Muse

Hey, did you find everything you were looking for today? Yes, I did, Kevin. Great. Now, will this be cash or card? I will not be paying for anything today. Got it. No charge. Now, will you be wanting the extended warranty coverage? I won't be talked into any extended warranty. Got it. Now, if you just punch in your e-mail...

Nor will I be punching in my e-mail address. I won't be talked into any kind of Best Buy membership card or charge card.

Right. But we really do need your email to keep you up to date about promotion. Oh, for the Geek Squad. Geek Squad. Not a problem at all. Okay. TBTL.

I say, I say, wait up, dog. Let the fun begin. That's a tune-up, bro. This comes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

Beware of things that cost $1.99. Those are the membership dues for this club that I joined. the columbia house music club turns out that wasn't really even a club it was just a business for making money although it is how i found my favorite band various artists of the 80s what you listening to college music ever heard it what is this guy trying to do is this supposed to be

what bozo's thinking or saying what guy is bozo bozo did it bozo did what bozo did the dub how'd

go. Well, he's going to acknowledge me on Instagram. So I guess you could say it was one of the best conversations of my entire life. Please clap. All right. Hello. Good

morning and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. We are living in the midst of a podcast boom. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Hello, everyone.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we have had a run of really, really spectacular weather, but that comes to an end today as the rain moves in. I like to get wet, though, huh? Training day? But it was a glorious end of September, beginning of October. We've got a glorious episode of the program for you. It's episode 4044. In a collector's series? Let the fun begin. On Friday night, Becca and I were having a little post-show dinner with Avery Truffleman, who is the host of Articles of Interest down there in Eugene, Oregon, after doing LiveWire. And I mentioned that I do this other show. It's called TBTL. We've had our 4,000th episode recently and podcaster to podcaster. She was just absolutely gobsmacked. Because that's a lot of shows. And here we are, actually, at episode 4044. That's amazing. Thanks for making it possible. This is purely listener-supported podcasting. And you're listening to a podcast co-host right now who had, you know, not the greatest sports weekend of all time. Did the Mariners, actually, I can't remember. Did the Mariners make it to the postseason of Major League Baseball? The answer, sadly, is not yes. In fact, our friend, television's own Chris Hayes, pointed something out statistically to me and Andrew that I was shocked to see. And that is just not only did our baseball team not make the playoffs, but they didn't make the playoffs in a way that is particularly sad making and also something they've done a lot the last few years. So we may talk, I mean, talk a little bit about baseball, but this is not a conversation about sports. This is a conversation about my father, Walter Burbank. So we will get into that. Also, it is difficult to run a small-town print newspaper. Oh, shit. Things are hard. Never more evidence than by, let's see, page. This is from the C section of this weekend's Colombian newspaper here in southern Washington. I'm going to read you what Craig Brown from the newsroom had to say about some recent errors at the paper. uh speaking of bunk journalism um a guy at slate magazine wrote a piece the headline is why we keep putting up with martin short what an idiot basic premise being martin short is not funny and we should all stop pretending that he is and um that's a it's a scalding hot take uh which we will uh offer our scalding take on his take coming up on today's program and we'll talk to this guy the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of

the tall ships i want to point out his comedy bona fides are absolutely unquestionable no one would read a think piece asking if this guy is funny please welcome god's one and only voice of comedy he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke please do me a favor. Do me a solid. Ask me why I'm feeling so good about myself and where I ended up in life

today. Andrew. Yeah. Why are you feeling so good about yourself and where you ended up in life

today? Wow. What a strange, large question to start the show with, Luke. But thanks for asking. You know, maybe one reason I'm feeling good today is because about an hour and a half ago, I woke up from a dream in which I was a total loser. I know that sounds weird, but I woke up from a dream where i was moving like moving apartments or moving homes or whatever which is kind of a recurring thing in my dreams i think but in this one it was like halfway through the move it occurred to me oh i'm moving back in with my other parent and then i was like oh i guess i've technically lived with my parents my whole life how have i never noticed that before and i was like wow i'm 35 i should move out here and then i was like you're not 35 you're 46 and man, you haven't graduated from college yet. And I was like, yeah, I've just been going to classes waiting for somebody to tell me when I graduate. I should look into that. And then suddenly I was just like, I'm 46. I've never lived on my own. I have been going to school this entire time and not graduating. What have I done with my life? And then I woke up and I was like, wait a second. I graduated.

I've always said bad dreams are generally a better thing to experience than good dreams because when you come out of a bad dream like that you're very relieved and when you come out of a good dream you're generally kind of sad now there are different versions there's like you know a dream you might have about somebody that you love and you lost them and it was comforting to kind of see them in some context and then there are also bad dreams where you wake up and you're physically like your body is still kind of sort of you know keeping the trauma of the dream that's not a good feeling yeah but like if we're talking about something a bad dream on the level of i never moved out of ohio out of my parents house in ohio or whatever that's a good kind of bad dream to have because i mean you're walking on

sunshine today i am and you know it was just strange the way i had the realization in the dream it's like i was going along my life feeling fine and then suddenly having this realization Because I never felt like, oh, I've been living with my parents this whole time. And now I feel like, hey, maybe I'm insulting people who are 46 and been living with their parents the whole time.

Everybody gets to do whatever feels right for them. But it didn't feel good to you to have that realization.

You have your dreams. I have mine. Now, here's the reason why I think I had this dream. And this was a dream that is kind of front of mind for me because I had it right before I woke up. I'd probably already woken up and then turned over, went back to sleep for a few minutes, and then had this dream. And I think the reason why my subconscious brain is feeling like maybe I'm a bit of an underachiever as I was sleeping there was because I plan on underachieving so hard today, Luke. Can I tell you about what my plan is? Yes. God, this is a rollercoaster story.

You woke up feeling really good about how you are achieving things in life, but your ultimate plans are to radically underachieve.

Oh, yeah. Well, I'm feeling good now. take the rest of the day off yeah exactly it's like when you go to the gym for the first time in a year and then you come back home you're like god i'm so good i'm gonna eat everything

in the refrigerator um i my doctor mentioned something about that to me really what how so well just briefly i was telling him that i generally intermittent fast but then at night i eat many more calories than a lot of people just eat throughout the course of the day of like three relatively balanced meals and he said yeah the idea of intermittent fasting is really calorie restriction yeah and so if if you're having a lot of calories at night you're kind of defeating the purpose and i said yeah yeah i know yeah i mean the sad thing is in some ways

i mean not to the extreme but in some ways i kind of do something similar to you on some days where i kind of forget to eat or i'll just have a little snack here or there again not to the extreme that you do but my habit is just to like get legitimately hungry late at night and that's when i go crazy

I don't want to talk about how many nutty buddies I ate last night after my dad went to bed, Andrew. Like, what is happening to me?

See, that sounds so good. See, I do want to tell you about my day. It'll only take two seconds. But I was thinking about that last night. Okay, we're going to call this segment the Honesty Chest. And it's when I get things off my chest that are honest. And I shouldn't be telling everybody. But I made a really nice dinner last night of a roasted chicken. And that's going to come into play here in a moment. because I'm taking that chicken out for a walk later, and I want to tell you about it. And I ate some of it, and it was good, but then around midnight, I started to get a hankering, and what I had a hankering for was something sweet. Now, I don't usually keep sweet things in the house. Genevieve will have some sweet things in the house. have a sweet treat here or there but like we don't have any boxes of cookies or my god nutty buddies laying around and maybe part of that is because it's like well if it's there I'm going to eat it and that's not good for me so what I do instead is I start making some I life hack desserts for myself at midnight so last night I'm sitting in front of what we do in the shadows like scooping a bunch of peanut butter and jelly on top of club crackers I love a cracker there's Nothing more useful, nothing more youthful, I think, than eating Club Crackers. Lifehacker, buddy! So, and I did, this morning as I woke up and I saw the empty peanut butter jar in the sink, I wondered to myself, should I just keep Nutty Buddies around? Like, what are we doing? Yeah, you were kind of like, what are we doing here?

Great point. You were, you were making an artisanal Nutty Buddy.

Yeah, I mean, sort of, yeah, or, or some sort of a, isn't there a little Debbie where there's Like, jelly rolled up into white cake?

I don't know if I have ever had any Little Debbie product in my life.

Oh. Oddly enough. As opposed to a hostess?

It wasn't a big thing. I don't feel like it was a huge thing in the Northwest when I was growing up. And then by the time I was an adult, I feel like you don't take on new snack foods as an adult. Like, you don't start drinking Yoo-Hoo at 30. You don't start eating. You don't tug on Superman's cape. and you don't start eating Little Debbie's unless you grew up with it. Like, I grew up eating, like, Twinkies.

Oh, that's not a – see, I kind of – I use Little Debbie to categorize all those things. Twinkies are hostess, huh?

Yeah. Oh, no, Little Debbie is a whole other brand and lifestyle.

Yeah, you know, I just sort of – I think of it as, like, the Franco-American versus Chef Boyardee sort of. Oh, sure. I was a Chef Boyardee family, by the way.

I don't think I realized those were two different people. See, yeah, right?

And meanwhile, we have little Debbie and Hostess going toe-to-toe here, and I wasn't sort of realizing that.

