Muse

So, Brent, I see from your file you were in the materials business.

Oh yeah, big time. Strings, cords, vinyl, synthetics, rubber. We do vulcanize now, so that's huge. Plus metals, aluminum, brass, copper. What else?

Steel?

No, not steel. Steel's a sucker's game. Polymers, coatings, internals. You crack open an HVAC, that is all us. Is there golf here? There frickin' better be. TBTL! I came here to do two things, eat eggs and nothing. And I'm not out of either.

The most rewarding part was when he gave me my money. Beep-a-ba-ba-da-po, thank you for the dough.

Do you have any idea who I am? I'm a verified Yelp complainer.

By the way, I'm a dentist. Okay, so I read body language very, very well.

This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print, that makes people.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Oh, la, la. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Who the hell is that? Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it was torrentially raining yesterday when it wasn't beautiful sunshine. It was a kind of a pretty volatile day weather-wise. Today, things seem to have calmed down a little bit. We might even get a little bit of warm weather later in the week. Sunny skies, 70s, maybe the final lawn mowing for a little while, which if you want to really start a podcast off sort of conversationally in such a way that you're going to draw in the younger listeners, I'd say talk about how excited you are to mow your lawn. literally the highlight of my week will be mowing either today if the sun comes out or maybe tomorrow let the fun begin speaking of the fun beginning here we are at episode 4055 in a collector's series and um yesterday the internet was on fire with people coming up with new nicknames for my friend andrew oh hey y'all said my name by the internet i mean instagram and by on fire i I think there was like 12 comments in the audio post that TBTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff, threw up. But we do have some interesting names proposed, nicknames for my friend. He was a little dog named Snuggles. So we'll get into those. And then also, we've got some Sky Jinx, baby. Sky Jinx! Ooh! United Airlines is rolling out a new boarding system that is supposed to speed things up and remove a certain amount of awkwardness in the boarding process codenamed Wilma Wilma! Sometimes we talk about Skyjink stories just because, you know, I travel a lot and I love to complain about the airlines This one is actually, I think, a pretty big deal in the lives of the people who will be boarding United Airlines flights under the Wilma system.

Wilma!

So we'll talk about that, too. Oh, and speaking of my good friend, Andrew Walsh, the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Handsome boy.

I mean, it seems so simple. My nickname should be Handsome Boy. Look at this face. Look at this face. You know, I wasn't even thinking of that. I think I was just... Genevieve calls our cat a...

Handsome boy a lot.

Boy, that's really quiet. We have a lot of, I actually have a lot of handsome related content here in my little system. I've got this one. This handsome young stranger. I've got these kids trying to tell Blair Walsh that it's okay.

You are handsome. Don't worry.

I've got a handsome boy modeling school kind of stuff going on.

Mom, Dad, I've got a little surprise for the two of you. I think I might just buy you a 30-room mansion in Beverly Hills, California, complete with push-button phones. Look at that.

Whoa, push-button phones. Push-button phones. I guess that's it. It's like three drops. It's not so many. But it's more for two guys that don't consider themselves to be particularly handsome. I feel like it's more handsome-related content than you'd expect for me to have in the old audio system.

It's irony. You know, I said handsome boy. I wasn't really thinking before I opened my mouth, which is sort of a tradition I have on this show. And it occurred to me the reason I said handsome boy was because I wanted, well, it's a ridiculous nickname to call me. But it was probably front of mind because Genevieve will often call our cat Bingo a handsome boy, which raises an issue, which I should talk about less loudly here because Genevieve is an earshot. But we have a little bit of a little tension in the household these days. I mentioned to you yesterday on the show that this weekend was what I'm calling Bingo's birthday.

It was a one-year anniversary of the day that we brought him home. And I've been telling Genevieve for weeks. The gotcha day, right, is what you like to call it? That's what some people call it. Rhythm is going to gotcha. But I was telling Veves weeks in advance of this day that, like, once we pass that one-year mark, Bingo is no longer a baby and can no longer accept baby talk. We must speak to him at an age-appropriate level now.

Just for developmental purposes.

Exactly. So I've been shaking his hand a lot. I've been saying things like, it's always a pleasure, looking forward to doing business with you, stuff like that. Genevieve has not relented with the baby talk, and it is, I feel like she's not taking me or bingo seriously, and it's becoming a little bit of an issue.

This happens all the time. She's basically coddling and smothering this cat. This cat is not going to go anywhere in the adult cat world.

Exactly, exactly. She's helicopter cat parenting.

Exactly. I mean, how is Bingo supposed to become a sad, Willie Loman-esque character coming home from work with a briefcase and some broken dreams?

Oh, that's so cute. If we treat... I'm picturing it. Here's imagining a salesman starring Bingo. Just a broken-spirited Bingo. I can picture the setting of the briefcase down on the table. Wait, do I have a sad meow?

now have we let have we let listeners in on that meow sound i know that you played it on the show the other day and i said that it sound i think we all agree that that sounds like a human being making a meow sound for a sound effect but have we said this on air that it is my belief that you and i at some point in the future will forget that that was a sound effect that came with your computer program and not me making that sound because i can see a year 2025 where you play that and we're like oh yeah that's when andrew made that cat sound and we isolated it it just

seems like the mistake that we would make it it absolutely is except it won't be in this case andrew because this particular audio program that i'm using that has all kinds of uh little tiles in it when you when you go to the what's called uh the sample sound effects which is where i'm getting all kinds of things like this one like uh you know my famous helicopter sound effect that i we're also gonna think that's me making that sound absolutely this might be you making making the Wilhelm scream that one's actually possible these all have a little illustration on them as to what they are all right so the cat that I like to play now even though I've dragged it this is far far too specific even though I've dragged this this pre-made audio effect that they were so nice as to sell me and really let's be honest the business in the podcasting pack that i bought from rogue amoeba um there's a cat on this thing and so even though i've dragged it over to sorry that was a quiet cat that's that's the sound that bingo makes when bingo stops right outside the threshold of the front door coming home from work having taken the long island railroad all the way back from the city to somewhere in beacon new york and right before he comes in to face his loveless marriage and his sons who are disappointments to him he just says to himself very quietly anyway it has a picture of a cat on it andrew so i will not i see ever confuse it with something that that was you in the first place were to not have that illustration absolutely 100 i would do that i see

so it doesn't say cat sound by handsome boy it doesn't i bet you there's a way it was me there's

a way to um probably modify that speaking of your cool new nickname should we run through a couple of these um let's see of course because it's instagram yeah so why did this happen why why did this come up again it came up because of this particular conversation that we had on the show yesterday very briefly about nicknames and it was grabbed by um tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff who's um doing a lot of cool stuff in the online space so do go give us a follow over there on instagram there's a lot of a lot of good content now including this you and i from yesterday talking about what your nickname should be we're big with nicknames on the show and curing loneliness at least we try j-dog is taken so you can't be j-dog yes that is true flash is sort of out yeah yeah what are the other nicknames japan you can't be japan's number one mixer I feel like in our era

I feel like you gave me a bunch of nicknames Except all of my nicknames are somebody else's nicknames Don't you call me Boom Boom because it was a nickname of a guy

I just play that I don't think of that You know what, you're right Andrew Because when I say he is Andrew Boom Boom Walsh What am I saying? I'm saying that's your nickname So that audio went up on the internet yesterday on Instagram And of course we are represented When you're talking it's a picture of Bingo And when I'm talking it's a picture of Bubbles and people

People jumped in the comments and were then suggesting nicknames for you. And I just wanted to run through some of these and see if any of them might. And I have some not great news. None of them are handsome boy. But maybe it's just too obvious.

