Muse

Pun Slingers, we come up with pun names for your business. We don't do doggy daycare, hair cutting places, or faux. Oh, Italian restaurant. Okay. That sounds good. Where are you going to be located? Okay. Get your number. Okay, Jeej. Italian restaurant. Great. All right, so, what do you got, Jeej?

You know, it could be construed as controversial, but it's a great restaurant name. Planned Pizza Hood. Oh, nice.

Yeah. Yeah. Love it. I thought of Pizza Paul and Mary. Love it. Ah, thinking...

Should we think more on the Italian thing?

Venice the Menace? Trust me? Like, trust me? Out of Parm's Way. Oh. Right? That's really terrible.

Yeah. I've got one. What about Spaghetti Museum? Spaghetti Museum?

Is that a pun?

Lord of the Pasta Rings. How about that? Wait, what was it again? Lord of the... The movie is The Hobbit.

Okay, I've got a movie one. Five Easy Pizzas.

excited to be here uh equally excited for you guys to truly take in how physically imposing i am so whenever you guys are ready to start let's do it i yell at you because i love you you listen to me

because you love me is this a weird dynamic yeah sure from the outside you don't have a choice If you don't like it, you can quit. That's a quote from upstairs. Bada-boom! You don't have to make rude noises. That's all right, I don't mind.

Oh, won't somebody please think of the children?

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

Another day, another victory for the OG.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host and I'm going to get all anecdotal on you coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where I'm actually not in the Madrona Hill studio today. I am in the kind of one semi-functional room in my actual house hiding from just a titanic amount of construction and home improving that is happening in really sort of every quadrant of this property that I'm on.

Hey, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?

It is a lot today. This may be the apotheosis of noise at the house. I'm not handling this well. So I'm in this little room because these are the things that are going on today on the property. You may have heard my dad, by the way, just slipping in and out of the kitchen. He's downstairs. He's redoing plumbing. He's running new plumbing in the basement. outside at the actual Madrona Hill studio, the guys Miles and Jason are putting up Hardy panel, a big kind of siding project where they're banging like crazy on the actual walls of the studio. Paul he's stump grinding he's rising and grinding. There's a guy with a giant stump grinder who's grinding up a stump that's right near where we broadcast from. And I just got a text from Home Depot that I am now second on the list for the delivery of a washer and dryer which will be coming in probably the next hour or so so i don't want to uh i don't want to sound like i'm not committed to the program today but i would put this maybe in i'll i'll put it in the top five priorities for me as of right now on this wednesday morning this is episode 4076 in a collector's series fun begin i would appear i got the numbering wrong yesterday it's not a hard job five days a week i put the show sheet together and all i'm supposed to do is add one number to the existing episode number you you would think that there might once a year maybe i would mess it up but it's more like once a week anyway here we are episode 4076 in a collector series ready to go looking back on a previous episode though we talked a lot about dragnet the television program and some of their weird kind of anti-counterculture, anti-drug monologues and speeches that the character Joe Friday would give, played by the actor Jack Webb. Well, this morning we got a text from our friend television's Chris Hayes, and he was just kind of commenting on how truly unhinged some of that dragnet dialogue was. And I started poking around. First, I wanted to find a funny picture of Jack Webb to send along. And then I descended into the world of Jack Webb, the actor, and jazz aficionado. Surprise, surprise, surprise. And I will share that magical content with you a little later on in the program.

First of all, I got to say hi to this guy, longest running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I am concerned about his mercury levels, though.

That's a tuna, bro.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

I don't know what a Chubba Hubbard is, but he's on my fantasy football team now. We don't have to talk about sports. I just got the notice that.

Wait, wait, wait. Is this a player or is this?

I thought maybe you would have known this name, Chubba Hubbard. I'm just seeing this name. I must have a couple of days ago realized I needed another running back on my team, so I must have picked up the best-looking running back numbers-wise that was available on the waiver wire. And right as you were introducing me, I wouldn't begin with sports talk or certainly fantasy talk, and trust me, we won't go deep into the details because I don't know shit about this guy, but I just got an email moments ago saying, hey, congratulations, your waiver claim went through successfully. you are now the proud manager of Chubba Hubbard and I'm like oh is that one of those nicknames or do you think that's like a given name because I know that's a pet peeve of yours when like somebody like didn't the Browns have a somebody named Hollywood for a while and you're like that is a nickname and that should not be what the presenters refer to him as well I mean you know

just a couple of weeks ago I went into great detail on Dave Mudbone Craig trying to change his name to cobra sure yeah what i'm kind of against is people giving themselves their own nicknames yeah sure yeah hang on andrew one second i'm just gonna say hi to the folks from temka logistics hello there i'm doing great are you getting pretty close to delivering the washer

and dryer i really stumped him on that one andrew i was wondering if you turned it off of no hello hello hmm well okay ask them if they know anything about chubba hubbard and whether when you first

said that i will continue by the way to answer the phone between or whenever it calls in from those guys because remember like a week ago i was like they're delivering a washer and dryer there was some miscommunication where they apparently went to the wrong house but were trying to call me and uh and then just went home with the stuff and so now finally i'm actually getting the delivery but i'm being very like i'm managing it closely i don't want them going to the wrong place again i don't want there to be any confusion so i had to answer that so at least they knew that there was a live live human on the other end of the line now i don't know if they'll call me back or not but i feel like i've i've i've taken a step towards them and now hopefully they'll take a step towards me yep now on the subject of chuba hubbard chuba sorry that's when you said well the way you said that though i thought you meant someone had joined the fantasy League and their name was Chubby Hubbard and I thought it was a play on the ice cream flavor Chubby Hubby I went to a just wildly different place in my mind with what I thought you were talking about

is Chubby Hubby one of those

I think that might be a Ben and Jerry's

Ben and Jerry okay I didn't know about that I'm looking it up now I wonder if I would like it yeah no I totally ruined that whole thing and honestly we can just like move on I just I saw this email I thought it was funny but I didn't even say it right. I just looked it up. It's Chuba Hubbard, and I still can't see if that's a nickname or a given name at birth. I'll tell you what. If I figure this out during the show, we'll play the breaking news sound effect. How about that?