Okay, so you're going to be incredibly unproductive today. What are you going to be unproductively doing?

And you know part of this, right? So you and I were talking on Friday that Monday Night Football is featuring the Seahawks, or as I like to say, has is featuring the Seahawks tonight. So this will be the first Seahawks game that I can actually sort of plan for. Like, OK, block off this time, sit down, crack a beer, you know, prepare some sort of junk food, whether it's from my freezer or delivered or whatever. Like I am going to football tonight is my first plan. But oh, my Lord, Luke, it gets so much better than that, because the reason I made a dinner of a roast chicken last night was sort of because roast chicken sounded good, but way more because we're out of chicken stock in the freezer. And so I'm like, oh, there's a crisp fallness in the air. I'm going to roast a chicken, and now, right now, waiting for me in the freezer is a bag full of, like, celery and carrot cuttings and various herbs that I threw in there last night, and another bag contains the chicken bones, and I'm going to combine those as soon as we're done recording, because I'll let that stuff simmer for hours, my friend, and that is going to be simmering away in the kitchen, making the entire house smell like my grandparents house while i finish up my work and prepare for uh 5 20 i've been i've been stocking all night for a monday i've been stocking all day for a monday night and uh and that's part of the plan and i've been using this uh this uh what do you what do you call it my composter my electric composter no that's low me that's a diet product they hawk on npr oh oh that's right It's not a diet, Luke. It's a lifestyle, right? Sure, sure. But anyway, and so that's been a lot of fun. And that is kind of like making stock. It takes like 16 hours, and then you get a product you're happy with. No, I'll try not to. But I just sort of feel like today is my day of doing things very slowly and just waiting until 520.

Two elements of this. One, I think it helps that the weather is kind of crummy today. Yeah. Like if it was, if we got one of those, you know, like sort of extended summer days where if it was like 80 today, it wouldn't feel as good to be filling the house Now the thing is, soon it will be all gray and glum and I will be, you know, seasonally depressed from it But like the first day that it's kind of like, eh, but you're making a delicious smelling, you know, soups and stocks and things like that And then football is happening tonight. And the other thing for you is because on Sundays you have your volunteer gig, you haven't had a day like this where you can really just, like, once your work is done, just get all hyped for the game. And so it's probably extra special to you.

Yes, and that's exactly it. And so I'm just, like, really looking forward to it. And I do have a couple of small things to do. It's funny. I don't want to kind of get into them. They're not a big deal. But I had a few things on my to do list the past couple of weeks that, again, not huge deals.

sit down to take care of but just sort of like mentally big deals and um I keep on having this feeling like oh I gotta get to that stuff I gotta get to that stuff and I woke up this morning I'm like wait you did most of that stuff like you just have one or two other little things to do but like I keep on thinking like Monday's gonna hit really hard and then I'm like wait no it's Monday it's actually not hitting hard it's hitting so soft and uh and I feel good about my soft Monday but But that's why I think maybe I was having this dream where it's kind of like, Andrew, you're too soft, you know, like you're you're not doing you're not taking advantage of the life that the dear Lord gave you.

I'm I'm looking forward to tonight as well. Although. So here's the thing. Gosh, I have so much to talk to you about. None of it's interesting, but there's a lot of it.

Oh, really? How are you going to follow up that, Luke?

Oh, believe me, dude, I'm living in your world. Like, part of why I was probably able to, like, well, I'm going to tell you how I was able to sort of, like, deal with my sadness around the Mariners baseball team this weekend. And this isn't a particularly compelling story. It's just I had this moment where, you know, they lost on Saturday, and that eliminated them from getting into the playoffs. And the thing that I mentioned at the top of the show is it turns out that that's losing on one of the last two games of the season and not getting in the playoffs is something that pretty rarely happens to teams other than our team, which seems to do it every year. I guess I just thought that was kind of how it goes down, but that is not statistically the case for most teams. We have a special way of getting right up to the edge of glory and then not doing it. But I was so bummed about it. I couldn't even muster a snarky joke in our tech chain. I believe I just said, I feel very sad about this or something. But my dad was in the other room. Now, my dad has an interesting relationship with sports. He's moderately interested, but he has no idea what's going on at any time and always becomes distracted. He's not a guy who's going to sit down and watch an entire game. And I had this moment. My dad was in the other room doing something, some kind of work thing. And I had this moment of being like, I want to go tell him how sad I am about this, but also he's not going to really get it. And then I felt like a moment of being like, why can't we share this? And then I walked out into the other room where he was doing his thing, and I looked at this blissfully unaware person who I love so much and who I get to hang out with on this project. And I just thought, okay, so some guys that wear some laundry that I root for, as Seinfeld famously said, didn't do a thing. But my dad is here who I love, and I'm hanging out with him. And it just like it was I mean, this is kind of corny, but it was just like this perspective shift. And I don't like if my dad wouldn't have been here, I would have probably been walking into the Columbia River with rocks in my pocket. But there was just something about about realizing how great my life is and also how special this time is with my dad compared to this thing, baseball, that I've made into this whole thing in my mind. And it was it turned out to be a really good thing for me because it just kind of just put it all in perspective. So that was good. It also helped that the Seahawks were playing tonight, Andrew. I still had Monday night football to look forward to. Now, the thing about the Monday night football menu here is I've been really struggling with something, which is I have been seeing recipes left and right for a chicken and white bean chili that looks incredible to me. I feel like chicken and white bean chili is having a moment right now of people making it. i'm seeing it in the new york times i'm seeing it on tiktok it looks and i would imagine smells so good this time of year like it's i basically want to create exactly what you're talking about

at your house and i do eat the occasional you know i eat meat now now and then not a lot of it but i had something happen the other day that has me struggling which is i was driving up i5 and i drove by one of those big i'm not trying to bum anyone out including you the bone collector but But I was driving on I-5 and I went by one of those big old trucks that's got 8 million chicken cages on it. And you know you're getting near one of those trucks because there's like feathers already flying out of it. And I drove by it and I looked in and a live chicken, Andrew, looked into my soul. And I was like, God damn it. I was going to give myself, I was going to do one of my, you know, a few times a year meat eating things for this exact reason, for exactly what you're talking about. I was like, I'm going to, I was going to go to Walmart and buy a crock pot. And I was going to follow one of these recipes and make a really savory, delicious. I mean, I love a good chicken based soup type situation. I know that's not exactly what a chili is, but so I don't know what to do because I really want to make that thing. But I, I literally like, I actually walked into the store the other day with the intention of buying a roasted chicken. And when I closed my eyes, I saw the face of the, by the way, this chicken is not remembering this. experience the way I am first of all this chicken's probably not alive but if it is it has no flipping idea the impact it had on a random podcaster but it really it got to me so I want to make a chicken chili but I can't kind of can't bring myself to do it I'm not telling you what to do but I feel

like of all of the foods that is adaptable to a vegetarian or vegan you know alternative chili is a great one I mean I'm sure if you I'm sure you could look up a white chili recipe that is still in maybe like you can follow the times recipe and just like pass up the chicken and

maybe I want the chicken that's the problem I don't like I'm actually not you know when I used to be much more of a low-carb American I was getting really into making chili like on game days because but when I say chili I mean very minimal on the beans I really like a big giant thing of ground beef that's all seasoned and has been simmering all day and then you throw some sour cream on there. I know not your move. You throw some cheese, some raw onions. That is a delicious bite to me. And it's also pretty much all protein. I've never been a big fan of a chili that's mostly bean related. So, and it's something about the visual of this white bean and chicken chili. The chicken looks so good to me. So I don't know what I'm going to do today. I guess I'll give you a report tomorrow, but I mean, I really want to fill my shabby cottage with all those good smells that you're talking about and also i i tell myself the chicken if i walk into that sorry i'm just rambling here but if i walk into that safeway and i go let's say that i want to i just go buy it like a chicken you know the kind that's like not been cooked yet that chicken is not going to be less dead because i don't buy it like whatever happened to that chicken happened to it it's sitting there right and me bringing it home and cooking a succulent football day meal for me and walt it's not going to change that specific chicken's existence it's already there it's already not alive but it's part of a larger thing that i'm still kind of grappling with

i don't know what to do and also i mean well and obviously you see the logical fallacy in that as well too i mean yes it's there because there's a demand for it and so exactly if you stopped and then i stopped and then everybody stopped there would be less of a demand and there'd be less dead chickens i mean obviously um i want to go back to something though okay and you know i told you i'm not going to apologize for the things we want to talk about on the show anymore but i'm still conscientious and i try believe it or not to make the show as listenable as possible for everybody i'm going to dip my toes back into some baseball talk that you uh brought up a second

ago if there's a day that i think we're allowed to do it it's probably today because that was for the city of seattle i think and the people who care that was well a it's the end of the season

and b it was a big emotional thing it definitely was and i'm going to say this in a way that you don't have to know anything about baseball in order to understand what i'm talking about here i mean you need to you need to be invested in some sort of fandom i guess so if you just don't ever care about anything silly like sports or insert pokemon insert the denver opera whatever it is your thing sure i mean i don't let's see actually when i get to the end of this i'm going to do an assessment and figure out if opera applies to this as well you're just really you just really want that gladiator wait how are they dressed in opera times you know what let's talk about opera let's not talk about brunhilde okay so you mentioned that there's a sort of painful quasi trend of the mariners being sort of in contention or i guess factually in contention for the postseason right up until the postseason, meaning that the last games of the season are very, very important. And in almost every case except for one notable case, the Mariners have dropped the ball at the end, sometimes literally if you're Teoscar Hernandez. And I was thinking about that as somebody who tends to root for teams that are underdogs, and there's a reason why I fell in love with the Mariners, and it's probably because they do shit like this because they tear my heart out. And I am so broken that I think that that's what fandom means.