I so I don't really know what my role would be in this, because if I give like if I'm like, oh, hey, I like that one. That almost negates it immediately because one cannot pick one's own nickname. Right. So I need you just to sit back and take it, whatever you're about to throw my way.

You will sit back and take it, Chubby?

I will sit here and listen to what is presented to me, and I will think of England.

I'm just reading these directly off of the comments on Instagram, so in no particular order.

What is your take on these before you read them? I haven't even looked at them. Oh, okay.

You want to know what happened yesterday, Andrew? I saw that our friend, the Stewbot, had just done a kind of a dump, had done a sort of nickname dump in the comments. and I know Stubot is a very funny writer and I thought that'll be funny to read to Andrew tomorrow and so then I told you hey just don't look at the comments because I want to read you some of these nicknames you said I've only read the ones from Stu

yeah those were the only ones I read now did anybody suggest the word dump for me

no

so I honestly

here's what I screen capped the comments from Instagram under this post and I'm just going to read them now And I don't, again, not in any particular order. Somebody said you should be called Mr. Clean. What do you think about Mr. Clean? Because of the Spotless podcast. I kind of like that.

Yeah, actually, I like that. But if I like it, I wonder if that means that I won't keep it.

Because it's one of those, you're not allowed to give yourself your own nickname.

I hate all the ones I like and like all the ones I hate and chase all the heat dogs.

I've told this story so many times on the show, but it just cracks me up to this day. on the subject of nicknames and can you nickname yourself um you know when i was a kid of course living in seattle i would listen to ironically enough cairo radio from seven to ten at night on 7 10 a.m because they had a show called sports line with wayne cody and we had a quarterback on the seahawks named dave craig and his nickname was mud bone and he

did not like the nickname mud bone for some reason for some reason the reason being it was

Mudbone Dave Craig is a fascinating figure In the NFL for a long time he Had the all time record For fumbles in the NFL But he was also a very good quarterback At times he just had small hands And then eventually I believe the all time Fumbles record was eclipsed by a fellow Seahawk Warren Moon So an odd stat there For the old Seahawk quarterbacks back in the day

I think So I didn't follow football closely As a kid you know when the Browns were good in the 80s we would watch the playoff games i'd get excited about it i would go in the backyard and pretend i was bernie kosar but that was basically the extent of it except you were

you would pretend you're bernie kosar doing a selling heating commercial selling heat pumps

um yeah but um i was always just a broadcaster wow really at heart brett favre has now gotten

the record he's got 166 fumbles warren moon in second place at 161 and dave mudbone craig Third place, 153 fumbles.

This is what I was going to say. I think Dave Craig was the – my other exposure to NFL football at the time was playing my Tecmo Bowl video game on the original NES system. And I'm pretty sure Craig was the quarterback for the Seahawks, a team that I would play sometimes, although I think I was mostly a 49. I usually played as the 49ers because they had a great passing game.

It does seem like that would have been a little – I'm just trying to think. tech mobile when when do you think what era was that was that i was probably playing that and

i i'm sometimes i sometimes go back further than i should but off the top of my head i'm gonna say 1987 but it might have been more like 87 might have checked out might have been at the tail end

of the craig era or they weren't updating tech mobile the way they do the new video games oh yeah they made it when dave craig was the quarterback and then they didn't decide to do like, you know, issue a patch for when Stan Gelbaugh became the quarterback or Carrie Stauffer or Rick Meyer, who was supposed to be our great savior back in the day?

I'm looking at something here. They definitely have Warren Moon as being the quarterback of the Oilers at the time. So I remember that was right.

I'm trying to figure out the House of Pain.

Was that the name of the stadium?

That was where they, yeah, where the Oilers played. They called it the House of Pain. Oh, I didn't know that. And damn, those Oilers jerseys were so tight. They were a powder blue. They had a big oil derrick on the helmet, which, you know, not great on the carbon footprint, but amazing on the sort of aesthetics.

And I've always been a fan of teams that named themselves after the local industry, which is I was saying this the other day. As much as I dislike the Astros, you know, Major League Baseball team in its current incarnation, it bums. me out because i actually think there's a lot of really cool things about that team number one that it's a that it's a it's named after a local industry and that local industry is space like that's so cool you know and the oilers is kind of cool too even though like you say the fossil fuels

maybe we don't celebrate them as now they're the texans i think they might have gone to become the tennessee titans and maybe they've made a new team and they call them the texans yeah i think that is the case so on the subject of nicknames dave mudbone craig one night i'm listening it felt like it was just an absolutely any run-of-the-mill night of listening to wayne cody do the do sports line possibly he was at long acres the racetrack because wayne cody famously loved gambling and loved horse racing and he was a man of large appetites on every sense famously once the seahawks were playing in indiana um wayne cody was the um at that time he was the uh locker room reporter for i don't know if it was the tv or radio broadcast but he had left the game to go to the dog track i think in near the where the colts played in indiana maybe he went down to hammond or something and then came back and and walked in the locker room apparently eating a chicken leg and said to one of the players who won it's a famous wayne cody story i'm picturing a giant turkey can you imagine like in this day and age with how seriously we take our sports coverage just like you know could you imagine Jen Mueller just strolling into the locker room going who won eating a chicken leg anyway uh Dave Craig called into Sportsline with Wayne Cody and said um I don't want my nickname to be Mudbone anymore I want my nickname to be Cobra and Wayne Cody said that's great Mudbone and hung up on him that was when I fell in love with radio

okay I found like kind of a write-up it's weird that I couldn't find something easier than this although this is pretty good. I found a write-up on a website called techmobilevsrbi.com slash techmost-teams.html. It does a little breakdown of each team from the original Tech Mobile. It's even showing me the little plays. Did you play original Tech Mobile where you could choose the play?

No, I only played RBI baseball, and of course that was the game where I threw the controller at my friend Peter Williams and snapped his tooth in half, which we then had to, to this day, we've been lying to cover it up so Diane and Randall never find out.

so it shows you the four little plays you could choose you know you had four before you know like just like the more modern games only back in the day it was much more limited uh much

Shane Waldron has four plays I believe the Seahawks none of them are effective from inside

the 10 by the way the Seahawks have two runs and two passes you can choose and here's a little write-up of how the team fares okay um from the the author of this website Seattle possesses a fairly balanced offense with good but not great players Kurt Warner is a solid back and Largent as one of the fastest receivers in Tech Mobile, but neither are elite players. Dave Craig, which, by the way, I didn't remember that it was spelled K-R-I-E-G. I would have put my hand on a holy book and said it was spelled like a traditional Craig. But that's our Craig, right? That's Mudbone?

That's Dave Mudbone Craig, graduate of Milton College, which no longer exists.

It says Dave Craig has below average arm strength, which hinders the passing attack, but the playbook is solid, which helps Seattle be a formidable passing team. Defensively, they don't have a good player from a key bookend position at D-end outside LB or the defensive backfield. I'm going to stop reading now.

I personally feel Fred Young would really disagree with that. Fred Young spelled his name with two Ds, and they asked him once. He was a linebacker for the Seahawks. Why do you spell your day with two Ds? He goes, because after I tackle people, they go, Fred-de-de-de-young.

That's pretty good. It does say Brian Bosworth. Oh, sure.

The Wizard of Boz.

Didn't he just play for one year, or am I missing him?

I think a couple of years, but he was kind of injured a lot. It was a real fiasco when the CIS got him. Well, here's your guy, though.

It says Brian Bosworth, decent complementary player, but from his bottom middle linebacker position, he's a liability against the run and not as fast as Fred in passing situations. That's your guy, right? Fred with two Ds.