I've got it right here. Ready to go. Actually, do I? So here's the thing, Andrew. I'm not using my usual equipment. Well, I'm using my usual equipment that I would use if I were traveling somewhere, because I have traveled from the place where I normally do the show about 50 feet to the TV room slash dining room slash uh what are the other things that go on in this room that I'm in right now well apparently podcasting today um and so I don't have my that the my normal real setup is in the other room and so I'm are in the other studio so I'm hoping that this is all coming down the line correctly I don't have all of my audio in fact I don't think I have my breaking news oh wait here

we go okay i've got it andrew breaking news oh i don't have any info it's coming from the wrong

place it's playing through the call is coming from outside the house let's see i've got this i've got this now okay good breaking news andrew i have to sound okay so that was kind of what we call that was breaking news number one and it's important to test these systems yeah no to see

what would have happened if i actually had breaking news there that's why you test the

system exactly thank you very much um so have you ever seen anyone do any stump grinding andrew

i tried to and then all the filters on my web browser gave me a lot of warnings i'm glad they did unsafe website i was like all right well you and i are using that accountability software now

that the new speaker of the house is using right you know about this i don't know about this i want to here's what i want to tread lightly because you know we have folks all across the spectrum in terms uh... as far as listeners go we have folks all across the spectrum of The kind of content they consume and kind of what their maybe religious worldview is, etc. So, you know, I want to just sort of respect where everybody's at. But I am going to tell you that what Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the house and his son are doing, strikes me as a bit. It's not something that I would have wanted to have going on with my father back in the day, which is they use some sort of religious based app that reports to each other what their browser histories are. so that neither one of them, his 17-year-old son, or the current Speaker of the House, will look at what they consider to be objectionable content.

Wow. So if they're having a moment of weakness, and they're like, I want to go see some stump humping.

Some kind of stump grinding.

Stump grinding. Sorry, not stump humping.

I want to see some kind of tub thumping.

They'll be like, no, you know what? If I click on this link, my daddy will find out, and so I better not do that, or my son. Right.

Right. And that's what Mike Johnson, that's what he calls his son, his daddy, which I think there's something about that that I don't think is totally normal and OK. But anyway, so, yeah, they have this software that they use to keep each other accountable. You can pick anyone to be your accountability buddy. So if you want me to be your accountability buddy so you don't go to those stump grinding websites, I'm happy to I'm happy to oblige.

When I go to Truth Social, you'll be like, why is Andrew over at Truth Social again?

is it weird that when i heard about this i immediately just started plotting on behalf of mike johnson's son about getting a burner phone like i just like i'm just such a sketchball i thought you know i mean i you know i grew up in a obviously a very religious environment and there were lots of rules around all of that stuff of as far as what was considered appropriate content and also appropriate behavior and self-love etc it was all very like sort of uh there was a lot of control around that stuff and then i was always just finding ways around those controls And I'm wondering if, like, Mike Johnson, current Speaker of the House, as he goes to bed each night and he looks at his accountability app and he sees that little Jack Johnson, which is literally his son's name, that he's like, well, look at all these devotional websites he went to. And Jack just has a different iPhone he bought at the mall that's just replete with stump grinding.

It's funny when you said you immediately I thought you're going to say you immediately wanted to hack into Mike Johnson's phone and just go to the most eye opening just pants dropping, mouthwatering, ears bleeding for some reason, finger licking websites and just go to town with his cell phone so that his son just gets a million alerts and says, oh, well, shit. here's what i'll say you sort of feel like i mean maybe this started yeah maybe just as accountability for the son and then so the dad says well then i'm i'm on this journey with you but there could be an alternate version where mike johnson just really needs to keep himself

accountable like well i mean this look you heard it here first i literally did i would be i will be the least shocked person if at some point we were to find out that there are ways in which current speaker of the house mike johnson his private life does not conform with his public life and i have absolutely no intel on that i am just telling you from being a 47 year old person on this planet when someone is going as hard as they are at people that they perceive to be deviants people who have never done one thing to them in their life it is not unusual to find out that there were certain things whatever that might be going on and i would just say that at some point years from now or weeks from now or hours from now we find out that again the public life of mike johnson does not conform with the private life of mike johnson including the various internet i think it's called white knuckle.com that he signed up for if we were to find out

But by the way, don't go to whitenuckled.net. No, no, no, no, no. That's a totally different thing.

Yes, and that will definitely, that will set off alerts with all kinds of accountability buddies everywhere.

You don't think that his deepest desires fit within the strictures of his own religious community?

I mean, I don't know the person, and I don't know what his desires. I literally am going just off of the fact that he has really made a political career out of othering, erasing, and outright threatening people who are doing absolutely no harm to him. And I just think most people that are that obsessed with trying to, you know, oppose other people who are not doing anything to them, there's often something going on. But anyway, we may never know until I hack into his accountability software and figure out what's really going on there. Back to stump grinding This was what I did

didn't realize about uh hiring uh somebody to come out and grind so i have this there's this enormous tree stump i took a picture of it i don't think the photo really does it justice but i can send it to you andrew and it's always been here like there was never a tree like when i bought this house it did not have a tree there it just had this big stump and the problem is it's um well first it's kind of unsightly and it's also kind of blocking an area where i want to put a little bit of a kind of gravel access path so that you can get down to the house without having to go down these really steep stairs um and so i think i thought and i don't think i think i was wrong about this i i i believe that what was going to happen was this guy was going to grind this huge stump down and then somehow all of the debris all of the mulch that's created because it's just you know becomes essentially like chopped up wood and dirt and everything was going to somehow neatly fall into some containment device which was going to then i guess be wheeled around to wherever on the property i wanted it deposited because i said to him this morning i was like uh so what we just end up with a big huge pile of mulch and he goes yep and then i just looked out there and i realized that's exactly what i now have to deal with so the good news uh no stumps no i don't want no stumps a stump is a thing that i can't move by myself under my own power but what i have now is a something that is almost seems exponentially larger than the stump that is a pile of chopped

up wood which i now have to deal with i mean you have to deal with it now and it's not useful to you immediately especially given the season and where you are in the construction but like yeah you're gonna have to find someplace to move that i don't know i mean it sounds like that's a lot of wheelbarrows i don't know if you get a trailer or something to move it to a different part of your property but i don't know that's kind of you're excited about it's kind of exciting too yeah like because you're going to be doing a lot of landscaping and everything like i know that's going to be like the the almost like the lipstick that you're putting on after all of the foundation

i don't know anything about have you been looking at my accountability updates i realized i didn't

even know that i was entering into that i think maybe i was starting with lipstick on the pig but Like, that's something else. That's not what I meant. Maybe like cherry on top of the sundae or something. Yeah, like a cherry on top because you have to get all the fundamental stuff done. But eventually, you're going to have this place that is now a construction zone, and it's going to be free of construction stuff, and it's going to be a beautiful yard, and you can start working on landscaping. And you're going to be so glad you have all of this mulch and that it came from the property. There's something so satisfying about that. Yes.

Yes, absolutely. I think the reason that I was caught a little bit by surprise was, again, one, because it just hadn't occurred to me that it was going to go from being a stump that was, you know, let's say four feet tall and four feet wide to being a pile of mulch that's six feet tall and seven feet wide. Like, it's because, of course, a lot of this stump was a root system that was in the ground, and it's all getting grinded out.