I believe what you said on Friday when they won was, I'm ready to be hurt again.

Oh, that was, I believe, that was your brother, I think, preparing for it. Oh, okay. He was at the ballpark, and we were even winning when he texted that. Well, he echoed, I think, your sentiment. Yeah, exactly. Just kind of like you prepare yourself, you brace yourself for this sort of letdown. And so our friend, as you mentioned, Chris Hayes, sent us a stat via the old website called Twitter. And I think it said something like only eight teams have experienced what the Seattle Mariners have experienced, meaning losing so close to the deadline, basically, and falling out like in the last one or two games of the season. And only one other team has experienced it twice since 2014. So this is a rare way of breaking fans' hearts, in other words, taking it to the end of the season and then not making it to the postseason. but

But I've been thinking a lot about that. I was thinking about it before I even saw the staff because here was my experience on Saturday. This is the day that they ended up losing a game that basically ended it all for their season. There was a chance if they won this game, they'd still go on to the last game of the season competing. But it was the second to last day, and the Mariners pooped the bed, as they say. And I was at the Eagles watching the game with Genevieve. Very few people were there. Somebody set up, Darren set up the big screen for us on the projector. So Vives and I had this huge room to ourselves. We're watching this game. It would have been amazing if the Mariners had won. I went into it expecting them to lose to protect my feelings. But while I'm sitting there watching this, a friend of mine texts me about something. And I was shocked to see that it wasn't baseball related. Because in my universe, everybody was focusing on baseball in that moment. And she's a big baseball fan. she's a guardians fan and i was like oh this isn't about baseball and then i was like why why why isn't jessica watching like the the guardians like they must be in contention too and then and i knew that they weren't going to win their division i knew that the twins are winning that division but i just assumed that the cleveland guardians were also making a push for the playoffs late in the season and i looked it up and i was like oh no it baseball wasn't on jessica's mind because the guardians were eliminated like two weeks ago like they were out of playoff contention and so my question for you i think it's obvious now is is it more painful to have the last two games of the season mean something and then come up with nothing as opposed to essentially saying goodbye to your team's baseball season two weeks or three weeks before the end of the season so you're just watching them grind out game after meaningless game in a certain way we and i'm not trying to be that mariners fan that like kind of says hey we did better than last year i hope everybody had fun you know like right we need to hold our team accountable we need to hold the front office accountable i don't think i need to like i don't think i need to prove to the listeners how much this matters to me and how much it shouldn't but it does matter but in a certain way we got way more meaningful baseball than a lot of other

teams out there true it's the you know is it better to have loved and lost uh won't get fooled again uh as the bard once said uh i think that it's better that they were playing meaningful games because i used to say when our baseball team was real bad that all i wanted was for them to make it interesting now what really helped with this was the and now we're getting into the weeds of baseball they changed the way that the playoffs worked they added a lot of teams because one thing i remember from my childhood was and those were the real dark days for the mariners uh the 80s was when your team is eliminated by like let's say the end of may when you realistically don't have a chance there's so many games to play still and i think a lot of fans were kind of checking out so i used to always just say i just want them to be playing meaningful games at the end of the season and you know what is the old thing may you live in interesting times it's happened they're playing meaningful games unfortunately a lot of the time uh it seems the The cookie is crumbling in the wrong direction for our team, but they are doing the thing that I used to always say I wanted them to do. So I would say it's better that your team is playing interesting games.

Yeah, definitely, because I did almost like your moment of sort of con of context, seeing your dad. I thought you were going to say, by the way, that like when you walked into the other room and you saw your dad, who's just like blissfully living his life with no concern about baseball or I'm assuming in that moment, football at all. Like it's almost like just an argument, not just that you got to spend a nice weekend day with your dad working on projects together and just housing nutty buddies, but also just that like, oh, there are people who just live in this world. And it's just like this moment means nothing to them. They're just going on with their time. Like, why do we why do we do this to ourselves?

yeah it was a weird I don't know why this is where my brain went but yeah it wasn't I I wish I cared about baseball less it was getting to hang out with my dad is um you know is such a special thing and a lot of people don't aren't able to do that for a variety of reasons this baseball thing pales in comparison to it like I don't know why that moment that that moment hit my brain in that way but it was good it was you know it sort of ameliorated what would have like let's just say if i'm here by myself at that point i'm like probably firing off a million super furious texts to you the group i'm like probably downing even more amounts of alcohol i'm like who knows what the hell i'm doing it's not good it's not a good scene for me to be here by myself you know going um like howard hughes on it or something it was good my dad was here as sort of an emotional support dad you know yeah possible show title emotional support oh i'm writing it down already um i uh i wanted to also um tell you about a

conversation that i had with my neighbor gay um because i had two trees blow down it wasn't just one i learned it was two trees that blew down andrew in this windstorm that we had and so yesterday i was i was oh man my new favorite thing dragging stuff with my lawnmower oh wow yeah i mean are you kidding me i video i took a made i made a video of my lawnmower attached to a tree that i had cut down i don't even know what for to look back on it someday and remember how fun it was like because uh well a couple things there was two trees that blew down and then there was also a tree that i took down because i'm going to be building a i have a raised some raised garden beds that right now are just like super fallow but they also had these two like kind of christmas tree type trees that were bordering them and they're where i need to build this this fence to keep the deer out so i went out and i cut that tree down with a sawzall which first of all just felt so cool and macho and then i wrapped a rope around it and i tied it to the back of my uh of my lawnmower and then i turned the blades off and then i just drove it and i dragged the tree all the way across the the yard and around the house and up to the burn pile and i'm when i tell you i have never felt more macho and also the idea of dragging something with a tractor-like device I've never experienced that. That was so fun.

Do you know that where I come from, that's like legit entertainment, that I grew up going to tractor pulls? Are you familiar with tractor pulls?

And is it how much weight can the tractor pull?

Yeah. And the thing is, I don't think they're actual tractors. Maybe some of them are really souped up tractors. Some of them are other just like, oh, yeah, I'm looking here. Some of them, yeah, they are like really souped up tractors. But I believe you also just have other motorized vehicles pulling majorly heavy things. And there's like a there's like a big weight on there that is it's balanced in a way that the the the weight, literally the big brick of weight on the back of this trailer kind of goes up an incline on the trailer as they pull it, making it somehow more and more difficult to pull until eventually like the tractor starts doing wheelies and spinning out. I mean, it's I got to go to a tractor pull.

it was so fun and i just want more i want more heavy things that i need to drag around um on this property but anyway i was uh i was bringing i was cutting a couple of the trees like basically what happened was the root system was rotten in these two trees so when the winds hit them they just snapped and bent over and so i was cutting them down to size with this sawzall and making them in smaller pieces and my neighbor gail walked by aka gay uh and she said oh yeah i saw those trees uh blew down and and somehow in passing we were talking about trees and she just casually dropped madrone tree andrew she said madrone which i was up until three weeks ago i had literally never heard that word and gail is using it gail and sarah i had that backwards i

was thinking that she was using the common no madrona is the common you were shocked to hear madrone is proper and and here you go in the yeah and she's surrounded by these trees and she's going

with madrone so now once again i'm on the i'm on madrona hill here so would you say at the beginning of the show today madrone or madrona i'm saying madrona i'm i'm i'm deciding uh i've made a decision like last weekend that i'm just gonna own it i'm gonna go with madrona people will know what i'm talking about from around here but i was just shocked to hear gail call it madrone Then I was like really are we How did I not how did I literally never heard that word Three weeks ago and now I can't get away from it

Yeah yeah did you mention anything or just like Did you say hey you call them the drones too Or just let it roll