Do we get a Kenny Easley mention in there?

Free safety, Kenny Easley? Nope. Just scanning the rest of that, that looks like all the name checks we're going to get.

Please send me that link. i'm going to spend my afternoon analyzing if a person analyzing the tech mobile team from the 1987 seahawks is if i feel that because one of the things is i find i find interesting that um they made largent one of the fastest receivers in tech mobile because steve largent hall of famer um amazing football player not fast that was never his thing he was not a speedster he was just a very very precise route runner and had really good hands but no one would ever accuse steve of being a fast receiver. Our fast receiver was Brian Blades. Or even-

Oh, I don't remember him being in the game. Brian Blades.

We had Brian Blades, and then Brian's brother played somewhere else. His name was Benny Blades. Does those sound, those sound like two characters.

Carlitos way yeah hey it's Benny Benny Blades from the Bronx let's see here it does look like Brian Blades was in the original Super Bowl but not Kenny Blades well no no um Benny Blades played for a different team oh I'm sorry who's Brian Blades Seahawk receiver oh okay so he so Brian is the one okay so Brian is and I'm looking at something else now that's why I didn't know what team uh but yeah so Brian Blades was apparently in technical but not mentioned on this website I sent you the link.

Importantly, though, Andrew, we now have established you cannot give yourself your own nickname. You cannot nickname yourself Cobra because that is taken by Dave Mudbone Craig. So someone suggested Mr. Clean. Somebody suggested Snickerdoodle. Is that a callback to something? Or is that just maybe they just think you're cute or tasty? What if I just went with Snickerdoodle? Hey, it's Andrew Snickerdoodle Walsh.

Could you get with that? What do we call that thing? Slow quitting? What was it? Quiet quitting? You might see some quiet quitting.

I keep tossing. It's Andrew Snickerdoodle Walsh. How about Andy Blades? I don't know. I don't see it for you. How about, let's see, somebody suggested Andy Man, which kind of was...

Yeah, that was already kind of my nickname. Right.

Was that ever your actual nickname and then the Andy Man grill product came about or was the grill product, did that precede anyone ever calling you Andy Man?

That's a tough question. My dad to this day calls me Andy Boy. So maybe that's my nickname right there. Andy Boy.

That's cute. I love that. How about somebody also, the same person suggested T-Bone, which is a pretty kind of, that sounds like a real kind of bad to the bone type situation. Yes. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. Let me introduce the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known. That's pretty good. For his leather chaps he wears. He is Andrew T-Bone Walsh.

And isn't there a T-Bone drop that we play? Oh, yeah, like this one here. Okay, T-Bone, time for some serious crunching. Yeah, so we already have the audio to go longer. Okay, that kind of works. That kind of works. That's from a Microsoft. I'm sorry, that's from a video that was released, I believe, in the 1990s from a, what do you say, a large computer firm on the east side of Seattle? Uh-huh, Software Concern.

Wait, that's not, do you know the story that I wrote in my head for that audio? Can you please play that again? I certainly can. Okay, T-Bone, time for some serious crunching. Now that you say that, now that I'm listening closely, of course it's not what I thought it was. I thought it was Lucille from Arrested Development, Jessica Walter, but not in Arrested Development, but in Archer.

Oh, I could sort of see that. I don't know why.

It just seems like a line they would write into Archer.

Yeah.

Not that her character necessarily was going around crunching into T-bones, but for some reason, every time you played that, I pictured the animation of Jessica Walter's character on the TV show Archer.

I'm looking to see if I have any of her character. I have a lot of Archer drops, but I do not dare play them directly because some of them are not. I shouldn't even have them on here, like the one about Mr. Roboto.

Somebody said Catman's World. Catman's World. Oh, Catman's World for you because you are really, you are very much leaning into your bingo fatherhood lately. Sure. Somebody said Clevel Andrew. Like, was that a Cleveland Andrew? clevelandrew yeah that putters as smooth as that is too beautiful to andy drew me like your tall ships okay that's actually pretty good wait drew me like one of your tall ships drew me like one of your tall ships andrew uh mars droopian gurgle that sounds like mars droopian gurgle the problem is putting somehow working drew and they're saying you're having some drooping problems it sounds like you need to see dr arakaki yeah just pass that one um and then a lot of this scat mandrew scat man drew this is the second man's world second person who's bringing up scat man uh somebody else said oh you could call you the airy ace oh for the eagles airy yeah sure although i feel like of the people in our friend group aside from me would you say you are the second how might how do i how do i frame this phrase this because you know our whole friend group everyone's members of the eagles now i am technically a member as well although i'm rarely there because i don't live up there but of our friend group you're probably the least likely to be at the eagles wouldn't you say out of everyone you know who i'm thinking of who are members and go on the regular and vives host karaoke there and it's a real regular stop you know our friend katie is literally the president i feel like you go a lot but there are all there are also andy nights where um where the the crew is getting together but you're not there does that ever happen yeah sure that that happens

occasionally i think i'm often there but yeah definitely genevieve goes more than me because

she's got a responsibility there yes she does so i think the airy ace might be more like genevieve or even our friend katie yeah uh putter king of ohio pko for short that's pretty good oh yeah and now please welcome to the show the putter king of ohio yeah that definitely sounds like somebody who scammed a lot of senior citizens out of oh sure something sure sort of like the polka king remember he was the he got in trouble the the polka king of like the polka king of western pennsylvania or something did you ever hear about that guy no i don't think so there was this guy um and his name wasn't lenny samosky but i feel like it could have been um there was a guy who was this like beloved polka king somewhere in the midwest and he was so popular that then he started doing these tours i don't know if they were sort of polka tours but he would get these he got into this like high-end tour bus business but then he um actually was like running out of money and fleecing everyone and he went from being the beloved polka king of whatever part of the the world the country was into um an ignominious end when he turned out to have stolen everyone's

money now didn't john candy also play a polka king in uh planes trains and no home alone right yes

yes yes yeah yeah yes right he's got the um what's the name of his polka crew i remember he's got his

jacket on right i'll be able to remember um but i feel like that was pennsylvania too no

very possibly i'm trying to the man who would be polka king the rise and fall of yon luen whose international polka empire led to the greatest polka-related financial crime in history.

Oh, my God.

Now, that's a hell of a log line.

Let's see here. What was the name of John Candy's polka band in Home Alone, the Kenosha Kickers?

Oh, God, the Kenosha Kickers. I love their work.

Gus Polinsky is his name.

Gus Polinsky. Yeah. Okay, so let's see. The polka king of Ohio. No, wait, the puttering king of Ohio. T-Mobile's number one defender. i just it's so random i love it and impossible to say wait hold on tmo because because i use

t-mobile how do people know that i use t-mobile no for real is that something that comes up am

i misunderstanding or is it t-mobile park maybe i don't know ask rob underscore denver okay who is the one who put these ones out there uh the data sculptor what is that the data sculptor oh Oh, the data sculptor. Ooh, okay. That makes it sound very artful, what you do with your data. Yeah. You know what you do with your data is your business, Andrew.

Oh, is that because we were talking the other day about how, like, when you're, like, deleting a bunch of files first, you just, like, take out the big chunks? Sure, yeah. I'm guessing. Sure, yeah.

Mr. Modesty.

I actually like that. I actually like that. It's pretty solid. To say that with a bunch of bravado, here he is, Mr. Modesty. There's a, what's the word I'm looking for? Never mind, let's move on

Here he is Mr. Modesty I don't know, just goat I was searching

Incongruence is the word I was looking for Incongruence, gotcha Don't you think there's a bit of incongruence? I do, I love it

My dad used to always My dad used to love to tell this I don't even know if it rises to the level of joke But it was an observation that he would mention Often about humility And he would say they gave somebody at the church a medal for being the most humble member of the congregation, and then the first day that he wore it, they took it away. See that? See how that works? Yeah. He got the medal for humility, but then upon wearing it, he was immediately, he had showed himself to no longer be humble.