Again, satisfying to think about.

It's very satisfying. And once I figure out where it's going to go, once I move it, it'll be great. But what I was thinking today, Andrew, that was going to be the big satisfaction of today was once there was a stump and now there's nothing there. And instead, it's like once there was a stump and now there's somehow more stuff there. Like it's actually more impeded than it used to be. Now, again, it's, it's now something that I could, if I wanted to just, you know, put some real time in just a bunch of wheelbarrow loads, I could just move it somewhere else, you know, and pile it up, which I will eventually do. But I think I had, it was almost like I thought this pimple was going to get popped today in a way where there was just like, all of a sudden, you know, there was, it was, it had all been dug out. It was gone. And now there was this just like really free and easy path. And it's almost the opposite. There's now arguably more material in the way than there used to be, although it's material that I can move myself. So that's a big difference.

I have some updates for you here. In a moment, don't hit the breaking news yet because I have a quick question before we get to that. Now, you mentioned that a lot of this comes from a root system that was in the ground. Does this also mean that you're going to need to fill it? Like, are you going to have a sinkhole situation?

Well, you know, I haven't been out there in a while because I hope it's not going to be a sinkhole situation. And Paul seems to really know what he's doing. so i'm guessing that he would not um excavate out something that was going to leave the the ground you know like structurally unsound um but uh but but i haven't been out there uh since about i don't know 30 40 minutes ago so i don't really know exactly what the latest is um as far as you know how much has been removed how far i told him kind of roughly where i was hoping he'd go back to like how far back in this big giant kind of it's root system is sounds like a bunch of small roots i'm talking about a a root that by itself is as big as the tree stump if that makes any sense like there was this sort of like horizontal thing that was under the dirt that was almost as big as the stump but what

was the root system of the stump so there's kind of a lot going on out there

yeah it sounds like I am very interested in knowing more when I'm gonna give you

a full photographic update when we're done recording or I'll take some pictures and and send it to you I will tell you that I will not be you know pouring any toxic materials into the ground even though well Walt had suggested that at one point as kind of the thing that I guess people used to do when we were less environmentally sensitive to get rid of the the stump but

The stump has been taken care of.

Well, not to get rid of the stump, but to make sure that, I don't even know what the purpose was. There's something about when you grind it out, they used to pour motor oil in there. Okay. And it did something, I don't know if it just, if it kept it from rotting further, like it kind of preserved it. Because if there was some left in the ground and it rots, maybe then it, you know, the ground becomes less stable and you could get a sinkhole. I don't know what the point was. I'm not doing it. My point is, Andrew, I'm not doing it. I will be accountable to you on that.

Hit the breaking news sounder, please, my friend.

It better be Chuba Hubbard-related.

Here's what I've learned so far about Chuba Hubbard. I do believe it is his real name. Now, I'm piecing this together from a whole bunch of, like, kind of web results where I can only see the preview because I'm not paying – you know, I'm not going to sign up for the Charlotte Observer just to answer all of these questions. But it does seem that Chuba is his first name. It's not a nickname. It's a Nigerian name, which makes me feel a bit xenophobic for bringing it up. When I thought it was pronounced Chuba and it was in front of me, Chuba Hubbard just sort of sounds like a football nickname. So sorry if I was disrespectful in that way. He is Canadian. Yeah. And this. Oh, you know all of this. Well, no, no.

I'm just looking this up as you're talking.

He has been coined Canada's cowboy because he went to play for Oklahoma State here in the States. And so his brethren up in Canada call him Canada's Cowboy, which I absolutely love. And apparently, according to a Reddit preview I'm seeing here, Chris Berman on ESPN referred to him as the Chuba Missile Crisis and then laughed for 30 minutes.

That's very, very Chris Berman.

OK, so that's the updates that I have. I'd like to mention to have him on my team.

I mean, yeah, if you can get the Canadian Cowboy on your team off of waivers, don't miss that chance. Now, I would also put forward that I think that the Oklahoma State Cowboys have one of the best logos in college football. Will you do me a kindness and just look up the Oklahoma State Cowboy logo? It's a very it's what I love about it is it's a cowboy drawing, But he looks like a cowboy that I would have seen in the grew the warrior or grew the wanderer comics that I loved so much as a kid. It's like he's a very at least at least as of like 10 years ago when the Huskies played Oklahoma State in, I think, some kind of bowl game. I felt like I just remember really liking their mascot or really liking their logo.

This is pretty sweet. So I'm going to what is best for you right now, text or email? because I want to run this by you to make sure I'm looking at the right one. Okay, I'm looking for you here. Yeah, so this is a cartoon cowboy, but like very Looney Tunes-y. Right, exactly. Almost in a way. Just orange and black and white depiction, so I sort of like the simplicity of that. He's kind of drawn some old-fashioned six shooters, but he's really mean-mugging, but not in a swole moose kind of way, which I know that you don't like.

That's why I like it so much because this, to me, this you know what really projects strength if you think about it is being able to like have a little fun with your root and toot and mascot not trying to have him doing you know jumping off a trampoline and dunking a football over the um goalposts a la the swole bot like swole mountain lion of the denver nuggets or the very regrettable swole jackalope of the philadelphia 76ers of some years ago which went more donnie darko than i think they intended like i just like i like a mascot that says we're going to be funny and we're and we're going to be quirky and we don't think that that makes us less powerful as a as a team and as a school sports program what i thought

you're going to say is nothing makes you feel more powerful than having guns as this mascot does but i'm looking now it looks like this this mascot that shows the full body cowboy which is another site that you're not like it he's got those what do they call that cowboy right um but um i think that they might have retired that one it looks like that one only went to 2000 because i was kind of even though it's a cartoonish again looney tunes depiction of because he's holding a six shooter yeah i think that they probably like most colleges probably would not want firearms of any kind in their logo so now i think it's just the head with like from kerchief up although i mean

I don't I don't think we need to get into a conversation around gun control today on the show, not with Temco Logistics about to deliver a washer and dryer to me at any moment. But I.

i have long said this that i i do feel like any kind of weaponry that existed when they wrote the second amendment i'm okay with people having those firearms but only those firearms so if you want to have a musket i guess a six shooter probably came later that was probably more the adventure of like was it like did colt invent that or something or like winchester or whatever even that yeah that's the the one that the cowboy was holding that's a little too that's got a little too much capacity for me but if you want a blunderbuss if you want a musket i i really don't have a big problem with that personally i just feel like you're you're it's just going to be pretty limited what you can actually accomplish uh if you were to have any kind of bad intentions

as long as you're in a well-regulated militia what does the language actually say i believe that's exactly the language oh you know how is that away i know let's not get into it because There must be an answer for that, right? Like, every time I hear...

I will be back to you on Breaking News. Breaking News. Andrew used the term well-regulated militia exactly correct. Exactly the way he meant.

