nice colleagues do for other nice colleagues but like it makes me uncomfortable because I have no control over that that must

have been what was going on for me too because i could not and again it was really sweet of of the people i work with to to commemorate that or to acknowledge it or something and also i noticed the tiara was like handmade out of tinfoil i gotta figure out who made this tiara because it's pretty elaborate like it wasn't they didn't go to the tiara store for it they like somebody made it and it must have taken some amount of time because it turned out pretty pretty good but anyway like I could not get that thing off of me fast enough and the sash and then of course I did this other thing this really feels like a thing you might describe happening to you Andrew I then felt like well I'm supposed to say something but I didn't really know what to say what I wish I would have said I wish I would have said, hey, thanks, this is really nice. That's wild that this has been going on for 10 years. Of course, it's only been possible because of all the people I work with who do so much so that I can just sit up here and talk into this microphone, and I wouldn't have probably made it 10 minutes without the whole team of people and even you, the audience here, so thanks a lot. Boy, what a great—if I could have conjured that in that moment—

And check out my podcast, TBTL, if you kind of like what we're doing up here.

If you're anywhere near the Baranoff, ask them why they took all those plaques off of the bar because one of them referenced my podcast but like what I wish I could have thought of something like that in the moment but instead Elena said how does it feel does it feel different doing it 10 years later also I'm terrible at answering questions which is interesting considering most of my job stuff is asking people questions but I why do you think that is why do you think that's my job or why do you think I'm bad at answering questions I just wanted to I just wanted and make you answer a question go ahead um I've clearly gravitated towards the thing that feels more comfortable but for being such a know-it-all why is answering questions so hard for me but so I I just said some I said I said something like it does feel different because I used to be really terrified coming up here for a long time and now I just don't feel as terrified which is a very bizarre answer and also does not probably put the audience at ease before the

show has even started that's not so bad that's not so bad at all i think that's fine i mean you're right like with a little bit more forethought maybe you could say and now this feels like home to me or something that would melt everybody's hearts but what you said i don't think what you said is not off-putting i know what you mean though you wish that you hadn't you know the a redo so you could have been say something kind of eloquent and and gracious to

the people around you exactly i wish i would have acknowledged all the people that i've worked with over the course of that time um instead of saying i'm less scared about doing my job now it just didn't it just didn't have the the the gravitas and the sort of like whatever you want to call it i don't know the sharing of the attention but again it's very strange because as somebody who has clearly sought a lot of attention in my life and my my career that particular kind of attention was it was like it was like they put a kryptonite suit on me or something and i'm superman like I was like the every second this tiara is on my head and the sashes on me I I get I grow closer

to death now this is this is interesting the earliest known use of the expression stick a fork in it was by Dizzy Dean an American baseball player and commentator in the 1940s when referring to a pitcher who is doing a poor job you can stick a fork in him folks he's done sorry I just couldn't Dizzy Dean you know Dizzy Dean that's not well I know the name Dizzy I'm old enough that like

when i was young and really into baseball you would still hear dizzy dean stories okay cool like i was on the tail end of the probably being or i was in the you know one of the last generations of people who would ever hear the term dizzy the name dizzy dean thrown around without a massive amount of like contextualization but anyway yeah so yeah so let's see here so back to the bell it's missing in action this now nobody nobody stole it intentionally i think it probably just got put, I mean, I grabbed my, I must not have grabbed my computer off of the desk. It must, the desk must have been gone. The computer must have been sitting near the bag. Somehow my desk bell was separated from my stuff and not, I think, because anyone would have any nefarious, no one's trying to start a competing podcast using my desk bell. So as to have some of the, you know, 11 herbs and spices of TBTL. I just think it was, somebody didn't realize that

goes with my computer and stuff. Is it, I don't know how many you have. Is it the nice looking one with the two-tone the colors it's like kind of yes I know it's pretty and I'll

swing down to the also you know what I've been meaning to make a trip to Joanne fabric anyway that were you got it really no but but I'm gonna go get some stuff at Joanne fabric and then I'll swing by old office depot and I bet you they've got a wide selection of desk belt

Luke I honestly thought you were gonna say no but I got a normal one here and I go down to Joanne fabric get some fabric gussy this one up a little bit I honestly was like go to the notion

section i'll get a couple get some calico get some rhinestone crafty um did can i just tell you really quickly before we get back to why my cat is why basically i'm going through um what's the uh there's a term and it's actually been quite controversial of lately uh quite controversial lately about um alienation parental alienation syndrome like there there's a a there There are folks, and this is actually a very serious topic, but there are people who would say that they have had their children sort of turned against them by their exes, and it's called parental alienation. And it's become, I think it was that there was a certain, I forget if they wanted to put it in some kind of medical, they wanted, the folks that were saying, this is a very real thing, it's happened to me, and we probably have listeners who feel like this is something they've... been through um i forget who it was but there's basically been this fight about like is it considered to be a real syndrome or not is it a real thing or not or is it just kids making the choices they want to make like where do you draw the line between this kid is doesn't want to hang out with me because uh they've been brainwashed versus this kid uh doesn't want to hang out with me because they get to make decisions even if they're uh you know underage so i decided to use that very light very very non-serious way to describe the fact that the cat doesn't want to come out here and hang out with me but before we get to that Andrew I want to tell you about my recent trip to Joanne Fabric I did a thing here that I am weirdly proud of and I think you're one of the only people who would even appreciate it I you know you know cord management and cable management is just it's one of the it's one of the number one challenges in this podcast again and as you know I've been setting up this the studio that I'm in here and so I had a chance i had a fresh start basically like i had a chance to just start from scratch and just say like what would i like this world to look like in terms of cord and cable management and i've also got this sit stand desk and i do actually change the height of it a lot of days like i'll be doing live wire from here later it will be at one hikes i'll be sitting as you know andrew as i established last week i'm standing right now as i talk to you and so it's a little hanky with the cords i can't tape the cords down too tightly because they have to be able to go up and down by a difference of maybe six to eight inches depending on the height of the desk and also there's just a lot going on here and also the my desk goes up against a big window so if you're standing in the yard looking this way and i have cords everywhere you could see that so what i did was i went and i bought i measured and i bought a had them cut for me a section of black draping fabric like you'd put maybe on a table if we were doing tbtl at the neptune they might put it around the front of the table i i got one of those and i put it all around like one two three sides of this sit stand desk so not the part that i'm standing at oh i can actually even do that i didn't even think of

that but the sides and the front have this black fabric hanging down that i velcroed so i can take it off and put it back on a velcro to the edge of the sit stand desk and when you walk in here you don't see a thing related to cord management and if you're standing outside all you see is this nice black drape like i've i'm so excited about this like the velcro i'm most impressed

with the velcroing idea that wouldn't have occurred to me maybe and that is uh that's really uh ingenious design there i know it worked and usually my ingenious plans fail so hard did you cut and like sort of hem this stuff did you just find this stuff find stuff of the right length how did you affix the and i'm not going to say velcro because that's a brand name i'm going to say how did you affix the hook and loop fasteners to the um to the fabric is it just sticky