I gotta say, the past three option for the San Francisco 49ers, it's still as sexy today as it was when I was playing this game. Let me see if I can name

who, so was that, this is the Steve Young era, right? Let's see here. Would Steve Young have been their quarterback at this time might be a little early for steve young actually you know what i'm just now realizing might have been later stage montana it was montana yeah it was montana and also they have

roger craig as a running back and i'm wondering if that's why i was that's why i was so convinced that the seattle quarterback's uh name was spelled that way yeah roger craig phenomenal

yeah he was really good they also probably have dwight clark on that team who made quote unquote The Catch, famously, for the Niners. Let's see, more nicknames for Andrew. Bramble Man, because you love clearing bushes. I do, sure. Let's see here. We've also got somebody who wanted to call you Dart Man. Dart? Oh, Dart Man. Dart Man, ooh.

Dart Man versus the Dart Bot.

Mm-hmm.

That could be Maybe a sequel in the franchise Bingo Daddy Pretty sexual And let me see if I can find Do we have some Okay here we go From the Stewbot This is a data dump here

This is a big one

It's for the data sculptor So start sculpting Drewgots That's pretty good Collision course Dan Guess what Drew Gotts Is back The Candyman Don't say his name three times Slick Andrew And now Andrew Slick Walsh Just trying it on The Valley Center Valentine I like that one too That would be your wrestling name 100% Valley City, Stu, but you know this Look at the next one Either Stu has a photographic memory of my favorite Dave Craig story Or there's just the coincidence of the world He also suggested Cobra Oh, Cobra

Yeah, sure

Andrew Cobra Walsh Even though I just said you cannot Well, Cobra and Cobra are very close together They're one letter off

Yep, exactly Meat. Meat. I like that. Just call me Meat. Andrew Meat Walsh joins us. There it is. But I want to tell the audience, you were going to delete that file. That's some random note that came packaged with software probably 20 years ago. And before the show, you're like, oh, shoot, I found another errant file. I need to delete it. I said, you do not delete that file. I know. We use that file now.

Now I'm kind of mad at myself that I deleted as many of them as I did. No, it's special. We could really turn the show into just kind of a tone. Yeah, that's the like is that the brown note Well, we'll find out when people email in other nicknames suggested by our friend the stew bot include Tame like us I'm a sucker for any kind of a like us reference. I'm wondering did the stew bot we should call him sometime I did though Yeah, I mean like us is the stew bot just know about like us because he just knows pop culture or because Because I don't think Lycus was ever actually on in the Twin Cities. I think that the Tom Lycus empire really only extended from L.A. to Seattle, bizarrely.

Oh, really? Oh, I thought it was a national thing.

Well, I always thought it was as well. And then one day, I feel like I looked it up. And it was not as, I mean, maybe there was a few other, maybe Sacramento or something. But it was not like coast to coast, you know, across the country kind of a thing. But also, you know, very famous in our friend group, particularly for me and Camaro Kev and J.D. talking about all that Lycus stuff. Tame Lycus. Also, I wonder if that's a Tame Impala joke. I love that. The Golden Flash. Oh, yeah. It's a little close to Flash.

Yeah, it is. Which is already kind of someone else's. And also, like, yes, I graduated from Kent State, but I feel like there are other people who should claim the Golden Flash title more than me. I wasn't, like, super involved in the school.

We've also got, we could call you Bud. Hey, Bud. Hey, Bud. How's it going?

Hey, Bud.

We could call you Uncle Doctor. I don't know. Is that a reference to something or just from the mind that brought you meat? It's Uncle Doctor. Disco Drew, Randy Andy.

Okay. I feel like that. Didn't that come up recently or was that off air? I'm not even joking. I was having some conversation about Randy, Andy, but was that not with you? I don't think that was with you.

I don't think it was me. Was it with Stu? Because I don't feel like I've ever, first of all, I don't think of you as the randiest person I know, although I don't know what goes on, and I don't want to know. And also, no one calls you Andy, I think, out of a particular preference on your part, right? Like, you were raised in Andy, but as an adult, you'd just as soon be Andrew.

I will be going back to the land of Andes next week, as a matter of fact. If I'm going back home, everybody calls me Andy.

That'll be interesting. And it is pretty consistent, like your family and relatives and everyone. You're Andy when you get back. I am, yeah. How's that feel? I don't notice it. Huh. But it's very regional. It probably feels normal there. But can you imagine me and you going into Goldie's and me calling you Andy or me seeing you at Teddy's or one of our other – why? It's always barred. Because we're contributing a lot to society. Potluck in the basement of the Lutheran Church.

Honestly, like if I were anywhere with you and you called me Andy, or even if somebody didn't know me and called me Andy, it would stand out like a sore thumb.

you know how your thumb when it's sore it really really stands out yeah it would stand out like that but i go home everybody calls me andy i don't even notice and it would be funny for somebody who knows me now to go back home with me because they would it would stand out to them i think like a like one of those thumbs that are injured uh-huh that are standing out sure i whacked my thumb

i whacked my thumb the other day doing that project of trying to get that sub floor up and And it was like, I just turned into like a cartoon character with a big red throbbing thumb. And then I had to do my, the only Buddhist thing that I do, even slightly Buddhist thing that I do is when I injure myself, like if I stub my toe or something like that happens to my thumb, I try to tell it, I am not cut off from you. I am enveloping you. You are accepted into this body. Even though you're hurting right now, let's spread this pain throughout the body. Let's not push you away and other you, thumb, that is hurting. You're part of this whole organism. You're part of this rig called Luke Burbank. So let's spread the pain so maybe it's not all right where you are. Maybe it's not all in this thumb because it's not a good feeling.

I would just swear at it. I'd cut it off like the Bible says. But you know how the kind of— That's the only biblical thing I do is I cut off my limbs when they—

Sure, when they offend you?

Yeah, when they offend me.

I wonder what the original—that's got to be a translational thing, right? Like, if your eye offend thee, cut it out or pluck it out. Like, I wonder what the, because offend could be a lot of things. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I feel like that's just, that's a weird way to put it. Like, I mean, I think what they're trying to say is if your eye does something bad or if your hand does something bad, if your body does something bad, get rid of it, which it's just one of those many things that I just don't think we should take literally.

Well, I think I said this to you on the show already, but I saw some little bit of social media wisdom somewhere, probably in Instagram stories a few weeks ago that said, in 2000 years, booty call and butt dial will mean the same thing. And that's exactly why we shouldn't take the Bible seriously today.