I didn't know that was at me. That's awesome. Yeah, so there must be an answer to that question, right? I always think about this. I don't think this is the place for us to have this conversation. I'm going to feel like a dumb guy in my dorm room again. But why is that never part of the conversation?

like you mean just the fact that when they wrote the second amendment they couldn't have imagined

what the sort of current firepower is well no my i mean no i mean what are you wondering i'm just embarrassed i just wish i could cut this all out but i guess my question is like if the if they literally say in the amendment you know with a well regulated militia then i mean that wouldn't apply to just to any yahoo who wants like to have an ar-15 in his basement right like shouldn't i

mean that's not a well-regulated militia i think it yes i think that's where you start to get into the real gray area is is you know and i think it was me i don't look there's a there's one person out there who knows less about this than you do andrew and his name is luke but i think maybe this the exact term might be something like so as to maintain a well-regulated militia so the question i guess then becomes you know uh what constitutes a i mean the people that want to have more guns and and less rules they would say the well-regulated militia part is kind of a side it's that's a side light to the whole thing because really what the idea is is that we as the u.s citizenry should all be armed and the words of benicio del toro in fear and loathing in las vegas armed to the teeth we should be armed to the teeth so that if the government wants to come for us we will be able to repel them which is one of the most hilariously silly ideas that's maybe ever been floated like as i've said on this show before uh to the ammon and cliven bundy's of the world and the he's on my mind because i think that they're bringing more charges against him um but like to the to the people that think their little well-regulated militia of their of their weaponry is going to repel the forces of the u.s government and the in the army and whatever uh if draft kings is giving me if draft kings is giving me minus 40 000 on the u.s army i'm still taking it i'm betting 40 000 and ten dollars to make ten dollars on how much you're not gonna beat the army so i mean just on its face it's a silly idea um but uh but yeah i don't think i think first of all most of our listeners probably attend to um align with us on this issue andrew and also yeah we're not really we're this is not the place that people turn for this kind the conversation so we'll leave that to uh the experts this is the place people turn to hear me promote live wire very briefly just allow andrew by the way i had a conversation with our executive producer last night i said i think andrew is low-key mad that this is a one-way relationship

was it the fact that i was shouting at you that was part of it the show was that the clue she

listened and she said she literally texted me and she was like thank you so much for the promo She goes, tell Andrew we can definitely talk about something. All right. And so, you know, negotiations are in the works. I just want to mention to people that we're doing Livewire. We're doing Livewire tomorrow night at the town hall in Seattle. And if you're a 10 and you'd like to come for a ticket that costs only $10, go to livewireradio.org. You've got to, like, go all the way through like you're buying the ticket. And then it'll say, do you have a promo code? Put T-E-N-S in there, that promo code, and then you'll get the tickets for cheap. Sam Sanders will be there. Sway Wild. It's going to be super-duper fun. Okay, Andrew, I am doing what I always do, which is I'm building this up to be much more than it is and much more than it will deliver for the listeners. But I did have a fun moment of investigating some of the musical career of Jack Webb from Dragnet. And maybe after we thank some donors, I can play that for you. Would you be able to queue up or have at the ready maybe that sort of anti-drug?

you know monologue that he that he does just to kind of give folks who missed that episode a little reminder or a little context on kind of the seriousness of one jack webb as the character of um joe friday by the way i forgot until i started looking into this that his sidekick ganon is harry marshall from mash oh yeah mash right yes i totally forgot it was the guy from mash who was his sidekick back in the Dragnet days. Anyway, okay. So yeah, thank you for getting that queued up and we'll thank some donors. Thank you, baby. Hey, let's thank some of our donors. These are the wonderful people supporting TBTL. This is 100% listener-supported podcasting And also supported to some degree Although to less of a degree than you might imagine In terms of profit margins By our merch site Which you can go to now Brand new this week tbtl.net slash shop And you can get a t-shirt or a hoodie or a sticker Or something fun And look forward to many conversations With strangers about what tbtl is

Can I say something about the shop really briefly I wanted to say this on yesterday's show I also am like seriously like earnestly not sure if this should be one of those off-air conversations but i think it's okay for me to say this on air the day that we slash really john launched this shop it was very exciting john did a lot of um kind of social media around it he made did you see that that hype video like tbtl has his first hype video for the shop it's so great yeah i i

like reposted that and it got a lot of attention is he using like taylor swift in it or something

She's going to blow up, by the way. Watch that space.

Honestly, I think we're definitely the number one merch shop for people who were on the Taylor Swift merch shop, which crashed. This is the place to go after that happens.

No, here's what I wanted to say, though. So I was having dinner with some friends, and I showed them the merch shop page. I said, oh, yeah, we launched the shop today, and they looked it up on their phone right away. and um their initial reaction i swear to god they were just like you're only charging this for a hoodie you're not going to make any money on these things and i was like well we're not trying to get rich off of this like we're doing this because our listeners are very supportive of us yeah just to get the show during tb telethons and so anytime we can do like you know we're not we're not losing money on this but like just for what it's worth like this was an earnest off-air conversation we had as we thank our donors these donors are only donating because they like and support the show they didn't have to you know what I mean like we're not paywalled and so because of that we try not to overcharge on things like tbtl t-shirts and sweatshirts and stuff and the fact that my friend said that he was a little bit aghast I think but I kind of also took it because i didn't i hadn't given a lot of thought to that but i was like well that's good then i mean that's kind of true to our promise and and again not to sprain anything

patting ourselves on the back but like this is also part of why we left apm because we did we we are so unbelievably grateful uh that this can be a job for three people you me and john and that enough people are willing to voluntarily donate each month to support this that we really want to make sure that like we're not um trying to monetize every single thing to the absolute maximum it can be uh and and there were there we always felt very protective of our friends who also happen to be listeners and donors to the show and did not want yeah did not want to like be like now here's merch which is going to also set you back a significant amount of money um because we're not this the point of this whole thing is just to figure out a business model that allows us to keep doing this as our job for a long time and if we can do that then that'll be something amazing it's not trying to you know it's it's not trying to maximize every single possible dollar it's just you know fun that where there's going to be it's just fun that there's a t-shirt with my face on it that sold absolutely zero items do you know that for

sure no i'm guessing i would like to know do you know that i get an email i don't think i've said this on the show I get an email every single time somebody places an order yes although my gmail account is going to fill up again in no time and that's going to be a whole nother week of broadcasts where I complain about gmail but uh so look forward to that but no it is fun so every now and then it'll be like oh you just got or hey not to be um you know not to go against the um morals of the speaker of the house but we did get order number 69 yesterday and that was oh Oh, baby.

That was pretty exciting, so thank you, babies.