Yes, I bought the kind that is, you know, actually both sides of the Velcro or the, excuse me, hook and loop technology are both, they're both sticky. So, and I just cut little sections and I, it's not hemmed and it would be nicer if it was. So it's, the fabric itself is doing the job. It is a little bit like, if you were to look at the extreme edges of the fabric, you could see that it's like, it's been cut by like a nice pair of scissors by the fabric person at Joanne. And it's not like I didn't go to all the trouble of hemming it and everything and making it super duper nice. But it's for right now doing the job. Mostly what it means is that the guys that are working here, not today, but at some point, and hopefully for the rest of their lives, the guys that come out here and work. I had this weird thing in my mind, which was like, these folks, to the degree that they understand that I do a podcast, it must just be a weird thing in their mind to be like, this guy? okay so his job because they're like we've met him we've talked to this guy they're paying him to talk people are paying to listen to him and so it became somehow important to me that the appearance of this studio I'm in look legit to the people that are coming here to do work so as to somehow solidify the legitimacy of me as a broadcaster I don't know if that makes any sense the idea of these guys building a deck on the side of my house and then looking up and just seeing this wild tangle of cables and them thinking, huh, this doesn't seem real legit. One of the first things I did was went to join Fabric and got this black material so that if Jason is out there working, and Jason who gave me an awesome John Prine poster that matches my tattoo, by the way, which is a whole other story. If Jason looks up here, he goes like, yeah, it looks legit. I guess maybe this guy is a professional podcaster.

I can't say I can't find anything in my life that I can't can relate to with that specific thing i think people are just like like i haven't i haven't you know these next door neighbors the window is open all the time during the summer i'm sure my neighbor kelly has heard me having one-sided conversations with you i don't know if she just thinks i'm on the phone a lot i'm sure they have heard me and genevieve like doing after these messages i don't know if they would make the i don't know if they would make the connection that we're doing podcasts but i feel like at this point they must and also at this point it just doesn't seem that strange to me and I'm not trying to make it everybody's got a podcast thing but I just sort of feel like everybody feels like pretty comfortable with that conversation but going to cable talk here for a second was I telling you this on the show the other day as talking to somebody this is a feeling I've had for a long time and I don't know if the Germans have a word for it or not I feel like they should but like yeah there's that there it is there's that feeling when you are moving into a brand new studio or rebuilding it like when I came back from doing the shows in your parents' basement for a week and I stripped down my entire studio then had an opportunity to put it back together and maybe even do some more cable management, some more responsible cable management. But like, there's this moment where you take out all of your hardware first and you set it as, you know, you arrange it the way you want it. Your audio board's over here, little headphone amp over here, couple computers, couple of DAWs, like you got all your stuff set up and you're like, this isn't so bad. Like, I always think that I'm always like kind of, you know kind of in a tangle of cords but really this isn't too bad now let's just slowly start plugging things in and you plug in a couple of things you're like okay yeah no this is still pretty neat and then it's like oh god no i need there needs to be an in and and out of this oh damn and then the next thing you know it's like i'm looking down now and i'm getting itchy looking at all my cables like i just feel like there's i mean someday there will be a world where you can have a setup like this or probably way more simplified than what what i have in my stupid studio that'll all be wireless and i don't think i'm going to be alive to see that day

oh there's no way you or i will be alive for it but our great grandchildren when they're podcasting they will they will uh they will have that sort of you know clean nice wireless look going on i'm telling you get a drape yeah no i do like that and by the way i didn't mean to make

you feel bad by asking if it's hammed i was just i know that you wouldn't you're not somebody who would stand for having a ragged edge or something so i just wasn't somewhere in between like as nice

as it could be and also hella raggedy yeah you know what i mean like probably not hell yes i'm sure no not hella raggedy sorry i went too far with that yeah it's it's it's if i have if i was a little bit more detail oriented i would have i would have hemmed it or even maybe had them hem it there on which i'm sure is a service they provide um but uh but it's so it's it's if you look real closely you'd be like yeah this is a little rough but it's but it's also not like better than you know in tatters or something yeah it's it's it's it's making me happy though because it it does it does have the effect of every time i walk into this room i don't just see like a rat's nest i mean i do currently have a it's a little rat's nestier than i want it to be because i've been going through some technical times here and i've been like switching between computers trying to do various jobs and um that means i don't have oh the other thing that i did real quick and then we should move on is well we got to hear about why the cat's mad at you of course well that's what i'm moving on to sorry mcdonald's you might get booted yes yet again um is uh i might be curious to get your take on this andrew so i was in in this room that i'm in it still doesn't have there's going to be a bookshelf there's going to be a sleeper sofa there's gonna be a lot more stuff in this in the studio slash adu that will absorb sound um but when i first got in here i was a little bit worried because it has a poured concrete floor i was worried that was a little bouncy a little live in here and you set it up and i know you love

your views but you wouldn't usually set up a microphone situation in front of a big plain

glass window right right except for at my old place in portland i was also in front of a big window and it seemed okay but i'm with you yeah i don't think that this would be the ideal so i thought well you know one thing i could do is the surface of this desk that i'm working off of is like bamboo so it's just basically like imagine like hard wood so i went and i went to that same joanne and i bought this big section of like like kind of acoustic wool that's the roughly the the the size of the desktop and i had them cut that for me custom and i put it down so that it so that the surface that i'm that the computer the surface that everything is on is actually soft That's smart.

That's nice.

And I think it's helping a lot with sound. But this is the other thing that's crazy. Speaking of hook and loop technology, what it effectively is, is the soft side of a Velcro deal. Oh, yeah. So what I'm doing now, like, so, okay, so, like, my cable that goes to my computer I'm talking to you with, what I have are these little strips. I have the hook, right? I have the...

strips of the hook and I just put those down and then I strap the I basically what I can do is I can lock any cable down I need anywhere and then move it like it's not like I'm taping it and untaping it it's like all I do is use these little velcro strips and again sorry I use that advisedly and and what it means is I can totally manage my cables and cords and then I can also move them and it takes like no time shit and I didn't even like this I I stumbled upon this like this was not my plan going in but it's like and you're the only person andrew who would appreciate it makes me so happy like when i'm like putting a new cord somewhere and then i just and i can now lock it down on the table but then move it very easily and there's no like goo or anything it's

like this is uh this is really working out this is literally the closest i've ever come to having Phone sex From maybe the most

Body thing Andrew's ever said on the show Directly into thanking The people who paid for it That joke's on you, donors I mean literally, you picked up the tab On this joke, thank you to daily donors like Kristen Myers in Seattle, Washington, United States.

Oh, yeah, I included the country in this one.