I mean, I, whatever, we don't need to get into this right now, but I would just say that the people can, you know, if people find a life of faith, particularly life of Christian faith to be something that is comforting to them and gives them a framework for their life i totally support that it's not for me but i'm not anti it i do find it funny that as many decisions are made in this country based on a literal interpretation of a book that says if your eye offends you pluck it out like we nobody's doing that because we've all decided that we don't really mean that one but then there's a bunch of other stuff that we're like but that one that one's but no but

that's the right yeah oh no other stuff is all we're really doing it don't do the i thing i can be a bigot against gay people yeah of course right of course and also because it's like there's one

there's like one verse in like john where it says like a men lay with men in their lust or something it's like we're kind of going a la carte here on the things that we're deciding are literal and the things that we're deciding are more just kind of general i don't know what you would call it

allegory or something so it's just so i can't even start talking about i've been thinking about that a lot lately i i don't know why but i've been i've been thinking about that that wazoo coach the coogs coach who claimed that and he won his case right and he was like i think he ended up winning basically he said he didn't want to get vaccinated as you know per state rules as a state employee he had to get vaccinated but did he win his case or are you thinking of the guy who wanted to pray at i'm well that i'm i i don't i know that the guy who wanted to pray at midfield won his case came back this season played one game dropped the mic and moved back to like fucking florida or whatever like anyway all of the he this one i hope most of our donors are from florida today i mean i got no problem with florida but like he raised this whole stink saying that he couldn't be a coach here in washington state because he was pushed out like he sued just i mean he was already out of state like it's just this ridiculous grandstanding and also creating precedent in the courts that just basically lets people blur the line between religion and law and It's just absolutely ridiculous. And just to close the close the sentence on the Wazoo coach, he claimed that his religion prevented him from getting a vaccine during COVID and his religion was Catholic. And we know that that is not a case. And it's just like it's been bothering me lately as I've been thinking about that and all these. I don't know why I'm sort of obsessed with this particular topic.

You definitely want to bring this energy home to Ohio. Yeah, I know. I need to get it. I think you want to get it, get it, get it all out of your system, Andy.

Because basically what we've created is a world where we say religious freedom, but it basically means I can do whatever I want. It's personal freedom, right? Because if you can say, if there's a track record of somebody belonging to a religion and we know that religion did not create it, not that we should ever. I mean, you could create a religion that says anything, like, frankly, like that's magical. It's ridiculous. But even if we wanted to stick with this sort of like idea that, well, we respect religion. So therefore, this person's religion won't let them get a vaccine. scene but we know that that religion does but they can still say yeah but it's my own personal religious belief it's like oh okay you just are saying the word religion now as a catch-all for

i can do whatever i want and no laws affect me i also i mean again i know we have a fair number of listeners who are people of faith and i don't want to i don't want to um offend them or tick them off too much but i just don't think that anyone should get a religious exception for anything because we have rules and laws like could you say your religion is i must i i belong to the sammy hagar the church of sammy hagar and i cannot drive 55 because of my religious beliefs what is different about that yeah than any other religious exception it's like we have rules and laws and we're either going along with them and obeying them or we're not the idea that you're a spirit life that you engage with should affect if you have to follow the speed limit or if you have to get a vaccine to work somewhere or whatever it's like i don't understand it at all as a thing honestly like it just because because of the fact that you could say anything is your religion and therefore you don't have to do something that the rest of us are doing i just i'm surprised that there's any religious exception for anything well yeah that's my point and just to

underscore what you said at the beginning of that to underscore your caveat how about that is a nickname andrew the caveat underscore andrew is like love it i am i am not against anybody having their own personal beliefs like at all like I want to make this clear there are some people like I'm personally not religious right I grew up religious had religious education I'm not religious I don't believe in anything that would be even remotely categorized as religion having said that I'm not the type of person who wants to argue the logic of it with you like if I meet somebody who's very religious I don't want to sit down with them and say like well what about this what about this I'm right I'm glad that you have your faith like that's wonderful for you I'm just saying that when your faith comes up against the laws of society that we shouldn't pretend that like again i mean it's just a frustration with the court right now and everything that's just like the term religious exemption doesn't really mean anything it means people can just as long as it's a conservative belief you can get away with it can you imagine how fun the

church of sami hagar would be though yes just think about it all the time think about communion would just be Cabo Wabo talk about transubstantiation we know where the church is it's in Cabo San Lucas like it's right there just think about how freaking fun communion would be and once a year you have to

go to Cabo San Lucas absolutely yes like it's like their Mecca yes exactly the Hodge yeah is to go

down and watch the the Red Rockers and I just I don't even I don't know what Sammy Hagar's current backing band is but i know that i already love the name of it it's like sammy and the what do you think it's got to be the like sammy haggar and the outlaws or sammy haggar and the um like it's they've got to be some kind of you know i don't know what sammy haggar and the pirates there's some kind of nautical kind of devil may care you just these these these guys cannot be you know cannot be controlled can we if we google sammy haggar yeah i've got some here

I need you to be prepared to be disappointed. Andrew, the disappointment preparer, Walsh.

Is it Sammy Hagar and the insurance? Is it Sammy Hagar and the expense reporters?

It's Sammy Hagar and the yours truly Johnny Dollars. There's one that he had called Sammy. There's one he had called Van Halen, unfamiliar with it. Sammy Hagar and the Circle.

That's not very.

No. That's very boring. There was something here called Kings of Chaos. I don't know what the deal with that is. That's pretty cool. I'd go with that. He looks like he was in a band early in the day called Montrose. He's been in a band since 2008 called Chicken Foot.

That's one of my favorite Camaro Kev references. He'll just sometimes drop Chicken Foot when we're just talking about something and somehow the red rocker comes up. I'm never not going to laugh when you just say Chicken Foot out of the box. Okay, I have one for you. How about the Wabo Ritas? Okay, now, thank you.

I'm back. The Wabaritas is the name of Sammy Hagar's backup band, though they are frequently and more recently referred to as the Wabos. Okay, now. You're sweet as they are. They were formed in 1997 and have been active ever since. I love it. Their only hiatus was during the Van Halen tour of 2004, during which Hagar kept them fully paid. Good for him.

See, all accounts are that Sammy Hagar is a heck of a guy. I didn't know that. Heck of a person. Same with Guy Fieri. It's funny because I feel like Sammy Hager and Guy Fieri sort of occupy this like the same sort of world of vibes, which is like we're going to be out fishing for swordfish. You know, it's a real strong salt life kind of vibe. I mean, Guy Fieri is more land.

based guy fury is more like i'm driving around in a convertible i'm driving through you know um where i'm driving route 66 in a convertible more of a terra firma vibe he's kind of and then you've got sammy is more like a kind of like you know attitudes and latitudes which i know is literally a jimmy buffett thing but just but in both cases they're supposed to be really good dudes who are really good to the people that work for them and are kind it would appear that there's a whole just like hey man just you got to just go with the flow and you just gotta you know i'm the mayor of flavor town and i'm hanging out with the wabaritas it might actually be working for these dudes yeah like they're not they seem untroubled and they don't seem like bad people to be around

do you want to hear the discography of the studio albums of the wabaritas i absolutely do red voodoo came out in 1999 sure 10 13 came out in 2000 he loves the numbers doesn't 10, 13. The number 10 and then a 1 and a 3.

So I wonder what that indicates or what that's a reference to.

Yeah, I don't know. And then not for sale. So I feel like, yes, something's going on here. And then living it up in 2006. I'm assuming there's no G in living. No, I'm sorry. If I pronounce the G, that's 100% on me. You didn't. Okay, no, that's an apostrophe. Oh, and here you go. Back to the church of Sammy Hagar. Their live album came out in 2003. Hallelujah.

oh wow there you go interesting i'm in oh hey king of rock you're out of your depth was that paul rudd uh maybe i'm just andrew i'm just cruising around in the old archives of of of stuff audio that's been living on that other computer for years i don't even know what that is it sounded like paul rott paul rudd okay is that rockstar legendary freaks we're a ragtag

group of crazy stupidly crazy talented rock star legendary freaks that's really great bring that

back yeah let's see i'm trying to oh this one i i've always liked this one too set yourself up

to completely fail the crowd or you go out there and you rock a house do you rock a house and then

of course on the subject of rocking we've got back it's back you you know what i'm actually

very many times that you deleted that i i thought i did i really actually i'm not even kidding i thought i did but you know the internet andrew nothing's ever deleted you know what i'm really excited about though no joke the there's an album that i was very very obsessed might be overstating but that i listened to all the time and it was from a band called the morning benders i think that they might have changed their name from morning benders to something else they did an album called the bedroom covers where they just did as you might imagine covers and i think they recorded it in one of the band members bedroom and i loved this album so much and i couldn't find it and it's not available anywhere i went on the line i went on every music service i would i would purchase i would be happy to purchase a cd of it and um somehow in all this transferring of audio what do you what do you think i found the morning bender's album the bedroom covers i could

not get anywhere like this album has been out of my life for like two to three years andrew and i

would think about it on probably a monthly basis and then i would just get on the internet and be like this is this album anywhere and here it is on my system i could even like well i guess i can't really burn it onto cd we don't have a disc drive on this but i'm just i've recaptured the audio of of something that I really loved and really missed when I didn't have it.