That kind of reminds me of the very early days of this being an independent project, meaning we had been fired from the radio station. I think I had, there was, my contract with the radio station was that they had to still pay me for 90 days even after they fired me, which my agent negotiated very successfully, my agent being me at the time.

And you negotiated that when you took the job or you negotiated that as you were parting ways?

I had no leverage as we were parting ways. I think actually that might be the standard thing or something there. I wish I could say that I was so savvy, but somehow that was in the contract. So I was like still, so I had, you know, a month. What is that? It's a couple months. And I was just doing the show at my house. And towards the end of those couple months, I looked at my bank account and realized there is no money in this bank account. That's not good. and so you know i just said hey we're gonna open a paypal page and if you want to support this um and have this keep happening five days a week let me know otherwise i'll just need to go find a different job and of course people were like so great and stepped up and but i think because like i had set up the paypal page with like james botdorf our guy um somehow it was going to my email and and maybe even my texts somehow and there was just like a week of my life where every time i would look at my phone it would just be like a message telling me someone likes tbtl yeah and is showing it with their support and it was i will honestly my life has been a living hell since that week because i will never get back to that kind we can get you that kind of dopamine that kind of dopamine hit it was just so like oh my god oh my god oh my god really whoa oh my goodness like it just it's because there are i was i was thinking about this today for some reason i think when there's folks out here doing you know stuff on the house and i'm in here with this little microphone i always wonder what sort of if anything they might think of this and then i'll have a conversation in my head where i'm trying to explain what this is to someone and then they'll ask me again i want to stress this conversation never happens this is a purely hypothetical in my head but it'll be like well how many listeners and i'll be like oh you know i don't know in the thousands and whatever and and that's both not a lot compared to like you know other big huge podcasts but it's also kind of a lot of people but it's easy to lose sight of that for you and me because we're just doing this five days a week and so there's something about having uh you know getting this weird little ding ding ding kind of a thing reminding you that there are thousands of people that listen to the show and thousands of people who over the years have supported it that's very very gratifying and and a good reminder for us to be as we're next week as we're going into thanksgiving a good week to be really thankful and appreciate folks like morgan madison over there in seattle washington morgan have you purchased a luke burbank t-shirt yet is my real question to you here on this wednesday what is it catch me wearing sunglasses

I'm probably crying over Jeff Tweedy's songs

Thank you, that's all I told you that I love that t-shirt Because I think that it's Listener Sophia, right, who made that I just love that that became Even a meme just between me and Sophia But it's interesting to see yourself rendered As a 47-year-old person in the world And the other day I was waiting For all of that hardwood That I was picking up I was waiting a long time actually for them to get the forklift and I caught, it was a sunny day and I caught my reflection in the window of the floor and decor in Portland. And I realized my hair is mostly gray now. Like it used to be, I'm thinking of it because Sophia's rendering of me has what I think of as my hair pattern, which is kind of gray around the lower part of my head and then kind of darker on top. But in this particular moment in the sunshine, I looked at, I was like, I'm a full, full gray, full gray head of hair.

Not quite full, but honestly, and I'm not saying, trust me, I am not in this business to compliment you. But like, as you well know by this point, but like having grown up with dark hair that then gradually becomes gray the way yours is, is not something that you should be at all in shape. No, I'm okay with it. It actually is a really good look. It's a distinguished look.

I appreciate you saying that. I mean, there's almost nothing about my appearance that I like or feel good about. But that one doesn't, you know, that one doesn't doesn't knock me down for the day away. A lot of other stuff does. But I just it's just, you know, I don't know why that for some reason, that moment in the sunlight in standing in a parking lot waiting for them to forklift the hardwood floor in there. I was like, yeah, it's happening. We are getting older, burbs.

I know we got we got to we got to thank Gregory Murdoch of Kuna, Idaho.

Hakuna, Idaho. Hakuna, Idaho. I was going to say, Vives and I were buying some beer at Sprouts, a local grocery store.

That was the Kmart of my youth.

Oh, is that where the Kmart was? Okay, yeah. And they always have, like, really friendly people working there. And this was, I don't know, like, this was, like, last Thursday night. It was kind of getting late, like, 9 o'clock or something. And the person who was at the cash register was very young. I'm going to put him, like, probably, I mean, maybe out of high school, but, like, you know, a very young man. And he looked at us and he just said kind of said politely. He had this manner about him that was like kind of a quiet, steady presence, Luke, in this young man. And he looked at Genevieve and I and he said, are you guys old enough to be buying this? Like kind of saying it in this way of just like he's supposed to card us. But clearly it's Genevieve and me like you don't really have to card us. He's just being kind of chill about it. And we're like, yeah. And I think I got out my ID because why not just show it to him? That way he doesn't have to worry about getting in trouble or anything. and Genevieve sort of makes a comment like yeah oh you know what I did is I'm pulling out my ID and I said I could show you my hairline which is like not exactly the best joke in the world but it is true if I'm wearing a hat I'm much more likely to get carded if I'm not wearing a hat they're just like oh I can see myself in your head okay yes every time oh I'm sorry no what

were you gonna say every time I get carded wherever it is I have to really actively stifle the urge to say like oh god bless you i mean you know what i mean like it's the that's the that's the dumbest most overused most uninteresting response when you're a person of a certain age who's being asked for id purely as a kind of um you know formal or pro forma measure it's but i i literally like it just comes out of my mouth without me even being able to control it because i think that is legitimately how i guess it's not legitimately how i feel because i know that this person doesn't think that i'm 20 yeah but for some reason i can't i have a hard time stifling the oh my god you you sweet talker oh bless you like it's been you know like there's for some reason that just involuntarily whiffs out of my body when someone asked me for my ideas as does my

hairline joke i think dude that was not the first time i deployed that in fact this guy so he had a like kind of a he had sort of a um delayed reaction to things but it wasn't uncomfortable or awkward can you tell i'm a big fan of this cashier so yeah i said i could show you i want to know more about this kid he sounds like he's going places and then he he says he's like a very tall slender kind of fair complexioned red kind of like red hair kind of kid and he i i'm just remembering this now i said something about my hairline he said oh yeah me too man and he was like he's a kid and he kind of pulls his hair back a little bit and i'm like i didn't really see that he had a receding hairline but maybe for his age and in his peer group he has a bit of a receding hairline and i kind of like took off my hand kind of nodded to him or something this all

happened did you guys slowly press your foreheads together yeah and then we honed our ghost and like you downloaded your whole life experience into this young man at sprouts and he just like