I like this because I see we had somebody not in the United States this day. Thanks. Kristen, though, is in the United States, in Seattle, Washington, United States. Jason Clarendon is in Tacoma, Washington, United States. And then up north in the Everett area, home of the Everett Seagulls basketball team, at least that's what they used to be i bet they still are yeah why would you change that that one doesn't seem like uh there's any reason one would need to change it uh that's where chris anderson is supporting the program thank you chris then kelsey or chelsea shriver is in vancouver british columbia international majorly sorry i tried to take a sip or is it i tried to take a A chip of coffee, which I also just spilled everywhere. I was, Andrew, I'm... Did you spill it all over your hook-and-loop tabletop? No, but I spilled it on my new Ruggable rug system, which is not what I call my toupee, for the record. Remind me, like, in subsequent shows, I've got a tight 20 minutes on Ruggable as a company. Okay. But I was proud of this. I bought a coffee, a travel-like coffee mug. It's weird. Those are the kind of things almost all of us probably have 15 of in our life unless you continue to get divorced and move homes then you can find yourself in the very weird position in modern america as i did of realizing i don't have a thermos type you know like insulated travel cup that i can take coffee in and like you're like

i don't i haven't been to any conferences i haven't gone the pandemic right right i mean And for real, like, this is something that you find that you don't buy. Like, I'm thinking about the thermal mugs in my life. Veeves and I both have two old school broadcast coffee travel mugs that we absolutely, I mean, like, I got an apologetic email from Genevieve the other day saying, I am so sorry. I think I lost one of my, one of the broadcast travel mugs. And I said, actually, I think it's in the dishwasher. And she was so, so grateful because we have two of these things. I don't think they make them anymore. And they're wonderful. But again, a gift. And my other thing is a Too Beautiful to Live travel mug that I'm drinking out of right now. Like, I don't think I've ever had to go and buy a travel mug. They come into your life. Wait, we made a Too Beautiful to Live travel mug? It was your idea. It's the one that's just, like, black, and there's nothing on it except for Too Beautiful to Live in sort of a jaunty font or kind of a bubbly font. What? This was totally your idea. I'm drinking out of it right now. God, I could have used one of those. somewhere between the little like the small little single cup like the broadcast ones but not one of those huge it's a nice mid-sized I can't believe you don't remember that I mean I swore you used

one for a while I'm I might have but what I the other day realized because I was driving into I was driving into Portland a bunch last week and each morning I'd like get I have to put my cup of

coffee in just a straight up mug and oh driving around with driving with like is there anything more precarious so my friend Paul used to do he'd come in I mean he wouldn't drink and drive but if I were driving somewhere in my little Toyota Tercel on a Saturday morning he'd come into the car with just a mug of coffee that he had put some of that what is the um not not the Irish cream but he was like a Kahlua man he would come in with his like just coffee and Kahlua and I would drive around Boston and it just made me so uncomfortable Thank you.

Him just drinking from a mug with no lid on it. Made me uncomfortable. I'm like, and also I live on a top of a windy hill. So it's like I'm going around these blind corners and I'm trying to like manage the like surface tension of this coffee. So I realized the other, well, yesterday I was at Target and I was like, I'm getting me one of these, I'm getting me a thermal, you know, insulated coffee thing that I can take when I need to go places and have my coffee. and I thought because I don't have a coffee maker here in this studio with me yet because there's a kitchen area that will be installed at some point but it's not there yet I'm actually kind of a far walk from the coffee it's down in the house and so I thought I will fill this and I purposely bought like a pretty substantial mug like or you know it can hold probably like maybe half a pot of coffee or something in it and I thought what I'll do I was standing in the in the target last night i wouldn't say fantasizing about this that's i reserved that for our phone sex time too but i was imagining i was like i can put like half a cup of half a mug or a rather pot of coffee in this and then get it all set up and then just sip on it throughout tbtl like that'll be plenty of coffee for me i don't have to go in at the break i don't have to and it doesn't get cold i was like this is gonna be amazing so i was all excited to do that today and i did and everything was going great until i reached over and knocked it over yeah and luckily it had you know the lid on it so it was just the kind of little opening that you drink through but that still dumped a significant amount of coffee on my new rug now and again we need to thank the donors

we need to find out why your cat is mad at you we know i don't know if we need to talk about mcdonald's or not i want to eventually but um i am interested to know that when you you know brought this huge travel mug of coffee into your studio that you do drink it from the travel mug itself i bring this one into um into my studio here but i also bring a mug and i pour it from the travel

mug into the mug that might not that might be a smart idea the problem is this i feel it would be spillage with this particular design like if i had gotten a thermos like it sounds like maybe you have or something i don't know that's that's actually not about it well the other thing is I should just plug in the coffee maker that I do have. I actually have a coffee maker.

You have one in the little studio. That's pretty fun.

I do, but things become ever more convoluted when you try to talk to me about anything, Andrew. But here's the thing. Our friend, speaking of Broadcast Berry, some years ago, Broadcast Berry was very nice and sent me a really fancy coffee maker because I think I was getting into drinking black coffee at the time, and he was like, well, if you're going to drink black coffee, You should really have high-quality coffee and have it made in a high-quality machine. And he was like, this is the one I like, and he sent it to me, and it's amazing. It's here in this room. But what it means is I either have to make a pot of coffee down in the kitchen in the regular house and then come out here and make a different pot of coffee every day, or I make the coffee out here. Like, I don't know if I can live my life having two different pots of coffee going in two different locations. Yeah, that is interesting. That seems excessive.

Yeah, that is interesting, especially since we record this show around the main coffee drinking time, but also, of course, coffee drinking time. I wish somebody would write a song about this, is when you first roll out of bed. So, yeah, no, that's a legit conundrum there.

Yeah, exactly.

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

All right, back to thanking our donors.

Oh, yeah, wait, should I play some more music? Sure, why not? I wish I had the actual rolling out of bed music, but we'll just go back.

Well, if I were not having technical times, you think I would have, let's see. Yeah, all I have, believe it or not, is Ked Woodley saying this song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world. I don't think I have. Well, let me search under Lava.

Here, I got a 30-second version.

Out of bed with one thing on my mind, just about coffee, drinking time. I know it's stimulating, barista I'm needing, mom come to the rescue, start the coffee brew, just about coffee drinking time, just about coffee drinking time, can't wait to sip my coffee, crave the jet fuel daily.

The most amazing thing about that is that is labeled as short version in my library. That is not a joke. That is a truthful observation.

I love that song so much. Also, you just sent me a photo. It's like you're tempting me. It's this TBTL travel coffee situation, which apparently I was instrumental in the creation of.

You don't remember it, or do you remember it now that you see it?

It looks familiar. I mean, it must have been the same year as the Lunchbox, right? Yes, you know what?