Thank you, baby.

Okay, let's thank some donors who are keeping TBTL in business. This is, of course, a listener-supported podcast supported by listeners like Aaron Hyland in Bellevue, Washington. Hey, hey. Thanks, Aaron. Greetings, Highlander. Indeed. Were you ever into the Highlander movies?

I was not. Is it Christopher Lambert's finest work? I'm trying to think. I was going to try to make a joke. What is the catchphrase of Highlander? Never say, never die. No, what is it? Is that it?

I don't know. I just know. I feel like Sean Connery is in one, and he says, Greetings, Highlander. Which is, I think we can all agree, a pretty good Sean Connery impression

No, that was amazing Was that a drop? Did that come with the computer program?

No, that was actually me, if you can believe it

Oh, I couldn't hear the cat. Oh, there can only be one. Is that what I said before? There can only be one?

Oh, you didn't say that, but that is what it is. Are you sure?

I think that's what I said. You thought it, but you didn't say it. Okay, yeah, sure.

There can only be one Aaron Highland in Bellevue, Washington. We thank you, Aaron. Also, thanks to Anastasia Hoffman in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia. Wow. All kinds of fancy. Germany. GDR, baby. Mm-hmm. German Democratic Republic. Thank you, baby. I wonder if Westphalia is a particularly kind of outdoorsy kind of area because, you know, famously the Volks... I can't say the word, Andrew. I cannot say the name. It is Volkswagen, right?

Do you find it incongruous?

That's living in my head. It's just the fact that for as long as this show has been around, I've been unable to say the word Volkswagen, and I'm getting no closer.

That is a strange one, but like I say, I bring up my own flub because I'm certainly not in any place to be throwing stones when it comes to pronunciation or knowing how to say words or knowing how to read words or really anything to do with words.

But that barely comes up in this program.

But luckily, I don't need that shit for my job. But that is a weird one that I can't get my head around. It must just be a regional thing, the Volks and Volkswagen thing.

I think I just got it wrong when I was little. But you're not the only one, though. It's just hardwired now. But the Volkswagen bus that is a Westphalia. Oh, okay. Which is, like, I was very into for a while. You know, they're like, you can get kind of the kind that have a pop top on them. You can camp. That whole thing, and it's come up on the show a bunch, but it is a very appealing thought to me. It's not a thought that I have given into of late. I've got my hands full here building a physical house to live in but the the thought of just being able to like drive anywhere and pop the top on a Westphalia and and park by a you know by the ocean and just wake up and look at the ocean that is a very appealing notion to me when I was when I was a young man that sounded very appealing to me but for me not no I'm way too much of a homebody it is funny I used to believe it or not used to have a very adventurous spirit when I was a young person I thought like I just want to

I believe that I'm going to travel around like, you know, not not even like travel around like tourism, but just like the life that you're describing, just like beyond the road at all times and whatever. Now, I'm just like, I just want a hot shower and a dartboard. Are you kidding me?

Well, that's why they call you Dartman.

That's why they call me the shower.

It's a radio drama from the 40s about a guy who has all his best ideas in the shower.

And his his fingernails are getting too thin because of all the hot water.

Uh-huh. Thanks, Kathleen Estes of Olympia, Washington, for supporting the program.

Thanks, Kathleen. I think I used to see Kathleen on the Facebooks back in the day. It's good to see that name here.

Wendy Ross is in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Nice. Beautiful. That's a place I would have gone. Have we driven through Cheyenne on any of our travels across the country?

I can't say for sure, but that is definitely the kind of place where I could have pictured myself in a hippie van.

I've been through it. I just wondered if we have been through it. You and I in like a Westphalia or anything.

I'm not sure. I don't think I've ever been in a Westphalia with you.

I want to apologize, Andrew, for the times that I've Westphaled you as a friend, as a fellow podcaster, as a co-owner of this business.

Let's take those Westphalias and turn them into West victories.

Yes, absolutely. You know who is hoping that happens is Elizabeth Gerard of Seattle, Washington.

Wait, that's our friend. That's Liz. Thank you, Liz.

Oh, yeah. I don't think I recognize the Elizabeth factor. I know. Hi, Liz.

Is Liz an eagle yet? I'm not sure if Liz is officially an eagle yet. I call her the airy ace. That's right.

Thanks, Liz. Also, Bobby Smolenski is also there in Seattle, Washington. What up, Bobby? Thank you so much. Thank you to all of our donors for making it so that we can do TBTL. We really do appreciate you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. uh uh united airlines uh has rolled out a new boarding plan called wilma in which people in the window seats will get to board before the people in the middle seats and the people in the aisle this is good news for me andrew bad news for you right i mean well

is it really bad news i mean there's only one little part of this that is kind of could be bad news but like it's only bad news if you're the type of person who thinks for some reason there's a benefit of getting on the plane first which i don't know well there is in terms of

overhead yes space if you have a yes if you're flying with a bag that you didn't check. Right, and that is the only thing. But honestly, it's so willy-nilly these days, whether or not you can take your bag on or not. I'm always just prepared for them to take it away from me at the gate. I hate it, but they do it all the time.

And also, I've noticed this, because you and I have flown together a fair amount, you don't even like to have your small bag up above. You like to have it with you so you can get to your stuff. So you're actually the least probably concerned with overhead space of anybody I know, Because you don't probably take much advantage of it.

Usually I have my, like, Away. Was the brand Away? Those hard-shelled suitcases? That goes above. That goes above. And then I have my personal carry-on, which would be like a backpack with, like, a laptop in it. Is that what you mean?

No. Well, I remember us flying somewhere. And maybe it was, was it Australia? I think it was Australia. And you had your bag.

I just put a lot in my laptop backpack, I think.

But what I remember was that there was room above, and I thought, I was like, and this didn't affect me, it was your leg room, but I was like, you should put that up above because, you know, technically it's like your larger bag in the overhead. I think maybe.

Oh, yeah, that was my personal carry-on, and I do remember you saying, like, why don't you put it above? I was like, oh, well, because all my snack or whatever, all my stuff is just in there, and my headphones, I didn't want to be getting up and down a million times.

I'm obsessed with, not obsessed, but if I can have, I'd like to get on the plane with nothing. Or if I have, like, a small bag and there's room above after, you know, everyone's got on, I want to put it up there. Because I just want to be, like, sprawled out and the maximum footroom, et cetera. Well, here's the thing. United Airlines says that this Wilma seating chart system saves. This is the part that I was really shocked by. This is a piece in the Washington Post by Heidi Perez Moreno. um or moreno maybe did you see the amount of time this supposedly saves i know that it's minimal it's two minutes right the whole thing i mean first of all it's it's very intuitive first i read it and i was like oh yeah duh it should be window uh boarding first because then you don't you know have to if you're in the middle or the aisle you don't have to like be sitting there kind of like waiting to do your seat belt and you're just kind of tense the whole time because They're just like someone else is going to arrive and then they're going to need me to get up. And you're just you're not really settling into the flight experience until that window person is seated. Of course, they should just be there. But over the course of an entire airplane, which is going to be like 30 rows or so, that's 60 events. Because you've got a right hand and left hand window, 60 possible events where someone has to go, oh, that's me. And then two people to stand up and somebody who did buckle their seatbelt has to unbuckle it. And then, oh, I'm sorry, get up. That happening 60 times was only adding two minutes to the flight?