some real but it was so this is a very quick interaction but he yeah so i'm like i could show you my hair like oh yeah and then um anyway i show my id but then genevieve sort of says oh yeah i could tell you what song was playing at my homecoming or my prom i think she says so in other words that's a more fun answer yeah so it all happens this is an exchange that happens very quickly and I am butchering this moment right now in the air but anyway it's like oh I could show you my hairline he's like yeah me too and Genevieve's like yeah I could tell you what was playing at my prom and then he rings us up and I swear it's like beat beat beat and he says what was playing at your prom and I really don't think he was like but like I think he was like honestly interested in knowing and then Genevieve had to think about it she's like well there was a lot of whoomp there it is and then he thought about it have a sense of what that was he didn't react and then again kind of the same amount of time he said that's pretty cool this guy was great

he's my new did he did he tell you about the song they played at his prong digging at your

you're so skibbity you're so phantom tax i just want to be yours i've heard the that there's a

on the facebook page and maybe in like slack and stuff there there are people who there are people who didn't like the sitting song but now would trade their their their birthright their first born oh no way really for the sitting song and compared to the rizzler song i mean honestly i

don't hate i don't really like either one sitting song yeah i think it's kind of grown on me a little bit like but most actually if i'm being honest i guess i don't like that sound it gets stuck in my head but the rizzler song i have not gotten sick of well you put it in a mixed tape and your next mixtape is the real question i was thinking about making a mixtape the other

day then i was like what is wrong with me well you put out a playlist on like instagram oh yeah

on spotify but yeah but no i mean i was literally i don't want to get into this i was honestly thinking because i have a record player that does run through my board And I have a very small record collection, but it's like, you know, kind of weirdly eclectic because it's I started it when I was like 12 and I still add to it every now and then, although it's a very small record collection. And I've been thinking, what if I just like using my recording equipment, make an actual like kind of analog style mixtape using only songs on from my record crate. And that's something I've been contemplating lately, which then brings in the question, do I start bringing back old drops from movies and stuff? And then that's when I got embarrassed and wanted to thank Missy and Joe Boyle in Watertown, Massachusetts.

But you have very good. And thank you, Missy and Joe. We appreciate you out there in Watertown. You have very good musical taste, though, Andrew. And you have very, like, eclectic in a good way. Like, sometimes I think eclectic is just code for all over the map. But, like, I would, like, when I saw, I think I saw you posting about it on Instagram, your Spotify thing. and my first thought uh-oh temko we've got a temko call now why is this one ringing through my computer but the other one wasn't uh hold on a second hello there oh excellent yeah i see you i see you out there okay i'll come out and meet you in a moment okay okay uh i'm at that uh i'm the house you're walking towards i'll come right out I realize, Andrew, if I gave more specifics, it would make it even easier for somebody to come out to my house. It's the third house on the right. Anyway, how about this? You've got to go take care of that. Okay, I've got to go meet these folks.

Do you want me to finish thanking the donors? Do you mind? I do not. I do the donors mind.

In the listener's timeline, I promise this is going to be compacted down. But give me a minute, and I'll give you a report of how this whole thing goes.

Okay, sounds good. It's me and the listeners right now. I'm going to thank the other donors of the day. Now, I want to say, I am not like Luke. I don't have little stories about all of these places. We have three more people to thank. That's three more locations. Katie Isaac in Seattle, Washington, has donated to the show. Now, Seattle, I am familiar with. So I could see you at some of my local watering holes, see you at Teddy's. That's all I can think of on the fly. Are there other bars in Seattle? Probably not, just Teddy's. Thank you, Katie Isaac, for supporting the show. And Rachel Wagner, possibly Wagner, but I'm guessing Rachel Wagner. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Is this a double last name? Rachel Wagner Marchetti is in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Rachel Wagner Marchetti in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. I don't know where Ambridge is, and I hope you don't take umbrage to that. Thank you for supporting the show. And William Richard of Mount Lake Terrace, Washington. Is that where I bought my camera? No, it's not. I don't know if I've been to Mountlake Terrace, but I'm sure it's a lovely place. With a name like Mountlake Terrace, how could it be anything else? William, Richard, thank you for supporting the show. Everybody, thanks for supporting the show. Luke will be back in just a moment.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. Thank you, Andrew, for covering for me there with the donors. The Eagle has landed. The washer and dryer, they are down here. They are sitting in the box. It is sitting in the box. It's a stacked unit. Sitting. Is that the episode of stacking? Yeah, right. Sticking at your gap where there is land. I, of course, because no interaction can be, you know, sort of trouble-free for me, Andrew, I did realize that I only had like I don't know $11 in cash on me and these guys were very nice and they did carry like they use that strap that's you know certain kind of appliance movers will which I actually am very jealous of I need to get one of those you know the one I'm kind of talking about that you wear like a harness and then it goes under the box it's like a game changer for moving kind of awkward things like stacked washer and dryer dryers and and other things like that because you you know you don't have to try to grab underneath you just use your your your back muscles but um so they they came down those steep stairs they got them in they were really nice and i thought let me say thanks to these guys but i feel like i don't know it's like you know tipping two hard-working grown people 10 or 11 dollars five of which is

singles is that like insulting i heard like way in the distance i didn't hear the whole interaction all i heard was like i i heard a reaction from one of the delivery people i knew the moment you tipped them because i heard him say i heard him say oh thanks i appreciate you and there's something um about i think people who deliver appliances i don't think it's a given that you're going to get a tip um and so i because I heard a similar reaction when we tipped the fellow who dropped off our refrigerator a few weeks ago, like a, a moment of like, okay, it's not the most surprising thing in the world that you would offer me a tip. I'm sure they get tipped plenty of times on a daily basis, but I'm sure there are plenty of places that don't tip them as well. So there was a, it's more than like a server at a restaurant where it's expected. I heard that sort of like, Oh, thanks. I appreciate you. Now I did not hear what led up to that. Did you just say, I'm sorry,

i only have eleven dollars i didn't tell him the amount i just said hey i'm sorry i thought i had a little more cash on me because the thing was i didn't until this morning i forgot that today was the day they were delivering the stuff so like i didn't really get this prepped correctly and then um so i and the other unfortunate thing is you know what i handed him probably felt like a substantial amount of money because it was like a lot of singles so i was like i wanted to manage his expectations so i wanted to be like when i think i did say something like hey i'm sorry i i wish i had more cash on me and then he said hey thanks and then you know again i hope that it's one of those things where the to some degree it's like the gesture it's like hey this is a person this customer is realizing that we just did something that was kind of hard and uh appreciates us we would have liked him to appreciate us with twenty dollars but at least it's something i'm hoping that's what it gets filed under not they're driving right now in the truck and they're like unfolding eleven dollars most of which is singles going are you kidding me right now just save your

money pal let's go spend this on toilet paper and come back tonight let's buy a joke toilet