I was trying to keep the conversation Relatively contained Gail is a real nice gal she's older She's retired I get the sense that if I leave that door wide open We could be chatting for a good while So but I was in the middle Of doing things like dragging trees around with my lawnmower so I wanted to get back to that so I was kind of like all right well you have a great Sunday and then she said I heard some banging from inside your house yeah well my dad's here we're working on the house okay well you enjoy this nice weather yeah you know I might take a drive later because this weather is so beautiful I just want to enjoy it yeah well you enjoy that drive and another thing like I kept trying to kind of kept trying to wrap it up it it worked out eventually but um yeah I was shocked to hear that there are people walking around calling it

a drone tree now so when you were pulling the trees behind your tractor did part of you wonder like i wonder if gail can see me right now and i wonder if she's thinking like i waited until she came down the driveway like me driving my go-kart around my backyard imagining that girls i had a crush on could see me and were impressed with the speed with which i took those corners around the

above ground pool i was literally like oh i wonder if brian's gonna see this and think i'm badass although i then burned the tree later and it was it went up so fast and it made so much smoke which was blowing directly in my neighbor's yard that i then texted him hey sorry about the smoke like it went from being like i don't know if this is gonna light to like

oh my god do i have control of this situation because this was the pine tree one this was the

pine oh yeah those things go up holy because again it was a it was a it was a real macho sunday for me yesterday uh i was hanging my dad and i were hanging these huge long pieces of wood in the living room of the house because basically the house is sagging like the the house is over what it's like a hundred years old or something and so basically the things that are holding up the upstairs floor so that like the the tippy top of the house where there's a couple bedrooms all of those beams are sagging from just a hundred a hundred years and just probably not being up to the task what that means is when we have the ceiling put in the sheetrock put in it's all going to be like weird and out of whack so we're having to put in this whole new series of basically it's called blocking we're putting these big pieces of wood so that when the sheetrockers come in and put the ceiling and it'll look like nice and flat and level and all that um so i was putting in these big timbers with my dad i was dragging trees i was burning trees it was i'm hoping gail saw it because it was pretty it is pretty macho what if gail will go to a tractor

pole with me i'm perusing oh i promise you gail yeah yeah a hundred percent it's fun man don't sleep on or at a tractor pole you can't sleep at a tractor pole it's too loud listen i'm absolutely

i'm a convert i told you i was i was doing a tractor pole here on a ryobi i did kind of mess it up though we need to move on but this is this is what happens andrew when i try to do something i left this out of the story because it was kind of embarrassing but i tie the tree to the lawnmower i'm i'm driving and i'm going kind of around the side of the house where there's this kind of big hill but i'm i'm on this little raised area and all of a sudden i realized that my ryobi lawnmower is in fact andrew doing a wheelie and it's not because the tree is too heavy it's because the tree has fallen into this big trench that was dug okay um that is yeah the tree i was like all i have to do is drag this tree without allowing it to fall into a massive trench that's avoidable but i had not done that i had let it fall into the trench where it was now lodged and it was making the i had to like seriously i almost like pulled the the lawnmower back on top of myself like i started to do a wheelie i was like wait what and i luckily i stopped it in time and i was able to reverse and back it up but it was like if anybody saw if gail saw that she's never

going to the tractor pull well it depends on your reaction it looked like i mean somebody might see that and be like wow that that that looks like a tractor in distress but the yeah but the cowboy on top of it really has this under control i did i i would say this once i realized what was

happening i did handle it with a certain cool calm collectedness but just the fact that like i went from like wow is this thing gonna be able to pull this tree to like it's pulling the tree to, like, this is the greatest moment of my life, too. Why am I doing a wheelie?

Well, yeah, you don't want to pull a Rick Riz. You don't want to find yourself underneath. No. Was he on a snowmobile? No. I think he was on an ATV.

And I have to be honest with you, I'm pretty down on ATVs just generally because, I mean, everybody gets to enjoy what they enjoy, but I feel like I hear more stories of people being injured pretty grievously from ATVs because of things just like that. Like, you know, I mean, luckily Rick Riz was okay, But we had the Seahawks had that guy we drafted out of like Michigan State kind of was never really competitive because he hurt himself on an ATV before his rookie season. You know, just those things seem like they can get out of control pretty quickly. I pride myself on, you know, on being someone who makes good decisions around that, except when I'm dragging a tree and I almost wheelie upon myself with my Ryobi electric lawnmower.

Yeah, it's also funny that it's an electric lawnmower. And that's not a diss on them. I mean, I would love an electric lawnmower if I had enough property for it. And that's what I would get as well. But it is it is there. There's something different about the I'm just scrolling through picture after picture after picture here of these like of these huge, you know, gussied up tractors spewing black smoke while they try to pull sledges.

I don't think that my Ryobi is going to be they're going to let me into the Cowlitz County Fairgrounds with my Ryobi to do some boss pulling. all right let's thank some daily donors these are the fine folks making tbtl possible this is listener supported podcasting hey listeners like mariah spicer

Our friend in Chicago, Illinois.

Thank you, Mariah.

Wine expert, runner, all-around delightful human being, Mariah Spicer of Chicago, Illinois. And we're keeping it in Illinois, but we're going out to Rolling Meadows. Oh, wow. Where Matthew Roberts is. Thanks, Matthew. I wonder how far Rolling Meadows is from Chicago.

I mean, it sounds like the opposite of Chicago, right? Yeah. Like one is a city, you know, it's got trains zipping through it and what have you. And the other is just rolling meadows and green skies, just green skies as far as you can see.

Yes. Green sky country, they call it.

Do they still turn the sky green around St. Patrick's Day? On St. Paddy's Day? Yeah.

That's a mess, though. Just people vomiting everywhere. There are some very rural parts of Illinois, which I think I tend to forget about because when I go there, it's typically just to go to Chicago. Sure, yeah. But I got a speeding ticket in southern Illinois that haunts me to this day in that it has affected my insurance prices.

How long ago was this?

It was years ago. It was like called like, I think it's called, believe it or not, Grand Mound, Illinois, which is weird because there's a Grand Mound, Washington, which is where that big water park is. The what do they call that? Great Wolf Lodge.

Oh, is that where that is? Okay.

That's technically in Grand Mound, Washington And I believe I got a speeding ticket in like Grand Mound, Illinois You know where I was driving from, Andrew? We had been in Mississippi together Oh, okay, so that gives me a sense

So that's, yeah, like six years ago or something

And I was driving up to Paxton, Illinois to learn how to drive Gravedigger

Oh, wow, monster truck, it's all coming together

It all comes back to tractor pulls today And Matthew Roberts, thanks Matthew Also Michelle Coggin, is in Portland, Oregon

Hey, you ever been?

uh recently in fact and i will be there again because of all kinds of back and forth with the apple store andrew which i feel that this this show at least my contribution to the show is in danger of just becoming me constantly griping about customer service stuff but i will tell you i've always had really great experiences with apple but i have been trying to get this computer situation worked out for a new tbtl computer for me and i was trying to explain it to becca over the weekend it's become like um you know that riddle with like the chicken and the fox and the

like uh you know corn maybe or something yeah whatever whatever it is I'm using things never

mind but it's like you can't have the fox and the chicken in the boat together but you can't have the chicken in the cornmeal it's like it's that with my computers like the computer they sold me isn't actually doesn't have enough memory to house the stuff that I'm trying to transfer from the old computer etc etc anyway it's a it's a whole thing point is uh michelle i'll be back down in portland soon so i'll see you then because i have to physically go into the apple store to talk to somebody uh megan sibert is in chehalis washington i'm surrounded by listeners andrew michelle's to the left of me megan's to the right here i am high above the mighty columbia i didn't realize that's the area that chehalis is well chehalis is north of here but it's kind of in between it's you got Chehalis, you've got Centralia, you've got Winlock, home of the world's largest egg. It's all down there. Which I've never seen

before, by the way, and it seems very much out my alley.

Andrew, you owe it to yourself. It's one of the main topic of conversations between me and Camaro

Kev. Here's what I'm getting stuck on here, and this is oh, this is going to really ruin this segment, but oh, he must be one mean bastard to ruin this segment. I sometimes I've explained this phenomenon to you before, and I don't know if you get up but there are certain words or names that I cannot hold in my head at the same time. And Chehalis and Shalan. You guys used to go to Shalan, right?

Shalanigans, also involving Camaro Kev, by the way.

Yes, and I would say to Kevin, like, I remember saying to him one time, oh, you guys are going to Chehalis for your big, like, boating weekend.

Oh, he must have laughed.

And I've never been to Chehalis, so I didn't know that that would be funny, but apparently that was not where you would go from.

Well, it's just a very different scene than Shalane Against.

And then so we had this whole thing where we were trying to come up with Chehalis Against or something. But at least, okay, so that was an improvement for me, though. I said Chehalis and came up with Shalane at the same time, so that's pretty cool. That was great. Thank you.

Yeah, well, Andrew, this is not your day for overachieving, okay? No. So calm down. Keep the bars up. Say less.

Yes, exactly. Thank you, man.

Andrew's out here doing too much, okay? Calm down.

Yeah, right.