I think so. And you know what? I think we were really distracted that year because we were hitchhiking and I think we didn't maybe like kind of engage with the thank you gifts as much.

much as we did in other years but you're right i think we sort of saw it as like hey you could

throw this in the in the lunchbox and then behind it is a desk bell another thing i don't have currently so oh in the in the photo i'm saying you're tempting me hey we should get out desk bells anyway go ahead i want to also thank caitlin woodleaf of eagle idaho woodleaf not woodley no relation to no no no okay other than they're both just absolutely died in the wool Carolina Panther fans I believe that was why Ked Woodley First got onto our radar I'm surprised to this day that that is A mostly TBTL Discovery

I don't I didn't feel like it was a TBTL discovery I feel like we've stuck with it more than other outlets

Well now that sounds like an insult

No I'm not even Well I guess it is But I'm being honest I feel like everybody was talking about it like At the time No?

Well This is what I mean This thing When Ked Woodley did a rap, he's a Carolina Panthers fan, and he was in his backyard. I don't have the rap. I have this. That's him impersonating a cat from his song, Dominate the Foe. And that kind of made the rounds. Probably it was still in the days of Deadspin or whatever. So that kind of was like a thing like, hey, check out this really enthusiastic Panthers fan. But then I went to his YouTube page. Yes. And then what had maybe 20 views was this thing called Coffee Lava. Right. Which I thought was going to be the next, you know, chocolate rain. I was like, once the internet finds out about Coffee Lava, this is going to become, this is, you know, this is going to become a big deal. And it never did. Only on TBTL.

No, you're right. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. You're right. The Dominate the Foe definitely got a lot of viral attention. But yeah, the Coffee Lava did not. This is a bad sound.

Carolina Panthers with sharp teeth and claws. We grow to win this game. We call pros with balls. our offense and defense so intense your team will be the losers if you got a lick of sense you dig the nfl my lyrics and my rhymes you eat up what i'm saying spit and fly hip hop lines

it's an interesting camera angle he's got the camera on the ground and he it's it's pointed don't even play that that is going to make people long in the backfield in a pistol formation i guess

This is the one that has a bunch of audio. I just say, are we throwing down, we're throwing down like sort of hype songs for football teams that we've kind of maybe had some good natured fun with, but also now have become part of the fabric of our brains.

You know, I got an email from, I think our pal listener Lee over the weekend, just saying, hey, I know you guys are busy, but if you happened to do a no point conversion, I wouldn't be mad at it. And of course there's a lot of baseball stuff going on too. I don't know.

As far as I know, I don't think we have a team anymore.

No, I think actually you're right. There was a lot of baseball stuff going on. I don't want to talk about it, but I was at Saturday's game. Let's see, you were at Friday's game. Yes, we really dominated the zone of watching the Mariners lose. But I did not realize, I mean, this is a dumb realization. I didn't realize that it's another one of those, like the L.A. fans take over the stadium. and like 90% of them I've I've spent more time in LA than 90% of the people there there was one guy behind me who was like getting a little bit more and more obnoxious like kind of making fun of um I said I'm not going to talk about it making fun of uh the walk-up music for Jared Kelnick being take me home uh West Virginia and he's like you're in Washington you're in Washington and I finally couldn't take it anymore I turned around I'm like oh yeah what part of what part of LA are you from he's like Linwood I'm just like I'm not even joking that was a true story So anyway, and then when they ended up clinching, when they won, which, you know, good for them, they're a better baseball team, and then celebrated clinching the division, I told my buddies who I was there with, I was just like, I'm out of here, love you guys, see you later. And I was like, I'm not going to take a party of four and try to meander out of this stadium while this other team, you know, most of them from Renton, you know, the Renton neighborhood of L.A. are celebrating their team that they picked out of a goddamn catalog. Anyway, I had a bad sports weekend.

There was a similar experience on Friday night that I had. I didn't have any run-ins, but I was just like, I did not realize there was going to be that many people wearing Dodger blue at the Mariners game. You know who would never stand for that? Joanne Stevenson of Cheviot, Canterbury, New Zealand.

Cheviot. Now, if you'll recall, Joanne was a Blur's Day shout-out last week, and I think I went with Chevois, which is probably wrong. I don't know.

My only knowledge of that way that is said is because there's a neighborhood in L.A., Andrew. I don't know if you've ever been there, called Cheviot Hills.

Oh, okay.

And I once interviewed a woman in Cheviot Hills who her family had been living in Austria.

when she was very young and they were Jewish and they had to flee because of the Nazis and they had had all of their possessions taken away. I think this might have been her father's had a painting by Gustav Klimt called the Adele Bloch Bauer painting. And she had, this woman, had finally, like through legal means over the course of hundreds of years, not really, but like 50 years, had gotten awarded basically by a court the right to get this like incredibly valuable i don't know 50 million dollar painting back into her family that had been her families all along and had been taken by the nazis

wow she lived in cheviot hills oh okay i forgot what we were talking about and what was great

about her too by the way was that i showed up at her house at like nine in the morning to interview her and she offered me a scotch and i believe i put that in the story i think her name was maria altman maybe or something but uh cheviot hills is that's that's where i'm getting cheviot from but i don't know i don't know from new zealand yeah i was trying to figure this out

while you're telling the story which is why i was a little checked out there it looks like some some say cheviot cheviot but i don't know i could see that in new zealand too right

right oh nar it's cheviot i am distancing myself i said it wrong i am distancing myself from this bit that's funky thank you i'm sorry joanne hello and welcome to top story all right the story on the cat so far is a little bit again i don't want to get the the listeners super worked up and i'm hoping that i'm kind of i hope that i'm slightly overreacting but basically when we got here last night and i brought bubs inside and uh and let her out of her little carrier well the first thing she did was pretty much ran downstairs and right into one of those holes that i had been meaning to block up

and hadn't blocked up and she has not shown that behavior in the past when she came to visit this

place she did like to hang out under the house in the past okay but there was something about her vibe last night that was not like hey i'm exploring i'm excited everything's fun it was i'm freaked she was in the back corner because i had to get in there with a flashlight be like hey dude it wasn't like she was like exploring and having fun it was like she was trying to find somewhere to cower

weird

which is really not her vibe and really kind of obviously kind of stressful for me yeah and it's not weird

as cat behavior goes that is the most normal cat behavior but it's weird as Bubbles behavior and it's weird that this is a space that she's visited before but somehow felt like things were different

and it is a very different place than when she came here like literally there's a wall of glass that wasn't here before There's, you know, it actually bears very little resemblance to what she was hanging out with me and my dad Also, there was two people here, and I think that might have meant something I think part of it is, I think she really started to bond with Holly Because she's been walking around the house, just going, not like a meow, like a meow But she's going, meow, meow, like a slightly deranged meow