that only has an opening big enough for farts okay so as i already mentioned uh at the top of the show uh we were you and i were texting well let's be honest chris hayes and i were texting you were there but uh but but i didn't see that stuff until later yeah sorry you were you were relatively but but it was it was related to this dragnet tape that you were playing the other day that was actually really kind of great um and i learned a lot that day i never knew about blue boy um i i don't think i had given much thought to dragnet and to just kind of how i mean obviously it's really pro cop but like just how kind of weirdly pro cop and anti free expression it really was like as a as a allegedly entertainment product so um can you play either the thing that you played the other day or something else like it that kind of for folks that don't know kind of puts the character of joe friday played by the actor jack webb sort of in context yeah i'm not

sure if this is the same exact tape i played the other day or not but you know he's famous for these sort of rat-a-tat-tat speeches as he lectures people coffee coffee yeah coffee no i don't drink coffee yeah you don't drink coffee how about instant coffee wait that's philip baker hall do an impression i was gonna say is this seinfeld do you remember that episode had philip baker i don't but i was like reminded me of this after that show sorry i wanted to spoof you there a

little bit okay i was like this sounds so much like but you know what's weird i don't i don't necessarily remember that scene i am familiar with the work of the actor philip baker hall

when i tell you this though you might remember the episode okay he plays a library cop so apparently jerry has some book that hasn't been returned in 25 years or something and so philip baker hall is this private investigator who well not private i guess a public investigator who works for the library system and it's a send-up of joe friday so i don't remember that but what i

noticed within five seconds of you playing that was this is seinfeld like does that make any sense it wasn't jerry talking it wasn't elaine it was philip baker hall it was it was noted character actor philip baker hall who i don't identify with the show seinfeld particularly i identify him with the movies of paul thomas anderson but something about the audio quality of what was going on maybe it was the faint titter of the studio audience there was something about that tape that told my brain this is probably seinfeld even though nobody from seinfeld quote-unquote had talked

Well, I need to, I mean, sure, Seinfeld, you heard Seinfeld in there a couple of times because they're going back and forth.

Yeah, coffee. No, I don't drink coffee. Yeah, you don't drink coffee? How about instant coffee? No, I don't. Yeah, I guess you're right. I guess you're right. So he was in there.

But still, there is, but not, but I understand your broader point. There is a way that you can sometimes hear a show and immediately sort of recognize it. But anyway, let me, okay, so that was an aside that was not helpful to anybody. I will play for you. We played some tape where Joe Friday was sort of berating some sort of Timothy Leary-esque guy who had started a conversation saying that pot and alcohol are basically the same thing. We played that last time. I'm going to cut into a different piece of tape that I was also previewing. I hope this is another good example of it. This time, Joe Friday, and what's his partner's name again? I keep forgetting. A Gannon. Gannon, they're talking to some kid or like some young man who believes that marijuana is going to be legal and on store shelves.

someday i hope this still pays off this is a little bit longer so um i'm at some point in there you're going to hear some really good joe friday like kind of patter we'd like to put them

out of business that's why we're here what do you mean we're trying to keep them from getting a new

customer there's a big difference between marijuana and hard narcotics yeah but it's only a small step

that doesn't sound like owen wilson when he said hard narcotics let's face it we're on opposite

sides and there's nothing we can do about it for you if there's a law against it it's wrong black and white i just don't see things that way that's all well you want to give it a try fella it might keep you out of jail maybe but we'll change the law someday even though your friend here thinks we won't believe me it's a new world your laws are as outdated as bustles laws are gonna have

we'll get we'll get some joe friday in here in a second they'll change or we'll have to break them

i'm just enjoying this owen wilson performance if you end up in jail she won't like it anymore

and i will but you'll have to catch me before you can arrest me won't you in the meantime it's a big game a hide-and-seek and to me it is a waste of time how old are you shipley 23 isn't about time you grew up here we go lecture number 131a no i'm not going to give you a lecture i don't have the

time i'm just going to lay it out for you this is so great this is so great because he says i don't have time to give you a lecture and then he gives him a lecture this is so no no lectures and then

he just rat-a-tat tats for 30 seconds for you straight now you listen to me you chippy around with marijuana long enough and you're going to buy yourself a lot of grief after a while marijuana it won't be enough you'll start looking for a bigger kick and then a bigger one after that and all of this is going to go down the tubes your job your house car family everything we've seen it happen before and not just to the neurotics and psychotics that wife of yours talks about but to nice clean cut kids from good families with good educations they start out just like you and they end up mainliners shooting it in their arms and they end up dead or wishing they

were but don't worry i don't have time for a lecture and i'm really busy i'm very busy

so what happened was this morning we were sort of texting about that about the the sort of uh joe friday stuff and i wanted to find just like a funny picture of jack webb to you know throw into the group chat in the way that you know we tend to sometimes and so i went and found some picture of him and you know screen capped it and sent it along and what i didn't realize was the picture was like associated with some article about the musical career of the actor jack webb who uh it turns out was also a real jazz enthusiast which i find really ironic because you know i mean first of all jazz cigarette right like a kind of a a code for like maybe wacky tobacco and like the whole the world of jazz was certainly not a place that was not that was not welcoming to certain kinds of illicit drugs and activities and things apparently jack webb who was born in Los Angeles and for a period of time lived in Echo Park when he was a kid at like a like a Catholic it was like a Catholic parish borderline orphanage and so he was always he enrolled in the army during I think maybe World War II but then he was he was honorably discharged because he had some maybe medical thing going on but he was always really interested in like law enforcement in the army things like that so he also created he created dragnet as a radio show and then eventually moved it into being a tv show where he played friday he also created the tv show adam 12 which was another like all his stuff was about basically law enforcement but on the other hand he loved jazz and had like 6 000 jazz albums and was always like you got the sense in reading about that he kind of wished maybe he could stop being joe friday for a while and just be like a cool relaxed jazz man um oh the other thing too that i thought was interesting do you know do you know that apparently this is according to your favorite website andrew me tv.com he never says the line just the facts ma'am no in dragon it's one of those play it again sam things the actual line that he says is in a 1953 episode called the big lease and he tells the main suspect a character named mrs banner he says to her all we know are the facts ma'am so all we know are the facts ma'am becomes just the facts ma'am becomes one of the kind of more iconic like tv lines from that era just like luke i'm your father those aren't the exact words spoken precisely precisely yeah exactly that's probably a better example i'm more relevant to my name i don't know why i went with casablanca for some i wasn't even as i said

that no joke i wasn't even 100 sure on that i think it's no you're very right it's not that's

not a direct quote right it's sort of similar to that right so uh so jack webb uh who was always apparently interested in music released an album and what i think is great about this album is that um well first of all it was it was jazz a couple jazz standards or and then it was a couple of other songs and then it was some originals and then it was also a meditation on color like