As I'm talking to you, Andrew, I'm looking out at the Mighty Columbia, and there is a huge, like, I guess sort of, it's a huge ship that probably normally has a bunch of shipping containers on top of it. But it's interesting because it says Costco shipping, not Costco, not the membership club with the... affordable hot dogs, but C-O-S-C-O. And what's weird is that I was thinking deeply about whatever Costco means because yesterday I was painting the outside of the house. I was priming it, really. And I was standing on a stepladder that's also manufactured by Costco, C-O-S-C-O. And I was remembering as a kid always being confused because we had various items in our house that were manufactured by whatever Costco is. But I would also hear people talking about Costco. Uh-huh. And I would be like, and we were not a Costco family. We didn't have Costco money as kids. But now I'm, so yesterday I was standing on this ladder. You know the way your mind wanders when you're doing kind of tedious things? My mind was just ruminating on whatever the hell is going on with some company called Costco that they make ladders. And I think they made like, I think one of my sister's car seat was made by Costco. and now I'm staring at a big giant ship that's steaming up the mighty Columbia that says Costco shipping on it

want me to tell you what Costco stands for please do China Ocean Shipping Company the China Ocean Shipping Company

well then what are they doing making that ladder

I don't know why they're making ladders and seats

that's what they've got there they've got their fingers in all kinds of different industries but anyway I just wanted to narrate to everyone what i'm seeing in my field of vision because you know who loves that david webster of dunwoody georgia thank you david appreciate you david and then jessica lucas rounding out our list in haddonfield new jersey jessica thank you so much for the support thanks to all of our donors today for making tbtl possible thank you hello and welcome to top story this is not probably interesting to anyone except me andrew but i picked up a copy of the colombian i think it used to be called the daily colombian but i think they're not publishing it seven days a week anymore so they might have had to change the name yeah sure this is the you know this is the reality of a print newspaper in a kind of medium-sized town. I was looking in the Clark County section, which is not actually where I live, but this paper emanates from Vancouver, Washington, but it kind of covers everything down here in Southern Washington, or at least as much as they can. I just happened to look over to the left and see this column. This January 6th story wasn't news. This is from the newsroom. This is Craig Brown, who is the editor of the paper. There's an internet archive site called wayback machine where among other stuff you can find all kinds of old news or you could have just looked at page a6 of our thursday edition there it was with a big bold headline three house gop receive requests from january 6th panel if that story seemed a little dated it was in fact it was more than a year old so a number of readers asked why was it in the paper this committee finalized its investigation issued its report on december 22nd first of all i'm very sorry for this mistake it shouldn't have happened but here apparently is how it did on wednesday more than a year after the story was published the associated press sent out a corrected version apparently the original story incorrectly referred to one of the congressmen as a member of the house freedom caucus ap resent the whole corrected story so members could easily replace the incorrect one Our substitute wire editor didn't notice it was a correction, not a news story. He imported it into our layout system and assigned it to page A6.

Are you going to name names? My God, has anybody ever been thrown under the bus?

Yes, Andrew. Web editor Amy Libby. Because, get this, that's not the only story they accidentally re-ran in the Colombian recently. Oh, my God. Next graph, more unhappy messages. is, I think I get more positive comments from the subscribers than do most editors. On Monday morning, though, I was greeted with a couple of grumpy messages. The first was a complaint about the lack of college football game coverage. The point is well taken. Anyway, he goes on to explain that because they published the paper on Saturday, it means they can't really give you the most up to date. They can't print the most up to date college football stuff. Then it said the second message was initially baffling. An eagle eyed reader asked why we had published the same article on our website on both september 11th and september 25th the story from the seattle times is a good one using a spokane county fire as an example it discusses the danger that wildfires pose to inhabited rural areas but why was it posted twice i would have thought with today's technology this could be entirely preventable said the reader it turns out the technology actually made it more likely i consulted with news editor merity hansen who did a little investigating The story moved multiple times on multiple while. wire services days apart good regional stories are scarce so both time it caught the attention of our wire editor but due to scheduling we had different wire editors on those days and because two different wire services moved the story there was no indication anyone at the columbian had already seen it web editor amy libby might have caught the second posting she's amazing but she was on vacation you want to like how are those tire marks on your back for going on vacation like basically like amy would have caught this but amy was on vacation right because amy wants to prioritize family over work right like i can't believe that craig had to basically explain how two different things got basically reprinted in this newspaper erroneously the second time.

Having said all of that, let us talk about the way newspaper articles are presented to us. Maybe not the copy editors and AP editors at a small local newspaper, but just like us, the the consumers of news I actually agree that it has gotten weirdly complicated because back in the day you had a newspaper you wrote the news in the newspaper and then you received the newspaper and you read it and the words couldn't change you were holding them you know what I mean like they could change from morning to night because there used to be you know early and late editions in fact I think some really great television programs have been uh made based on late edition or early edition it was early edition right some guy could tell the future

because he did the magic newspaper early yeah i think it was kyle chandler later from friday

night lights oh good for him um but obviously that was forever ago that was a dinosaur's age ago um and now we're all used to reading things in the new york times and the washington post i'll use them as kind of examples here and what we have now is a an ongoing updated story you know what i mean like it's just when there's a big like let's just say that it's it's about the looming government shutdown and and and uh budget negotiations going on in congress which is a very complicated story or maybe even like when when the queen died or just some big story that's going to dominate the headlines for days you can't just get the latest edition and read the latest article because it's always like well we've updated our story here and there are links all over the place I know I sound very old here, but often what you will see is actually this applied to my beloved Mariners as I was trying to find find out day by day. What is the path to victory here? What is the path to the playoffs?

It was one article that was sadly the answer is non-existent.

Yes, it was an article that was written a couple of weeks ago that they kept updating the information on. And so it would say so like the date was a date a couple of weeks ago, but then it would say updated today at 11 a.m. or what have you. And there is something that I find. And again, I'm sure it's just I'm an old man. I mean, younger people would have experienced the newspaper this way their entire lives. And so therefore, it's not weird or complicated to them. But like it's just like there are there don't seem to be definitive articles anymore. It's just articles that keep getting updated on breaking news stories.

Right. Exactly. And I think that's a couple of reasons. one because uh it's less work to rewrite the whole piece and because it gets more clicks and because it's probably seen as more dynamic and informative which it is but it can be confusing the other thing that's confusing is the way that the internet resurfaces things yeah i've been stung by this many a time on this very program where i'll i'll uh you know maybe send an article along to you like hey we should talk about this today and you'll go just you're like i'll happily talk about it but just a heads up this is from two years ago like why is this you know but it's some obscure story that i didn't know had happened two years ago um but i want to say for the record too i love that the columbian is printing yes newspaper like i was in the i was in a safe way uh getting some uh provisions this weekend and i saw that this paper was there and i was so excited to buy it and i will buy it every saturday when it comes out although only one section of it appears to be kind of locally generated you know a ton of ap stuff see previous print problems um but i love that they're still making this newspaper and i want to do everything i can to support it because it's just that i you know and i read the obituaries this weekend then i read the mobituaries it's a busy weekend for me no but like i love that i have this physical newspaper in my hand and then i read the the local section cover to cover about uh homeless veterans that were getting uh haircuts and um and and hot coffee and various things attended to uh down there in vancouver and a restoration project that they're trying to do in washugal washington i am so here for this physical newspaper i was thinking

about you and becca this weekend because i was puzzling out the you know you you got me on that connections thing now the new york times connections you know what's funny she asked

me this weekend because we were in eugene on friday and saturday morning she said do you think andrew still plays connections what's going on with the two of you and should i be worried

it's become a whole thing with uh with our wordle chain you know we've had we have maybe eight people on this wordle chain where we share our wordle scores every day and uh the day that you introduced me to connections on this very podcast i then introduced it to the rest of the gang i'm like check this out and then everybody's been playing it and you know sharing their results in the same way you know both of these games if you're unfamiliar there's a way to share your results where the game itself kind of uh presents these colored blocks that can kind of show you what somebody's progress was without actually spoiling the game for you that applies to both wordle and this game connections and the connections thing has really started a bit of a rift in our text group and i gotta say like i was i was you know sort of uh maybe even instigating that rift to a degree because here's the deal i play connections every day i don't like it even when i'm really good at it like there are days and this is going to maybe sound well i don't think it sounds that boastful it sounds both good and bad that game connections either i get it all perfectly in four chances or i don't get it at all like i and there's something about it that even if i even though i'm not that bad at it and i can usually puzzle it out i feel the puzzle maker puzzle it out just got to puzzle it out the puzzle maker you feel them working so hard to be tricky and it seems so much more subjective to me than wordle like wordle it's like hey come up with a five letter word it's in the dictionary or it's not i know that the word email kind of created some controversy a half a year ago but like um for the most part like hey this is a word can you figure it out in six chances or not whereas with connections it's very much like i am the puzzle master can you figure out this little game i've created ah yes no they're all red i assume that's exactly the voice yeah exactly like you just feel like and it just seems so subjective and like they're out to screw you that and like so that i i raised that on the wordle chain i'm like listen i got this today but this game is starting to irritate me and then some people are like yes hate to this game other people are like i actually like this better than wordle so we have like a split sort of a we have various perspectives of this on our wordle chain it's caused some it's caused some heated words like it's caused some people to say well i literal quotes have been well literal paraphrases have been i've told so and so that he doesn't have to play if he doesn't like it so much

so a little bit of a little bit of you know drama a little drama going on save the drama for your mama andrew that's what i always say that's one of my catchphrases i know it's weird it doesn't make sense um speaking of drama uh i we're late to this story i am late to this story it was published september 8th but i was listening to my latest obsession which i've mentioned on the show previously but which i've really drilled into this weekend which is strike force five the podcast which is now over because the writer's strike is over but uh there was a period of time where all of the late night hosts of uh so i guess it would have been colbert uh jimmy fallon jimmy kimmel john oliver and uh seth myers they were doing a podcast together and the um the proceeds from the podcast were paying all of their staffs and i think there were a lot of proceeds because i think this was a hugely successful podcast for it being a limited run and also ryan reynolds just decided to sponsor it with all of the products he owns

oh i was going to ask what the monetary model was okay they did well i mean this is a totally