She's looking for her gang

I think she's looking for Holly not that the thing is it's not because she's been staying with Becca for like a couple of months and and when she's not there she's been at Jeff and Darcy's where they've that's a whole friggin cat party Cleo's there you got DJ the standard poodle I mean that's honestly that's Disneyland for her like two awesome humans and then like a menagerie of other animals to just like mess with so she's going from that to then being at Becca's house which is a really nice apartment and a really nice like place for her because uh you know she's got holly there to when she feels like messing with holly she can and you know becca's really good to her so then it's all of that to like this weird kind of still mostly austere construction zone house with a guy who i think she's kind of lost touch with you know which is where this gets a little on the serious side because it's like i don't i was i was asking becca about this last night i was like do you think she remembers i mean i see her all the time but it's like i'd be at becca's house staying over and then we play with the cat and like you know she seems to be like yeah i know this guy but it's like she is regarding me as it's it's like um it's like i was an absent father and it's like something out of a like a dickens book where she was just living her life and then all of a sudden one day this guy showed up from the ward said i am your father i didn't die and now we're going to live in this weird house on a hill and that's kind of what the energy has been for the last i don't

know 18 hours well first of all i just again would like to applaud the fact that all of your analogies today really take take us on a little a little ride on the dark side um also are you sure speaking of that it wasn't becca sort of planting ideas in bubble's head that you are not the preferred parent like maybe this is exactly what you were talking about because that

Bubbles alienation syndrome

Exactly

We can't rule it out at this point But like so last night Finally she came out Of the under the house Thing and was just kind of But very leery and again like you said You said quite accurately this is not Weird cat behavior it's weird behavior for this Cat and so I did get Everything all blocked up down there There will be no getting in There will be no going under the house anymore And then she was in the TV room area A.K.A. the one room that's kind of not a disaster And she's just under the couch That's where she is now Like during most of the show Well, this is what's strange So she sort of vacillates between Wanting to be under the couch Which feels very much like a cat that's freaked out And also obsessively head-butting me So that I'll pet her

Oh, okay, okay

Like these are the two modes There is no in-between That's good though I think that's really good so last night what I'm sorry this is I'm getting I'm gonna get bogged down in too many details but like we do have a lot of people that clamor for more cat content so you're welcome so like last night I finally get her to she comes out from under the couch because I had set up her like food and her water and her like the litter robot and all this stuff and I wanted her to know where that stuff was and she's still just being very tentative and so I'm like I'm gonna go to sleep she knows where her food and water is where she can go to the bathroom this house is safe there are no there's no way for her to leave the house right now I'm upstairs the door is open the bedroom door is open if she wants to come hang out she can but no pressure like I just want to let her kind of figure it out I wake up at like one in the morning and I come downstairs she still hasn't come upstairs and I just go and she's still like she's like under the couch still and I'm like come on man so I have this like feather like thing that she loves like all the main thing she loves in life is this feather on a string deal so i get that it's one in the morning i'm just standing in the middle of the living room like thwacking it so that she comes out but she's still like very cagey so i just lean it against the bottom of the steps and i go back up and go to sleep and probably like 15 minutes later i just feel like on my body which is it's worked she's gone over to where the feather thing is then she's realized oh yeah there are stairs here let me see what's up here oh yeah it's a hallway oh yeah there's a big lummox snoring away in that bed that seems familiar so then she spent the next two hours just walking around on the bed with me just looking out the window and meowing like a maniac and then eventually I think going back downstairs and going to sleep and I caught a couple of hours of sleep so and then this morning it's been kind of like it's weird again oh and while she was meowing like a maniac she was constantly forcing her head under my hand so that I'd be petting her. Oh, that's really sweet. So, like, I think, what I think it is is she's going to need to re-acclimate to this place, to me, and she's already, like, she's less scared now than she was when we got here last night, but the thing that's still a little bit, like, kind of makes me feel sad is she's still kind of regarding me like I might have it out for her, like I might be wearing a fur coat made of other Bengal cats that I've murdered because she's, like, she's very leery around me right now like if i if she thinks i'm going to try to pick her up she wants to dash off and that's not that was not her move you know when we were living together in portland in my apartment we were quite bonded at that time and she would be always she was my little shadow following me around everywhere and now she's a little bit more hesitant i'm hoping that that's something that will eventually subside with a little more time i wonder if she overheard

you talking about that bible story last week about putting animal skins on people's arms so they see more yeah the suit jacob and esau story yeah exactly so i don't know if that's it i will say the fact that she is being um that that she is seeking out pets i think that's really good i think that means that she's um not traumatized i think even the lovely as in being petted on the head being yeah pets i'm sorry the fact that she's seeking a the fact that she wants to bring another pet into the relationship i think it's a good sign no i do i think the fact that she's looking for affection is the word i was looking for i think is a really good sign because i even the most lovey snuggly cat when they're truly freaked out that is that falls down the the hierarchy of

needs that tells you just how needy and overly social this cat is is that oh the other thing that i bought i don't even understand how what my plan for trying to use this is but like when in out buy something is kind of my motto i the other day purchased on amazon a like it's not quite a catio but it's basically like a series of tubes it's all mesh right so it's that kind of stuff like it zips together so imagine like a long mesh tube that has like rigid kind of you know ribs to it and then you zip

that into this like little hut and then the hut has another thing coming off it basically like this giant tube of containment with little houses zipped into it that Bubbles could be in on the deck

on the deck okay that's running around

is the idea I might try to set it up later today if so I'll maybe I'll make a hey dummies video with oh yeah that would be great actually yeah anyway so that's I don't have a great power out to the story other than to say she I two times I tried to like go grab her and bring her out here so she could hang out while I'm doing the show because I also think I want her to be with me so she feels a little bit more safe but both times she was really eluding me and then hiding from me which it stings but I think it's what happens when you turn your back on your cat dad responsibilities like I've been basically doing for the last three months it's

just a lot it's just a lot of sensory input I think and a lot of change and I think that it sounds pretty natural and again she's not she's come out she socialized with you she wants to be

petted like that it's all good and that feather thing yeah that's that's like the bedrock of her life like i i don't care how wigged out she is you start flying that thing around and she's like right back with it like this morning i was like trying to do some show prep and get ready for live wire and i've got like i'm sitting in like a camp chair in my living room because that's my life right now and i'm like typing with one hand and then just like twirling this weird thing with the other hand and she's just like running around like a maniac and then she gets so tired she's like lying on the floor and like you know trying to catch her breath so we do have some moments of normalcy that are still going on here in this cat family all right oh yeah go ahead i don't know no

i was just gonna extend the cat talk never i'm sure there are listeners that wouldn't mind they probably like that even more than mcdonald's talk maybe hey you know what um forget about the cat talk for a second but i brought up that baseball game i went to and it just occurred to me and And you tell me this is something we can talk about McDonald's now and talk about this tomorrow, because maybe this is a bit more of a stem winder. And we're pretty we're you know, we're going pretty long today. But I actually got a foul ball at the ball game, but I did not come home with a foul ball. Do you want to let that be the tease? And I can explain to you what the situation was on tomorrow's show. And you can tell me if what you think of what went down.