Yeah.

Or you're only saving two minutes by avoiding that potentially 60 times? I was really surprised.

Yeah, maybe on average when it cuts across all of the travel of a day, I'm not exactly sure. Here's the deal, though. In fact, this is on my mind right now as I get ready to travel again next week. And I traveled over the summer games. I did a little bit of flying. And one thing I realized there is if I'm going to fly, we've we've said this a million times, I'm going to fly Alaska Airlines. They are by far the best airline to fly. And I try not to drag them too much. I know it's like it's somewhat complicated. I know it's a very complicated industry. I also think it's I have my issues with the industry as a whole. But one thing I realized was I couldn't choose my own seats. You know how they've made it so, like, and I don't know if you do know this, Luke, because you have so many points and you fly first class so much, but, like, there used to be a time where you would, you know, book your flight and pick your seats, and then as you get closer to boarding time, you could open the app and maybe even choose a better seat if you could. But little by little, they've been like chipping away at what seats are free. It's like, well, now you have to pay more if you want to be in the exit row or now you have to pay more if you want to be on the end. Or these seats here have like a fraction of an inch more leg room. So that's going to be an extra forty five dollars each way. They've just like chipped away, chipped away, chipped away at the actual options that you have if you just want to get a better seat without upgrading. Now they've totally taken that away. Now, I don't know if that's because I've been booking these through Travelocity. i'm not sure but um it didn't used to be this way and maybe that's a mistake maybe i should just like kind of like do not directly to alaska definitely find the find the fare you want and

then um this is why i'll never be hired by travelocity but yeah for all those things whether it's hotel airplane always if you can go to the source because you first of all you'll have much more recourse if there's an issue and also because you can usually get the exact same price

like in my experience yeah yeah and i think yeah and i think it is the same price i think those websites i think i just got into the habit of doing it that way and because this time i know that i meant to to book it directly through alaska maybe i just kind of got lazy in the moment

Just hit, you know, clicked the buy button. But anyway, when I was flying back to Seattle earlier this fall, not only could I not choose my seat, like I had to go up to the gate agent and say, so I haven't been able to pick my seat. Like, if you have any aisle seats, I'd really, really appreciate it. Just sort of throwing myself at their mercy. And it did work both times. But the second time, I was actually on the standby screen, Luke. i saw i mean that was a blast from from the past when i was like my my mom was a flight

you might have not even gotten on the flight i think so it said waiting for seats and there were like two or three names up there that's different and one of them was mine yeah waiting for seats is a little my guess is that you were going to get on the airplane no matter what but that you um but that you didn't have a seat assigned for you whereas standby is like if you're flying on your mom's you know because i think your mom was a flight yeah my mom was a

flight attendant i would fly standby so i'd see my name on that screen quite a bit but you might

not even get on the plane it doesn't have to be extra seats i'm hoping anyway for the sake of my my beloved and preferred airline alaska airlines i'm hoping that they wouldn't do you that dirty where you like buy a ticket and then i mean that does happen occasionally but that would be it

made me nervous but it also just really kind of irritating again the gate agents i find to be usually very helpful and kind and if you just say hey listen i know that you guys are totally booked up but if there's any chance you have an aisle seat for me it would mean the world for me and because I mean it is true like I don't I'm not like diagnosed with anything but like I get kind of claustrophobic in and we all my personal religion Luke says that I can't sit in the middle seat or the window seat no yeah like I don't know it's uncomfortable everybody is uncomfortable in some way on an airplane so I don't want to make it seem like I have special needs when I don't but But it seriously degrades my experience over a three to five hour flight if I am not on the aisle. And so I just try to throw myself again at their mercy. But like it really bums me out that they've just like made it impossible to navigate the system on the app anymore without paying more money.

Yeah, I don't know about that because of all of the, you know, flying that I've done in my little status. So I'm in a very kind of protected bubble of picking seats and things. And if I'm in coach, you know, I'm I'm able to pick hopefully whatever the best available seating coaches because of but, you know, I'll tell you what I'm running up against, Andrew, because I have been so I've been so kind of busy with this house stuff and everything and my schedule being what it is. i actually haven't traveled as much this year for cbs as i have in previous years i'm and i'm eyeing december 31st and realizing that i may not get enough miles to get to my little beloved status which the way they the way they really get you is once you kind of have your your little status thing you've got to keep it up you've got to fly like i have to fly 75 000 miles every year to have the status i was flying home from new york the guy sitting next to me i can't remember if i mentioned this to you or not but like the guy sitting next to me who was a nice enough guy he had flown that morning from portland to new york had a 20-minute layover had gotten back on the flight and flown home and there was apparently one or two other people on the flight that he had seen that were doing the same thing they're just banking miles they just needed another 5 000 miles the ticket was weirdly cheap it was like 100 bucks so you go around and you find and this is a whole thing people do they locate like a cheap flight that's going really a long way and uh and they they book it and they just do it to get the miles and i might have to do that before december like a few times which is not pleasant but i can't go back i answer i can't go back to living like you do i know i can't be i can't be showing up and be on the standby list i have to be you know like at the, even if I'm not in first class, I have to at least be able to pick like an exit row or something. Although that does, you know, I always talk about this, but that does make me, I do get weirdly nervous saying yes to the flight attendant, confirming that in the case of emergency, I will operate the door. I don't know why. I just feel like everyone on the plane can hear you and it's embarrassing.

I need a verbal Cabo Wabo. Here I go. Once again, with the email every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

I definitely think Verbal Cabo Wabo is a strong show title.

I need a Verbal Cabo Wabo.

Yeah.

Let me see. What do I want to play for? Oh, my buddy William called the show, I believe, over the weekend. William's here in Seattle, and he had some tips for you as somebody who is, you know, going through everything you're going through with your house. You talked about buying a new door and your travails there. And now you're building a door with your dad and you're putting what do you call the hatch, the port, the port hole.

Which, Andrew, is not I said it was coming from England It's coming from India Oh, wow Which is wild to me What's the shipping on that, geez, Louise It's free, which I don't know How that works How is that priced in? But it has writing on it That indicates that it was from A ship in England But of course, because of the history of colonialism I guess that ship or part of that ship ended up in India, or just somehow that porthole made its way to India where it is now being sent to me from a guy in India.

How do you feel about the expression, shut your porthole?

I'm going to start using it all the time once I have that door set up. Yeah, absolutely. That's going to be my new catchphrase.

Actually, William does have some advice on portholes.

Hey, guys. William, Seattle. Got a couple of hot tips for you. If you're ever near the Elder Burbs, there's a little town. Well, you know about Poles, though. There's a little store in Polesville called Long Ship Marine, and they have all kinds of – it's a used nautical stuff store. So they have all kinds of things, like you could get a new ship's wheel. You could get some more portholes. And then the last thing is the little latches that you use to shut the porthole and keep it watertight are actually called dogs. And when you shut those latches, that's called dogging the hatch. So you should be able to bust that out on some of your guests sometime soon after you get your door done. See ya.

Yeah, so instead of saying close the porthole, you can say, hey, could you go dog those? Is it hatch or latch? I can't remember. Hatch.