boring offline conversation andrew that you and i should have but basically all these ads for like various like so diageo is this giant you know alcohol conglomerate and they own a bunch of um they own like casamigos tequila and stuff and the so the um i guess there were some things that weren't ryan reynolds related but he has like mint mobile and he has his own booze called aviation gin but they would do these ads for some of these boozes and they were baked in they were not dynamic ads they were just these guys riffing on like and john oliver's vibe became comparing the good stuff they were advertising and how great it is compared to just absolute swill that he'd had before they have to bleep out what he was saying he was basically like just deeply insulting some other existing products so that became a bit but like these baked in ads and for the listeners the difference between an ad that like andrew and i might read on the air that's gonna live in the show forever like it's part of the recording like what i'm saying right now versus those ads you've all heard a million times on podcasts that

kind of like a computer inserts them and they might change over the course of weeks. Those are called dynamic ads. And then there's the ones that are just part of the content. I love the baked in ads on the show. I love the show. It is. And it made me think if, and when we ever get back to having advertisers, I don't think it's a problem for us to bake them in. I found it utterly delightful. The whole show is utterly delightful. I mean, what I really learned from it is there's a pretty, there's sort of a reason that these folks have jobs as talk show hosts is they're very quick. Like they really are like, And anyway, I very much enjoyed listening to Strike Force 5. I would recommend it to folks after you've eaten your TBTL, please. But they were talking about this article that was in Slate Magazine. Now, when I heard the rumor somebody is saying Martin Short is not funny, I thought it was just pure clickbait and maybe just from like a subreddit or something. But no, this is Slate Magazine. It's Dan Coy's writing in Slate Magazine why we keep putting up with Martin Short. and uh the the short version of his argument is that martin short is not funny that martin short's characters are way too over the top and that we somehow have societally been deluded and confused into thinking martin short is funny when he is in fact not funny and what's interesting is he uses a lot of martin short's own like memoir to kind of build his case like he's talking about ed Grimley the character of Ed Grimley which I will tell you this I don't think Ed Grimley is the funniest thing Martin Short has ever done it's a little silly and over the top I certainly thought it was funny when I was a kid but he talks about how Martin Short in his memoir kind of told the story of how the Ed Grimley character came about and how it became more and more ridiculous like first it was just this kind of weird character and he was doing it I think at like SCTV or maybe second yeah second city television but then pretty soon he did the hair weird and pulled his pants up even higher and the more extreme he became with the character the more people responded to it and this is sort of used as evidence that martin short is not funny but just sort of unbelievably needy and wants attention at all costs and is just kind of like somebody who's willing to just sort of debase themselves and be absolutely ridiculous to get the laughs and I I mean it's I find it a really interesting uh not an interesting argument I find it really interesting that this guy made the argument and I'm having complicated feelings Andrew because there are plenty of people that everyone thinks is funny that I don't think are funny and and also I don't like it when like basically when we on this show happen to say that we're not into something and then somebody who loves that thing gets really really kind of bummed out and really mad at us and might even be like I'm done listening to the show I'm always what i hope in those moments is that people will understand that as the song says different people can like different things but i'm so mad at this guy for writing this article like i am having exactly the reaction to it that some of our listeners have when we don't like something

they like well here's what i would ask you and i have not read this article because i've made it clear to you luke i know can't read it's andrew's day off yeah right exactly i got soup to make not even soup um but um i guess my question for you having not read this and not seeing the tone of it is why like i understand if there's a new movie out or a new television show and you are a an art critic or you know a screen critic you can like write about it and say hey this new thing you know you might like it if you like these types of things wasn't quite for me like whatever you can give you can even give scathing reviews when something is new but why would you just write an article about somebody's entire body of work especially somebody who's like kind of in his in the very later years of his career um and is kind of widely celebrated why would you just write an article you and i might talk about something that comes up naturally and i'll be honest with you let's just keep it on martin short only murders in the building people well that's what it's tied to is it as i say people love that i haven't brought it up on the show because i don't want to poop on anybody else's parade it's not quite for me i've known a lot of people who love it way way more than i do i watched the first season um and it didn't fully hold up for me but that's fine you know what i mean like and i didn't want to like make a big deal of it on the show because like literally what is the good of that having said that this is a conversational show if you logged if you logged onto this computer one day opened up your mic and told me luke that you're really enjoying it i might say uh you know it hasn't been for me and we can talk about that a little bit but like just to like i guess write a whole article that says i don't like this new show and also the the entire the entire body of work of one martin short is overrated seems like kind of extreme to me and like trying to poop on somebody's parade but i have not read it i only

know what you've told me so far i the sense i get is that there's a new season of only murderers in the building or there's recently released a new season and so on the subject of you know martin short making the rounds again and also i guess i haven't watched the show funnily enough this made me think oh i should start watching that show so it sort of worked for that project um but it's i And also the way that he writes is that Martin Short's character on Only Murders in the Building is kind of a hyped-up version of real Martin Short. And the ways that his character in the show is needy and kind of desperate and sweaty and stuff, he's sort of making the case that's not a huge departure from real Martin Short in this guy's argument. What I find hard to believe is that anybody who—and obviously this guy, he writes for Slate Magazine. he's got to be pretty smart and he's got to have a good sense of humor i don't understand how anybody can watch jiminy glick and not think it is an unbelievably sharp satire of everything of hollywood of the people who are being interviewed it's like i think that jiminy glick it's one of the funniest things i've maybe ever seen in my life and i don't get how somebody who writes for slate like i just feel like it's objectively funny like it's it's and i don't understand how put aside like what three amigos or other things where martin short is maybe being you know a little extra or something but just like purely the character of jiminy glick to me and if you're this guy dan coys who's writing for slate presumably he's been an entertainment journalist for a long time he's probably been in plenty of interviews where it's something that's set up because you know a hollywood studio is promoting a film or whatever you think maybe why i love jiminy glick so much is because and i haven't interviewed that many hollywood luminaries but it would be really fun to just say everything that comes into your mind uh when you're sitting you know down with these these stars as opposed to like uh what how did you feel about this project or whatever i just understand how somebody who writes about entertainment could watch the jiminy glick

character and not think it was a riot well here's the deal and again i'm not saying that everybody has to like martin short or that dan coyce need has to like martin short but we keep on referring to him as like a you know a media writer or a media critic of some sort i don't even i don't even think that's the case just based on the other headlines and you said something like i don't understand how somebody writes for slate with you know if this is your perspective honestly this is the slatiest thing ever right like that's a good point the headline here is why we keep putting up with martin short you know what i mean like this wasn't my favorite ever pretend slate headline why cancer is good for you yeah right like it's always got to be like well we all think this one thing i'm gonna say this other thing and that's what it's seen you know i'm not saying that all of dan's headlines that i'm looking at here fit that description but it doesn't look like this is somebody who's like you know looks like he's written about all kinds of different things has written some novels as well and basically just said i will again i just sort of feel like you're You're trying to get my attention by shitting on something that is beloved, and I really don't care whether or not people think Martin Short is funny. Here's the deal, and I shouldn't say this. You want to talk about throwing somebody under the bus like that poor editor Amy. When I first met Genevieve.

No more vacation for you.

Genevieve actively disliked Martin Short when we first met, and it wasn't like, I promise you, it wasn't like me just sitting down and explaining his comedic movies and why they're funny. I don't know what happened. Our friend Pauly was a huge fan of Martin Short, and Genevieve was like, oh, I think he's way overrated. And then somehow over the course of years, Genevieve, if you asked her now, she'd say, I can't believe I didn't like Martin Short. Like, she loves him so much now. And I don't know exactly what turned her around, but I mean, I do think that, like, you know, what's his character's name? I'm as doomed as doomed can be now. I don't know if I know that character. No, the skinny guy. Ed Grimley? Ed Grimley, yeah. I really must say. Yeah, I did a terrible imitation. But there was one sketch with him that we had on a VHS tape as a family that we watched a million times over. And there's a little devil who's trying to take him down to hell. And he says, I'm as doomed as doomed can be now. So in my family, we all know that that's Ed Grimley. There is no reason for you to know that. um but anyway so the point is like i can see that like somebody mostly seeing that character and being like that's not funny to me and just like not thinking beyond that you know and so whatever like again you can like him or not but like writing an article why we keep putting up with

martin short you know what that is luke that's haterade that's just like you just won the super bowl game and someone dumped an entire thing of haterade all over that's right like why like i

just sort of feel like you're just trying to you're just being you're just sort of being I

haven't read it I should shut up sorry I well again for me the part of it that that was the interesting part of the experience for me was how personally I took someone saying they don't like Martin Short like who like you're right who cares like everybody gets to like what they like and everybody gets to not like what they don't like everybody gets to not like what they don't like I get to not like grammar I get to not like it a lot but like I don't I just found myself in this weird position where I felt like really personally aggrieved or personally angry over someone's opinion which is like I I want to tell myself, get a life because it doesn't really matter. But I was I was I was like walking around like mad at this guy yesterday because after I heard the mention on Strike Force five, I then went and I read the article and I was just like, give this guy a piece of my mind. Like I was really I was really kind of wound up about it, which is just totally silly.

You know, the ironic thing is the articles from a month ago.

It's being reprinted in the Colombian today.

Here I go once again with the email every week. I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, emails or V-mails.

You want an email? You want an email? Okay, I'll give you an email. I was sliding it over into my media player. Here you go. This is from listener Sarah.