Why don't we do it this way? looks like mcdonald's is going to stop letting you get refills so now we handled that story now

wait no no because i haven't read that story and i actually think there's a lot to talk about there i am shocked that that is something that they're losing money on like i would i always assumed that the soda is so ridiculously cheap that they over they overcharge for it so much that like having like refillable soda knowing that you're probably going to technically be having some free free rider issues still though like it wouldn't really actually like like cut into profits it seems like it would just be like not a not even a loss leader but just a a perk yes um well let's

talk about that tomorrow then you okay maybe you'll you can read the story and by the way you're not you're not wrong your instincts are well you're about halfway there on the topic anyway just from

what you said so maybe don't read the story but maybe you could just tell me the story how did you get a foul ball so i'm just interested in what you um think of this so we are sitting up in this really sweet section as they're with my my buddies uh paul and hauser who you know both of those guys um and we are up in in the bleachers but really good bleacher seats that are right by the third baseline foul pole okay um and so ty france mariners first baseman so somebody that i root for hits a foul ball that comes right near our section so like i'm i am row one seat one up in the bleachers so i'm like basically kind of i'm at the edge looking looking down at the the sea of dodgers fans below us right yeah and so i'm in a pretty good position to scramble around because i'm at the edge of the aisle i'm at the edge of the stairs and also i'm in the front row of this section so nobody's in front of me and a foul ball comes our way you know really high pop fly but it's it's foul it comes on the other side of the foul pole and lands kind of if you can picture me i'm sitting in the aisle where the stairs are and i'm in the front row and this ball kind of lands in the second row which would be like one behind us but across the stairs sort of and what happens when a ball who hit the foul ball it was ty france oh yes so ty hits the ball and and then it's like a scramble so it's not like the ball came to me and i caught it or anything it was like kind of a scramble amongst these people who were one row behind me and across the the the aisle with the stairs and while this guy is like kind of fumbling around for it it reminded me so much like in the moment luke i was thinking of you which is really be becoming a problem and the story you tell of being a kid when you were a kid and there's like wrestling and like biting some adult's ankle to get to the theater kicking someone's hand a businessman who had let us sit with him at the kingdom i believe you bit somebody's ankle anyway so this foul ball is basically under literally under this other fan's foot he's stepping down on it and trying to grab it at the same time but i'm able just sort of in the scrambled without even really getting up i don't think or maybe just keeping like one ass cheek on my bench i just kind of i have pretty big wingspan i just sort of reach over underneath his foot he's stepping down and i just yank it away and because i hear at one point he yells like i got it and i'm just like i got it and i just yanked it away but then within a second i mean it didn't even occur to me for more than a moment to keep it because it just sort of maybe i mean i know that that is how it works at a ball game and that's them's the rules you you catch it or you grab it it's yours there's a scramble and whoever comes up with it but in the moment it just seems so unnatural for me to keep it like I ripped it out from under his foot he never had a handle on it a good one I had a better grip but really it came to them he had under his foot so I just kind

of grabbed it and kind of like I won but then I immediately gave it to him and then later on there was some fan like some guy who I don't even know he saw me going to get a beer and I passed him in the aisle and he just said oh there's the guy that he said it to me but he's like oh here's the guy who gave away the foul ball I'm like whatever I think I said you know my friend Polly has an expression it's nice to be nice I was like you know it's nice to be nice he's like you could have gotten 40 bucks for that and I couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not and so I wasn't sure one person dabbed me up for doing it like hey that was a sweet move another person was busting my balls to me it just seems sort of like a no-brainer like unless I'm a child I already

We have a Ryan Court ball at home, you know? I thought the story was going to be you then gave it to a young child. No, I gave it to the guy who basically had it, and I kind of ripped it out from under him. See that? I mean, listen, I'm not saying you did it wrong. I'm saying I don't think you would have been judged morally if you would have kept the ball if you got it from another adult like you did. Now, if that was a kid, that would definitely not have been socially acceptable. And I think my move, if I got a foul ball, even a home run at this point, which I can't imagine a world in which I would catch a home run. I don't think I have the hand-eye coordination for it anymore. Basically, if I get a ball at a Mariners game, I'm giving it to a kid. I'm 47 years old. I've lived a long and happy life. I don't need that baseball in my life as much as like a six-year-old kid who would probably, you know, be super stoked. So that's all. And for me, it's a default setting. If I ever were to get a ball at a baseball game, I'm giving it to a kid. Now, if I had wrested it away from another person roughly my age or another adult, I would not give it back to them. I would give it to a kid.

Yeah, that's true. I don't think there were any, I mean, I guess there were some babies, like, kind of, that my friends noticed that were kind of in our row. No, I would not give it to a baby. Well, not a baby, but there were some young kids or whatever. But basically where I was sitting, again, because I'm in the front row, like, I didn't, there were no obvious children around. And also, most of them were Dodgers fans. And I wasn't going to now this guy who I ended up giving it to, I'd made a really quick like kind of look. He wasn't wearing he wasn't wearing the colors or the stripes of either team. So I'm just like, OK, whatever, I'll just give it to him. If he had been wearing a Mookie Betts jersey, I'm not giving it to him. If there was an obvious kid around or like some kid kind of near me who we've been goofing with or whatever, I totally would have given it to him. But there was it was like I didn't even think about it. It just seemed like the natural thing to do. Like scramble, scramble. Ha ha. Here you go. I got it. Like, I just did it like that, and I didn't make sure that.

How long did you hold the ball in your hand?

Oh, just a few seconds. Like, I had it, though. Like, I mean, I had sole possession of the ball for a few seconds.

Did you make a football move?

I did. Well, the thing is, nobody knows what a football move is. I think I did. I stood up, and I made the Heisman Trophy, sort of like. Okay, sure. Is that what Al used to do in Married with Children? I did that whole thing, yeah. Anyway.

The Heisman, you know what? Actually, I always mix this up. But I feel like Al used to be like he was throwing it. Yeah, that's not the Heisman. And I feel like the Heisman is he's stiff-arming a guy. But I actually think Al might have also done a stiff-arm as he was pretending to throw it. Maybe. Al Bundy football move.