Hey, dog the hatch. Hey, stand by on the poop deck. Dog the hatch. No, no, no. Don't raw dog the hatch. Just dog it. Just dog it.

Dog the hatch could also be a way of telling somebody to shut up as well. Only you and I would know that. But if I'm ever talking. Hey, Andrew. Andrew's like, hey.

Andrew, would you consider dogging that hatch right now? Dog that hatch.

I'm going somewhere with this.

I'm going to definitely forget that, and I'm definitely going to botch it next time I try to say it. But dog that hatch.

Dog that hatch.

Yeah, I like that. That's very catchy. And I want to go to that store. Now, I hope we'll find out when my porthole gets here.

Did I hear you Googling it? Have you found any online presence? I've already forgotten. No, I wasn't Googling it.

I was making a note to myself about dogging the hatch.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, that sounds – I mean, hey, we know from Polsbo now, right? We sure do. You and I are Pols bros.

How did that – were we not saying where we were? How did Pols bros –

I don't know. But that is where we led that Jeep life. Let's hear it. I got one more voicemail to play. Another little quickie from listener Jake, who's catching up on the show.

Ahoy. This message is for Luke. My name is Jake. I was just giving you guys a call because Luke recently – and by recently, I mean before the Coupetail Summer Games. It was very hot, and Luke bought a ton of bubbly water because it was on sale at a great price. And that is the correct move. A couple years ago, New Seasons had a sale, and they did a similar thing. And like Luke, I bought a freaking pallet's worth. It was awesome. I'm sad I haven't seen those prices again recently, but I still think about that haul. It was a really good time. I'm with you. I had so many flavors for so long. All right, that's it.

That's it. Just like I love that Jake wanted to just call in with some just kind of like, hey, it's the correct move to buy all that bubbly water. How is it going, by the way? Have you worked your way through it?

Oh, so long ago. Oh, okay. It is shocking how quickly I got through what seemed like a lifetime supply of bubble water. like i because you know a listener jamie was checking in saying hey you know make sure you you know rotate the stock and try to drink the oldest stuff first because that stuff can go bad it had no chance of going bad like it was gone in i want to say a month it's funny with my dad being here though because i am you know uh i'm sort of bad about opening a can of bubble water and then consuming about half of it and then leaving it i will say that i do drink it flat like I don't care like I don't think it can go bad per se so I'll usually sort of get to the end of them but now that my dad's here the fridge he'll go around and if he has one and has a sip he puts it back in the fridge or I think even if he finds mine he puts them in the fridge like my dad is not about wasting the last three sips of a bubble I remember that was a thing at my

grandparents house like we don't feel like we drink that much soda growing up but when we went to the grandma and grandpa Walsh's house now keep in mind Grandma and Grandpa Walsh, I say keep in mind, I assume everybody knows this. They had five children of their own, and then those children went ahead and created large families of their own. So when we would have big gatherings at my grandparents' house, it was like a whole heck of a ton of cousins and everybody.

and everybody's drinking their cans of dad's root beer or what have you and I understand that my grandfather one of his real uh one of his his pet peeves was like finding half drunken cans of soda around the house so that was like a cardinal sin you do not you do not just like leave a half can of soda laying around because that's where that's where grandpa draws the line exactly I thought you

were gonna say bubble water and I was like who are these New York sophisticates you grew up with Because nobody was drinking, nobody outside of Manhattan or let's just say the five boroughs was drinking seltzer water until about like 10 years ago. It is.

Well, except for that really sweet seltzer water that came out in the 80s. That was a big deal.

New York, which was called New York.

Literally called New York seltzer. We were big on that tip, but that's not the kind of bubbly water of today. That stuff, it was like, oh, it's clear. It's clear. Therefore, it's good for you. And it comes in bottles, not cans. But it's like I tried one and they re-released it a couple of years ago. And it's just like it's just super, super sweet soda that's clear.

Yeah. But that you're right. I mean, that's somebody needs to do the definitive documentary or something. I don't know. On the we are living in the midst of a seltzer boo. Like, how did this go from being something that was I know that like supposedly like I think it's polar is based in the Midwest. and they've been there maybe in Wisconsin or something for a long time. So there must have been some amount of club soda being sold, maybe just for mixing in your Tom Collins or something. But like, I remember when I went and worked at WNYC in New York and they had a refrigerator that was full of seltzer. And when I say seltzer, I'm talking seltzer, not, you know, all this Waterloo lime stuff that I like now. We're just talking straight up club soda. And everyone was drinking club soda all day long. And they were like, it was like, well, you know, the pay here isn't what it could be. And this building we're in is falling apart one center street, but we get free seltzer. And I was just like, who cares? That was where I was in about 2003. And boy, have things ever changed. And I feel like nationally, that's what happened. Like somehow this became something that all over the country we're going, yes, we should be drinking more seltzer water.

Well, you know what's weird here? And now it's going to sound like I'm trying to pretend like my family were sophisticates, which we most certainly were not.

Is that your new nickname, the sophisticate?

You're using seltzer and club soda interchangeably. I'm pretty sure they are not because actually, actually, Luke, my dad was drinking club soda. And I think it's okay for me to say this, but my dad quit drinking alcoholic beverages like back when he was in his 20s. I want to say kind of late 20s. So growing up, my dad always had those bottles of ocean spray club soda, not seltzer. And they were the bottles. They were the kind of bottles that were wrapped in like almost paper, but also almost styrofoam wrap, like label. Can you kind of picture that? We would take my dad's bottles and we would start peeling it at the top and then try to peel a spiral all the way around the label. You know what I'm talking about?

Yes, it was almost like a koozie, but not thinner.

It was very, very thin. And it was like paper, but it was like it was a tiny bit of like some sort of a styrofoamy material. And my dad just we always had I don't know about pallets, but like flats of that stuff. And he would always drink that with a lime. And then years later, my mom got into the seltzer game. And again, it wasn't like it wasn't the bubbly water that we drink today, but they were yellow bottles of seltzer. And I don't know what the difference is, but I know that there were so many different things because I'm looking it up on the Internet.

Oh, okay. Seltzer, like carbonated water, gets its carbonation later on. However, unlike club soda, seltzer does not contain any minerals. Many people find that seltzer tastes much more like, quote, natural spring water than sparkling mineral water or club soda.

Interesting. I want to see if I can find a photo of one of these old 1980s club soda bottles. Oh, man. Are you ever watching like an old movie or an old commercial or something? Yes. And you see – yes, you are. and you see a glass bottle of Gatorade and you just want to build a time machine?

No, I thought, although that was the best when you're a kid, it's a hot summer day and you go to the like mini mart and you get that orange Gatorade and that pebbled bottle and it said Gatorade in the glass. It was like sort of beveled out,

if that's the wrong word, but wow.

I thought you were going to say, do you ever watch an old movie and you decide you really want to get one of those glass seltzer bottles so you can spray someone across the room.

You can accidentally, quote-unquote, accidentally spray somebody across the room.

Do you ever dream and find yourself slightly aroused at the idea of being a Marx brother? I did. I think it even happened. Maybe we were on the air talking about it, but I do think there's something intriguing about those OG. I'm going to say seltzer, but I don't know if I'm here. using the right terminology here, but whatever the bottle was, my whole knowledge of this thing existing as a kid was it's something that people spray each other in the face with as a bit in a zany movie. Right, exactly. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes looking like an accident, but it never is. Exactly. So, all right. I think that is probably where we should wrap things up today. Whoa, too loud. Okay, there it is. Sorry. That's perfect. That's the perfect volume. Okay, good. Thanks for listening, everyone. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Win! We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Out!