Hey, dummies. It's Sarah in Maine. I recently failed a corporate phishing test and am now being forced to take some training, and I just wanted to share with you the first few moments of that training because I know you miss it, and I thought you would enjoy this. So here you go.

Ahoy! I am the Captain Ernest Headmore. Let us start by talking about what an access credential is. Credentials are user IDs in a system. When accessing a secure computer...

I'll just stop there because that's going to keep going for another three minutes. Please pray for me. Okay, thanks. Bye.

Captain what? Were you able to hear? They have a character named Captain Cybersecurity.

I'm not surprised. Can I tell you something, Andrew, that's a bit embarrassing?

That's you?

Considering that one of my gigs is being the person who does all this training for a large software concern on the east side of the greater seattle area when she said i failed a corporate fishing thing i literally thought she meant like fishing i was like what kind of job does sarah where there's a fishing test like is she a long is she like a gorton's fisher person like what is i when i no part of me went to fishing with a ph which is very sad considering you a while to

Were you listening to that sound of the – at what point did you realize we were talking about cybersecurity?

Before we got to the tape, but way too late in the game. Like a good halfway through Sarah's description. I was like – literally I'm thinking like did they have to go get halibut? Like what is going on here?

Like some sort of trust – like there's got to be an episode of The Office where they all go out on some sort of corporate phishing thing, right?

Yes, exactly. My mind had created some whole thing where it was a team building exercise for Sarah. I didn't ever really think Sarah was like working, like, you know, sailing out of Gloucester, you know, like with Captain Disco's crew from Captain's Courageous. Like, I didn't think that, but I did think like maybe Sarah works in corporate America and as a team building exercise, they have to go fishing. But she failed it, so she had to do more fishing. My mind wrote that entire scenario in half of a second.

What would be worse, do you think, having to go out with a bunch of your colleagues in like a, you know, if we work for a more like kind of standard corporate company and have to do like a phishing day or even a weekend or go through the cybersecurity training once a year?

Oh, gosh, that's a great question. Probably I just do the cybersecurity. Yeah, I mean, it's easier.

Because the fishing thing, you would just have Genevieve go in your stead and just like holding a computer with you FaceTiming on it the whole time, right?

Yes, precisely. But this raises a bigger question, Andrew. Are we going to have a TBTB, Too Beautiful to Biz, are we going to have some kind of team building retreat with you, me, and TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff?

I don't think so. I mean, I feel like I could see a better use of probably our resources. But, you know, I mean, if you guys want to go hammer some things out, I'll be making stock and soil in my kitchen.

I'm only like I'm sort of joking but sort of not joking. I wonder if we should like once a year try to all get in the same room and have like a, you know, have some kind of a bonding slash planning slash, you know, reconnecting. hey we all work for this company kind of a thing a burger eating contest as well well i'm just going to throw that on there i think i would win do you think who do you think would win a burger

eating contest between the three of us honestly i feel like john should be here for that conversation i'm not comfortable having that behind his back maybe we can have john on later on this week and

answer that question let's let's talk about this should we do an eating contest where we're all three of us are in different locations so you know there's a little bit of honesty involved but where like on the show it doesn't have to be burgers it could be whatever we decide but like we we actually have like a contest while we're doing

the show and we see who can who can put back the most of whatever it is we we pick but we all eat the food of our choosing well i does that that seems confusing that doesn't work

he enters on his fourth celery stick while luke is on his i have one of those turkey legs from

the state fair exactly um no but like i i you know i don't eat a ton of hamburgers but boy when i do And of course famously I kind of cringe when I think of this Because I was really trying to lean into my I don't know Bad boy persona or something We had that burger eating contest That cheeseburger eating contest at Cairo back in the day And I feel like it was me and Sean And Libby Denkman and maybe Rachel Bell And I think I only ate like seven Which doesn't seem like that many I'm also very hungry right now

Didn't Libby and Rachel eat like two or something

Yeah I ate the most But I also was doing a shot a jamo in between these ones that's the part that i'm like get it get over yourself burbs but like i would not do that now but um uh but like i seven doesn't seem like that many actually like i i remember being pretty full at seven like but i if you would have asked me before i've been like i can probably eat like 15 or 20 dick's cheeseburgers i don't even did you really get up to seven because

it was a very short period of time did i not get to seven have i like i mean this stolen valor i don't want to tell you this because the video is kicking around somewhere i was gonna say it's on youtube i could answer this question right now i just don't think we want to or do you want to i mean no i don't really want to it doesn't matter i'm not i'm not trying to like um uh judge you

or make you feel like no no i just um i i'm i don't feel judged by that it actually if it was less than seven it only makes my point stronger which is it's hard to eat a lot of stuff i think harder to eat than a lot of stuff than i think like i feel like again i'm so hungry right now But it's like I feel like I could easily eat 10 Dick's cheeseburgers Right now, that's what my feeling is But I bet you I could

Yeah, I don't know, I've never put myself in that kind of Situation before Is that because of

And I don't want to get too real with you Particularly at the end of the show I know you've got a lot of not doing anything To do today, so I don't want to cut into that But I think you've Described this on the show Because of how you grew up been some some feelings that you had that some like my experience with you is that you often will finish the meal and say I ate way too much and my observation of that with you is you usually a pretty standard amount of food at the restaurant we're at or whatever do you think that like an eating contest doesn't really sound appealing to you because of some kind of like uh like sort of

childhood stuff well I mean do you think most people in their life have been in a situation where they can have a eating contest do you think that I'm on the outside do most people have eating

contest that i don't know about oh i don't i'm not trying to argue that it's like a thing everyone's doing well when they're not flagpole sitting and competing in dance marathons i mean i think the

reason i haven't had an eating contest part of an eating contest is because i don't it hasn't come up yeah i mean i guess i could have been part of that dicks one but i think i didn't do that because i'm a picky eater and like dicks specifically i don't go that's a local you know burger chain around here most people know that but they're also kind of famous for like no swap outs right and so I think somebody just like dumped off a bunch of cheeseburgers and like, I don't eat cheese, so I wasn't going to do that. Sure. If they were regular hamburgers, I would have probably tried because I'm always curious about that. Like, but I mean, that would be the only time in my life that it was even I was even anywhere, you know, close to an opportunity to I guess you're right. I don't think most people do like I don't think most people live in their life. Like, why have you not why have you not taken part in an eating contest? It's like, well, that's really presented itself.

That's the literally the only eating contest I've ever been. that's kind of a good point you know i think it's skewed in my mind because the tiktok algorithm has delivered unto me a child hark no um a lot of people trying to like eat mass quantities of things at restaurants so as to get their name on the wall or whatever oh right yeah there's a couple of people that i that i see over and over again doing the like it's the big breakfast challenge at such and such diner and it's like eight pounds of bacon and all these you know hash browns etc um and i see that a lot so it made me think that everyone's going around just competitive eating and and eating contesting each other it's really a very specific thing and you're right it probably doesn't come up in normal life for most normal

people but at least having the conversation i think we should get john on the show and at least have the conversation about who we all think would potentially win because i think he's going to have some strong opinions on that also i would like to get into and i don't think we should talk about it here let's wait for this but like what would each of us choose as our food to be like what do we think would benefit us the most or that we would either do the best at or want to do the best at

you know like you right well you got to watch out for flavor fatigue andrew that's a whole

okay yeah see okay keep the powder dry keep the flavor blasted powder dry on this right yeah like

Like, I do get that.

the sense for some people that actually eating something that they like helps them eat more of it which i guess is kind of obvious kind of intuitive but like i really again i'm just maybe because i don't live near uh dick's driving anymore god those dick's cheeseburgers really that sounds real good to me right now i feel like i could uh i feel like i could really do some damage trying to think what else taco taco time maybe taco time soft tacos i feel like i

could eat a lot of those too all right well you think about what do you think your food would be Well, I want to get John on the line for this conversation, so let's hold off on that, because I'm thinking about it. Like, if I wanted to beat you, I have some thoughts about what I could choose, because I know what would, like, not be so comfortable for you. So, anyway, we'll talk about—

Wait, what? Okay, we'll talk about this with John.

We'll talk about this, yeah.

And this has to—I feel like, as long as you're not—

It seems like it's going in one direction here, doesn't it?

Yeah, as long as you're not a hard no. Why do you have such a long anti-eating contest stance, Andrew? Why is that such a big part of your brand?

Why have I been so vocally against that? I, uh, why is my silence so definite? Um, I was going to say, uh, now I'm just, I'm thinking about the wrong end of an eating contest here, but, uh, can we talk about this really quickly? Like, do you have your colonoscopy? The wrong end of an eating contest is a very strong show title. Is, is good for the outside of a man? What? Um, no, what, uh, do you have a colonoscopy now on the book? You and I were talking about it the other day that we're both planning on setting some up and i have a doctor's point appointment in november that i plan on scheduling a colonoscopy i was wondering if you have one that's locked in now if maybe you don't want to talk about that

which is fine we can save that for the food segment um i do not yet have an appointment because i have been referred to whoever does the appointments for the colonoscopy so i talked to the doctor and he said do you want to send in the sample or do you want to do the the full thing and And I said, I hemmed and hawed, and you know me, obviously, typically I want to just do the least amount of hassle possible. But I was like, the other thing he said that was compelling for me was, if you get this done and you get a clean bill of health, you don't have to get another one for 10 years. Yeah. So I like that.