Anyway, yeah. So you're kind of like, hey. Did you make an Al Bundy football move? So you're saying, yeah, you wouldn't have kept it either. But if you were in my position, you would have found a cute kid to give it to. I do think all the kids around me were Dodgers fans. Uncute. And I'm sorry. Yeah. They were unfortunate looking. I really wouldn't do that. I'm sorry if you're a kid I mean I wouldn't wrestle it away from a kid but I wouldn't just like voluntarily look around let's find a kid I don't know if he's wearing a Mookie Betts there's no way I would have done that

totally and I think I don't I probably also would have you know I don't sorry I know that it's part generational trauma it's like if your parents just slap

you in a dodgers outfit and bring you to a game in seattle um it's really did you have much to say in that as a young kid probably not but still i was surprised not to belabor this whole dodgers thing but like so i took the train up on friday and first of all there was like the train station and kelso washington entries it's right out of hogwarts or right out of anna green gables if that's how you roll like it's this tiny little brick building it says kelso train station it's adorable it's run by volunteers you can't even buy a ticket from a human there they have a couple of like kiosks but there's a couple of really adorable little old ladies wearing these green vests and they're like just train enthusiasts i think i was telling you all a little bit about this when i saw you on set on uh on on uh friday night after the game but like you show up and And they're kind of helpful. And then when it was really cute, though, because when the train was finally arriving, this little old lady came in and went like, 804 to Vancouver arriving. Now, she totally got her like, you know, shining time station on. And so anyway, it was it was really fun to take the train. And I was surprised that there was like a number of Dodgers fans in Kelso, Washington, getting ready to get on the train. But I didn't want to make too much trouble. But then when I got to Seattle, of course And really what stung was Saturday morning I'm walking from the hotel down to the train station to go home And as you would imagine It's just everywhere you turn There's Dodgers fans And then this was what was wild to me Last night, maybe now it's just like You buy a certain kind of car And then you see everyone driving the same car Last night, Becca and I took a fairly long walk From her place over to where the Swifts were at the um at that school i swear to you in portland i saw 20 people wearing dodgers gear

and i was just like gross yeah and they're all from the kelso neighborhood of los angeles

i i don't maybe what it is is i actually would i actually think it's possible some of the people i saw in dodgers gear in portland yesterday were actually visiting from la because i think what they might have done is like gone to seattle for one day and caught a game and then well we're in the northwest we'll come on down you know either driving or whatever to portland and check out portland because i was like they're not even playing here why am i seeing so many people in these get-ups and i think it's i think people were making a weekend out of it or something yeah i'm

not saying certainly that nobody there has a real claim to to dodgers fandom i mean clearly there you and also by the way you can sort of get a vibe from some people like you know when you're wandering around the stadium and i'm just kind of like yeah i whatever i'm just like judging people i don't care it's just stupid fandom but you can just sort of like you can just sort of tell who are probably dyed in the wool dodgers fans probably grew up in that area or something and then the people who are just like the guy behind me who literally at one point again this is linwood's number one dodger fan mr obnoxious literally said at one point that's right we own this stadium we own two stadiums one in la and one here to which i then this is the only other thing that i said to him which our more progressive listeners will immediately hear the um the the untruths in what i said to him but it still felt like a pretty good burn in the moment i said well at least we didn't have to steal the land for this one um and that really in which obviously all of the land is stolen but you don't have the specific chavez ravine situation going on where you literally displace people um from their homes for your stadium um and i gotta say possibly killed them And I said that to him, and I turned back around, and then I swear to God, and I did not engage with him anymore after that, but after that, I heard him an inning or two later mumbling, kind of, no saying, like, oh, all land stolen, and you got the Duwamish, and I was just like, and I turned to Hauser, and I was like, I think I got in his head a little bit, huh? because I did not engage after that. I kind of let it go. All I said was, at least this wasn't stolen land, which again, I see the falsehood in that, but it felt like a pretty good burn in the moment.

I think you definitely got into his head. I'm surprised. This guy actually, I find this guy very interesting because A, he admitted he was from Linwood. He admitted. He did.

Did I tell you, maybe I misquoted, he said, I'm just a hater. I'm from Washington. He said, I'm just a hater. And then Hauser's like, where are you from? See,

I give him credit because I'll tell you what, my move in that moment would be let's just say that I'm a Dodgers fan but I grew up by Green Lake but I like but like I'm sensing from you so I'm like that guy I'm in the outfit and you're like what part of LA are you from like I'm sensing that what you're trying to put me on blast over is that I'm not from Los Angeles which is why in immediately I lie to you and go Hollywood born and raised yeah no he knew like I don't like I would never like I would you you could hook me up to the torture machine in the Princess Bride and I would never admit that I'm up from LA because I would know that that was the premise of your statement no he was he knew he knew

what I was getting at but then he was just like kind of obnoxious enough to not give a shit and also like you know like that here's the thing about that game is like it was it was I think 10 innings of you know shut out baseball which is actually like as much as I'm making it sound like it was a bad time and obviously I get way too into my emotions when these teams take over our stadium and and by the way like i honestly truly do believe i mean i've gone to games i have never i've never been to a mariners game i don't think at dodger stadium but i've been to dodger stadium and i don't like root against them or anything like you can enjoy another another team and and their stadium and you can even root for your team but they're you know it's these it's these complete takeovers and literally this guy behind me saying we too we own this stadium i mean like that's the most galling shit and that's what it always feels like to me i was glad to have somebody literally express it so i don't feel like like such a crazy person but um yeah i mean he just was like he totally only he's like no like i'm just here to he was you know he was a dodgers fan who's there to love being a dodgers fan because they're a better team you

know that reminds me of this yard sign that i really hate somebody i don't know half a mile from here seems to have it and it was like it's this kind of person who like so i think that the yard sign it looks like a political yard sign but it just says like what does it say it's basically like this is something like i'm not i'm not voting for either one i'm just an asshole and it says have you seen this around no no i don't think so it's like it's like imagine it's like a yard sign that's supposed to be like if at first glance you'd be like oh well they're supporting one or the other and then they're going like i don't i'm not i'm not running for anything i'm just an asshole that's what it says i'm not running for anything i'm just an asshole and it's like what are you adding to the world with that sign like what is you like like it's just like you just wanted to make people contemplate that bad word while they're driving are you you're basically saying that anyone who is running for office is a bad person i don't know i don't even

get what that means i don't either running like who most of us aren't running for anything exactly

like it's the it's a bizarre thing but that just feels like it's in it's in the neighborhood of being like i'm just a hater like really wow what a sad thing for you that you're like embracing this as your personality trait i'm just a hater i just like i just like rooting for the team that i have no connection to playing against the team that everyone in my life has some at least geographic