That's good. I thought maybe at a certain age it becomes five and I might be getting better.

Maybe so, but maybe at my age. All I know is what my doctor said, Andrew, which was, you've got to go to this seafood place in Chicago. And I was like, okay, but let's talk more about my colon health. He's like, and also, let me tell you about some other food spots you might want to go to if you're in Illinois. And I was like, yes, this is all great. How long do I have to live, sir? But anyway, I will be getting that. I don't know when. Obviously, it will take some scheduling. It did, Andrew, as we suspected, really unleash our friend Phyllis Fletcher.

Oh, on the text chain, yeah.

P. Fletch Unleashed, really, because she's our colonoscopy correspondent. I made a colonoscopy joke online this weekend, Andrew, which is everyone's talking about the sphere in Las Vegas. In fact, we've even had listeners who were there, I think, right now. I will be honest with you, it looks pretty amazing.

This is the big U2. It's almost like their zoo. What was their big one in the 90s? Zoo TV or Octung Baby had all the lights?

Zuropa maybe Octung Baby They came out of an egg one

I think it was Zoo TV Not Zuropa Isn't Zuropa something else Isn't that a drink or something

I think they had an album called Zuropa

Oh okay what am I Okay yeah Zuropa is the album What was I saying Zoo I don't know what I was just saying Okay yeah Zuropa was their thing So but was it Octung Baby That had all like the flashing TV screens And everything

It was one of those two And the sad part Andrew Was I saw that tour I saw them at the Kingdom they came out of a giant egg a giant like like bright like strobe lighting egg they came out of which reminded me a little bit of spinal tap when you get stuck in those things i saw them at the kingdom andrew this is how old i am with the mummy saw them at the kingdom with not because i had set out to buy you two tickets that morning but because somebody at my work i worked at metro traffic had free they were like i got these two tickets anybody want them and i said sure i i think that was whatever tour you're referring to i think that was the one but i can't for the life of me tell you if it was zuropa or octoon baby or or i know it wasn't like the joshua tree um or by the way becca and i were we were listening to you two driving back from eugene and we were both agreeing that when we were kids i had no idea there was something called a joshua tree the way that i learned about this part of the american southwest was from the u2 album the joshua would that be the case for you growing up in Ohio as well?

Yeah, I think so. I think if you said Joshua Tree, I'd be like, oh yeah, that album. And then, I mean, the album does have a Joshua Tree on the cover of it.

Yes, prominently. So, I mean, I guess I realized it was a tree, but if you would have said, where does that tree grow? I'd be like, I guess Ireland? I don't know. Like, I...

had no sense of the joshua tree in the u.s or joshua tree national park or anything like that i just knew it as the thing on the cover of the youtube but anyway uh that uh they are playing this residency to kick off this thing the sphere i mean it's puts looks pretty phenomenal inside but it also the outside of it is wild like because the outside is also covered in these led lights so i've just really never i've never seen anything quite like it you know they can just put they can turn into a giant eyeball and it's so unbelievably realistic they can just do anything they want to the outside of this building uh the inside they this is my colonoscopy joke they played this you know so u2 is is performing and behind them is this giant i mean they're just everyone in there is inside of a giant like totally immersive globe or or or sphere that the whole inside of it is lined with lights as well so they can do anything they want it's like imax meets 3d meets like i don't know i've never seen anything like it but they played this video behind you two at one point that looked exactly like a colonoscopy it was sort of like a small aperture that was getting bigger and bigger and you're going on this journey and i was like has anyone else thought about how much this looks like a colonoscopy that's gross why they choose why they choose those colors i want to know that was weird too and i my spoof was i should not have sent my colonoscopy i should

have shared it with bono i'm assuming it wasn't really brown right i'm assuming no no no it was

white but it just looked very it looked to me like i imagine my i also will have thousands of doves living in my colon because i think that's something that happens in that video that's i mean if you go

the organic way i just wanted i just need to jump in here i feel so much better about what just happened on the show wow you were saying you're having quite the monday you were saying zoo ropa and i was like well why was i saying zoo tv and i got really in my head like what is zoo tv zoo tv was the was the tour that came kind of between Octung Baby and Zouropa that was like the big mass media thing so I think I'm looking here like oh wow the the tour supported Octung Baby and then Zouropa but I think it started off as an Octung Baby thing which is where they were really making a like some sort of statement on the state of media at that point there in the early 1990s and so they had all the the televisions blaring behind them and everything so when I kept on saying Zou TV and then you said Zuropa and then I was like what the hell am I talking about it's an actual thing that's related to you too and so just it's another it's just an Andrew W. Monday

it sure is take the rest of the day off my friend

have you been listening I'm barely here now

alright I guess

that's probably it but can I just tell you one more quick little thing that we got a note

again this all represents you doing too much

I just wanted to say because I don't know if we'll have a chance to mention it later on in the week. This is just a small little note that our friend Mellie posted on the show page from a couple of days ago from episode 4042, Let's Get Physicals, which I was very proud of that. Ooh, that's a good... Of that show title. But we were talking about what we had built and what the media had built, the legendary hot tub house in Berkeley. I can't remember the name of the fella who ran it, but essentially it was like a place where strangers could go and, like, use this hot tub, and he sort of ran it, and Mellie has been there before. And so I just wanted to share this experience, Mellie writes here. I went to that Berkeley hot tub house quite a few times when I lived there. It was awesome. My friend had a code. When you go in, you're absolutely silent. You undress, shower, you get in, and it's hotter than you think you could possibly stand, so no one stays in the water long. Then you get out, and you go around the yard. Around the yard are wooden platforms Among the trees where you can do yoga Or sit and meditate It was really wonderful I never met the man myself And that was good because he would basically only appear When people are not following his rules Especially being loud Then he would change the code And lock everyone out for a while

That's awesome I'm really glad that was something Melly was able to enjoy I have And I don't want to take this there The guy has passed away And it sounds like Melly had a perfectly lovely experience there but i don't think i put together that it was nude oh you said that on the show though well i don't

think i retained that information either you said that or i was reading along with you while you're doing the show yeah you nudity was required that was one of the rules silence and nudity i

believe that seems like if the guy again i don't want to paint this guy with an unfair brush or whatever but it's like we got this hot tub nudity is required women are allowed there you only see him if you're breaking the rules and he's kicking you out it still seems like is he watching the situation how does he know when the rules are being broken like why would nudity be um a requirement it would seem like it might be clothing optional or something i don't know that's an interesting aspect to it that i did not fully retained was that there was an a nude component and again I don't want to I don't want to you know besmirch this guy's legacy or whatever it sounds like a lot of people enjoy this place it sounds like it was all pretty above board but that's an interesting factor and I will tell you that like I went to a there's a place called Doe Bay out on Orcas Island this really lovely kind of resort type of place and they have a spa and it's clothing optional and I was was out there some years ago just kind of like doing some solo hiking and just enjoying orcas island and i went over to this thing and i was by myself and i will tell you this i was the only person with my swim trunks on sitting in that hot tub i was not trying to get naked around a bunch

of strangers well also and you you keep on saying you don't want to besmirch this guy one of the articles you sent me and again i was scanning this while you were reading it but he does sound like a complicated guy like the whole thing sound and again it sounds like meli's experience was great so that's good and again I don't want to I don't want to taint that obviously it's not for me I'm not somebody who's super comfortable taking off you know my hat in public um you know so obviously it's not for me and I wasn't there and it sounds like it was a good experience for a lot of people but also yeah the rules about like it was like women only or a woman could bring a male partner but a man couldn't just show up and I think you know the idea being that it's a safe space but then did you see in one of the articles that he also put up like a handwritten sign at one point that said like basically you had to be a cis woman and he wrote out the definition like the biological definition of what a woman i did not see that part and that made obviously some trans people feel very excluded obviously they they well they felt they felt that way because they were um and so anyway yeah and you're like wouldn't you consider changing your

gender gender identity in order to get into a hot tub exactly that's the whole thing like the the

The misunderstanding of what people's motivations are is staggering. So anyway, yeah, it sounds like there was a lot of complications here. But the house is for sale now, and he is in a different place.

Honestly, I was like, I don't have $900,000. I don't know if I have $900 currently, Andrew, with this construction project.

We need to podcast harder.

but i did think well it seems like a from what i know that seems like a decent deal for uh you know what uh what folks are paying in the berkeley area i know that the housing prices there are just absolutely astronomical so anyway all right well then how about that you know another thing that i felt good about why i'm liking the strike force 5 thing is because each show they alternate for who's kind of hosting who's kind of driving the bus as we say and a couple of them have had a really difficult time wrapping the show up and these are professional, paid hosts at the pretty much highest level of this and they don't know how to wrap up a podcast so I feel better about the fact that I don't know how to wrap up a podcast here either alright, thank you for listening everyone we will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you, in the meantime have a great Monday, take care of yourselves go Seahawks, and please remember no mountain too tall, and good luck to all

There it is. We're done. Did you really like it?

I feel like I just watched Prince record Purple Rain.

You really did it. Power out.