connection to here's the other thing that irritated me and this was this is much less about him but it reminded me of something else that really irritated me that made me very mad at uh at the the people running um t-mobile park which is this so first of all this guy this quote-unquote hater this Linwood's biggest Dodgers fan he's got a really he's got a camera there a nice camera with a really long lens on it and I've looked many times at the rules and regulations because I don't want to show up with my camera at T-Mobile Park and have it taken away and this is a longer lens than I even have this is like a telephoto if you want to zoom in on something far away the lens tends to be kind of a longer lens and I know that that thing because it's only supposed to be like I think a lens that can I thought it was no detachable lenses for a while or it might be a lens that doesn't exceed two or three inches great king missile song by the way um and this one is i'm just i you can explain it later on a text chain with phyllis but um i uh anyway so i know that this camera that he's got in there isn't regulation i don't really care i'm not going to tattle like i think that that's kind of a dumb rule but what kind of bugs me is i'm like i wonder how he got it in there and i'm like well he probably just found a gate that didn't really know the rule or care that much right he found a gate agent for him and what that reminded me was is how I already came into the stadium with a bad attitude because of the you know clearly the realization that we were no longer a Seattle ballpark but an LA ballpark but also we had a conundrum where my boy Hauser had a tote bag a tote bag that was open at the top but he had like a seat cushion in there and a like a hoodie and just some of his personal belongings right and I was like oh I don't think you can take that into the stadium it has to be clear bags only now my My friend Pauly has the proper clear bag that you're allowed to bring into the stadium. So we come up with this solution, something that I know that I've done with Genevieve before, which is Hauser carried his seat cushion. He put on his hoodie. He put one other thing in his pockets or whatever. And then he gave the tote bag just an empty. And it was a museum of museums or the museum of museums tote bag, which is like a little Seattle art institution that's going away. So it sort of feels like there's some value there in this little tote bag. he it's he rolls it up canvas tote bag rolls it up and then puts the empty tote bag as a rolled

up device into the see-through bag of polys which is think about the irony of that you're allowed to bring an opaque tote bag into the stadium as long as it's inside of a clear no this is the thing that pisses me off because that should

be fine you would think that the whole point of an opaque bag is like we need to make sure there's no guns or knives or whatever in there but no clearly it's not we folded this thing up it's just a piece of cloth it's two pieces of cloth that are sewed together at the edges with handles like but there's nothing in it it's folded up it's in paulie's bag they don't let paulie bring it in now hauser's already inside the stadium with me so and there's no re-entry and these security guards are taking away this mom bag this museum of museums bag away from paulie and there's nothing we can do about it they're like you're not allowed to bring this bag in we're like but there's nothing in the bag it's just a bag sitting in another bag and they're like you're not allowed to have it and they confiscated it and now he's out a bag that i don't know if he can get again and hauser was way more cool about it than i was i was steamed like isn't that ridiculous what is the point of that rule why are you not allowed to bring a

folded up a bag with nothing in it well i mean the thing about all that stuff that what comes to my mind and we do probably need to start um winding things down today but uh edgefield where this summer i went and saw two different shows including lucinda williams and big thief they have a million ridiculous rules and the people that are enforcing those ridiculous rules are not being paid to um to sort of think creatively you know they've been given their list of things and they're just like there it would be a very i think that i think the thought is it would be a very long day for them if they were trying to really sort out the kind of like actual implications because you're right there's no normal person in their normal life would say like that tote bag is a danger to anybody but it's like they've got the rules what because what i did there um because i wanted to bring oh becca had a tote bag and she had certain things and they were like no you can't have that bag so then i just said all right well let's take it back to the car we took four steps back we took this stuff out i rolled the tote bag up and stuffed it in my sock and we walked right through yep like you know and and then of course we attacked many people with that tote bag so but like that it's just like yeah those rules are those rules are pretty maddening and i'm i'm listen if there's anybody who gets really pissed about like rules that exist for the rules sake like that and are enforced kind of without any real with any real thought behind it i'm that That really makes me mad. I guess I would just say, note to Pauly next time. Put it in your sock.

Yeah, that is true. Or just even literally your back pocket or something. But I thought... Not that that's on Pauly. That's not his fault. No, I mean, it seemed like it would make... And I know I've done that with Genevieve before. I know that I think she had a bag or something.

Right, because depending on the person you get waving you through, it's a totally different... There's the rules, and then there's like, how much does this person care about the rules? It's like a whole thing, and it's part of why all that stuff is kind of BS.

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

Alright A quick email or V-mail Before we get To our next destination

Yes you might have noticed Some new tape From none other than Andy Rooney At the beginning of our show I did catch that Of course there's some Andy Rooney tape of him reading off a whole bunch of tbtl drops you think to yourself well i understand why he'd be a fan of the show but hasn't he left this mortal coil uh years ago and you'd be right about that but we have a listener steven who uh is really good with artificial intelligence um and has been able to recreate these things that sound like andy rooney saying things on our behalf uh what you heard this time though was um well it was andy rooney doing uh the kim cattrall scatting. I read poetry

and sonnets, and he plays the upright bass. Yama ki piebo, sedere fa kebo, in dog Latin he quotes, UJ, sovis, hooray!

So then at the end of that tape, if people know what she says...

We just have a good rhythm together, you know? He sort of feels me out, I feel him out. And

we go for it. Now that tape of somebody who sounds like Andy Rooney doing that, the AI that Stephen I did not play the entirety of that in today's intro, just the beginning. I want you to hear the whole thing, because as Stephen points out in the email that he sent this in, there was some weird glitch in the Matrix near the end, which is really upsetting.

Well, he bit all the he-dogs and winked at all the she-dogs. The town never knew such a hullabaloo as that little dog raised till the end of that day. We just have a good rhythm, you know? he sort of feels me out and i feel him out and uh we go for it that's what the ai did with that

script for some reason that i'm not exactly mitch mcconnell ai no we go for it that is an upsetting

sound and it's i almost wouldn't well because of the context yes and just everything

But it's also... We go for it. I don't know that I would play that if that was actually a human being, but knowing that that is just a robot...

He feels me out and I feel him out. And we just go for it.

We go for it. So anyway, I just wanted to put that in everybody's ears. And that's what I got today. You send me that file. I have no... I can't think of any way that I might use that. Yeah, I'll send it to you. Steven, thank you for creating these things for us. They are a bottomless pit of enjoyment.

They really are. They really crack me. I'm looking forward to cracking up. I haven't cracked up in a while.

Cracking up. We go for it.

All right. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks, everyone, for listening. We are going to be right here tomorrow with another one of these shows. My week just got a lot easier. I was supposed to go to New York. Maybe tomorrow. I don't know if listeners care about this, but I was supposed to go to New York, and suddenly I'm not, which is actually fine. I was going to have to stay in the diciest hotel of all time because it's also the U.N. General Assembly this week, Andrew. Oh. I was, like, in the concur travel tool for CBS being like, how is it that, like, the one-star motel in Weehawken is $900 a night? This is definitely out of per diem for CBS. And then this morning I turned on NPR and they were like, the General Assembly of the U.N. is meeting. I was like, well, that explains it.

That'll do it. The first time we were supposed to go out to the Twin Cities when we were new employees of American Public Media still working for Steve Nelson, the guy who hired us. And he was really embarrassed because our first trip out there, it was a little bit tough to find a hotel room because the poultry convention was in town. And he was like, I promise you, this does not represent the Twin Cities.

So the good news is I'm going to be right back here tomorrow trying to get my cat to love me again instead of flying to New York. So we'll see you then. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Hey, it's very neat. Had to pause the show to say, Woo! More cat talk, please! Ha ha! Power out! Power out!