You

a lot of the songs are just named for colors like purple and blue and they're like so he's getting really out there really abstract but i think the name of the album is pretty great which is just the tracks ma'am so he's misappropriating the his own quote he's miss he's miss like he's just fully on the train of just the facts ma'am even though he never said it but he's like you know what it's the brand yeah so let's go with and i believe it was warner brothers records really did released just the tracks ma'am the jack webb the guy from dragnet uh his sort of foray into music now um this has really not been widely noted maybe just because it was a long long time ago people just don't care about jack webb and dragnet what i was first drawn by was that he does a cover of try a little tenderness the the the otis redding number which actually i guess otis redding didn't write but he certainly popularized it what's interesting about this version of the song by jack webb and the whole the whole album is that it's just spoken word he's not even trying to sing he's not even doing a shatner where he kind of sings songs it a little bit this is some of jack webb doing try a little tenderness she may be weary women do get weary

wearing the same shabby dress and when she's weary try a little tenderness you know she's waiting just anticipating things she may never possess

now you get the feeling by the way he hired some of the people had collaborated with frank sinatra He also hired a huge orchestra to actually do. I mean, you know, it's funny because the day and age we live in, you forget that for Jack Webb to get this sound behind him, he had to hire a room full of people playing musical instruments, you know.

It's not just sentimental. She has her grief and care. and a word that's soft and gentle makes it easier to bear part of what i learned when i was trying

to do a little research on this was that you know there again is very little online chatter about this like i feel like this was really don't forget a passion project for jack webb that probably warner brothers let him do because they must have had some piece of dragnet and they were like okay but like nobody talks about this i don't think at the time it made much of an impression the song by the way there's like 40 tracks on the album the song that really got to me though was an original written by jack webb called nancy where i feel like he really melds his love of law enforcement with his love for somebody named nancy because there's just these little we'll just take

listening. If I don't see her each day, I miss her. Gee, what a thrill. Each time I kiss her. Believe me I've got a case On Nancy With a laughing face

I've got a case on Nancy How would you feel if somebody was like Trying to tell you that they liked you Because they've got I've got an airtight case on Nancy I'm going to throw the book at Nancy I'm going to throw the book right at that beautiful face of hers Could take some lessons from her There's some really amazing rhymes in this song, Andrew. I'm going to back that up a little bit.

Summer could take some lessons from her. Picture a tomboy in lace. That's Nancy with a laughing face.

I knew he was going to say face when he said lace, Andrew. I knew that I had figured that out myself. I hadn't even heard the song before. Do you ever hear Mission Bell's room? She's going to say something about Mace.

Well, she'll give you the very same glow. This is about to be my favorite part of the song. When she speaks, you would think it was singing. Just hear her say, hello. I swear to goodness. You can't resist her. Sorry for you. She has no...

sister he's like the m&m of his day door hinge door hinge he's really playing with scansion and

really playing with the form what did he rhyme sister with what was the first mister but not mister like no like missed m-i-s-s-e-d see i think for a cop he should have gone with and you better

believe it mister right you're right that would have been better who was the last person to see her sister. Tell me right now, mister. I swear to goodness. I love it. I swear to goodness this sounds so Midwest.

Mike is Mike Johnson approved. Right. Do you think that also, so this is all new to me. I mean, I gotta be honest with you. I'm a little bit irritated with you right now. I mean, irritated is a strong word, but like for the setup of this, there was a lot of Jack, I'm sorry, Jeff Regan erasure um jeff regan investigator i believe i've played parts of that show for you that was an

early radio show put out like did he put out a sitar album that we should be listening to some tracks from did he do something else it was a real left turn do you not recall the lion's eye

the name of the show is jeff regan investigator even though at the beginning of every episode he says i'm the lion's eye leading everybody to wonder why didn't they name the show the lion's eye he's so much better than jeff reagan exactly i love that show though um but um so anyway we just sort of skip you know you're giving a backgrounder on jack webb and we're just skipping over that part it seems a little bit which seems a little bit weird to me but um this musical career i mean at first i'm befuddled because it's kind of like what is the market for this and maybe not great but i'm on discogs right now like he's he released a bunch of collaborations with other people like at first i was like oh this is just some sort of a money grab but no i think you're right like this was something that he found fulfilling in some way and maybe it's because he talks so quickly on the show yes i think so he needed to slow things down like i just don't like if you can't sing at all what is the pleasure that you get from right this one as awful as it is he wrote it but like why would you cover something if you're just having other people do the beautiful musical part and you're just talking over it now he's got a great speaking voice for sure but like what person in 19 what like 65 is this what person in 1965 is like right hey let's let's throw on that jack webb record and like have you guys listened to the have you listened to that

track called purple right where he's just free associating on a color now which which record is

this is it called colors because i can't find that one or is this one you're my girl romantic

reflections by jack webb which is a 1958 record um let's see um just the tracks i was able to find it on amazon music uh which uh thank god thank god i'm able to give jeffy b a little more of my hard-earned uh income so so that the just just the tracks ma'am uh oh that's the name of

it just the tracks i'm sorry you we had a whole discussion about that so let me just play you

I'm gonna play you Magenta I've never even listened to this yet This is just a song Called Magenta Maybe there's not even words Maybe this is just like the The kind of musical Interpretation of the color Magenta It's actually not bad

No but he's not playing it

No this is someone named Pete Kelly Jack Webb and Pete Kelly

This whole record's on Spotify, man. Don't you have Spotify?

I don't know. When I internetted it, it said I was Google. That I just played it on Amazon. I don't, I have, but he's got, like, there's a song called Fire Engine. There's a song called Van Dyke. There's a song called Carnation. There's a song called Rouge. There's a song called Sapphire. Periwinkle.

A lot of red. Lobster. Peacock.

When Sunny Gets Blue. This I don't mind. I'm a sucker for this kind of...

Yeah, no, this is great, but again, this isn't him.

It has nothing to do with Jack Webb.

And we know for sure he's not playing that piano, right? I don't actually know that, but I would be surprised. Yeah, yeah, because the other music you were playing didn't have a piano. It was one of those things where it's like, oh, if he's one of the musicians, but they need some vocals, so he's going to talk over top of it. It's not unprecedented, but if you're only doing covers and your covers are talking slowly over music, why?

what are you adding what are you adding to the product when the other person the actual musician in your group who let's be honest is associating with you because you got a record deal with warner brothers and you're joe friday from dragnet if if it's just somebody named pete kelly twinkling the eye ivories or maybe tinkling the ivories uh what are you as jack webb really adding to this particular track called magenta is the question that is sort of raised i also just like i'm curious and i wasn't able to really like get a lot of intel on this through the wikipedia page and other things but for some reason i got interested in this idea of this guy jack webb who clearly had a you know Houston we have a boner for like law enforcement and for tough talking g-men and the like but then he loved jazz and I was like did he believe all of that shit he was saying on Dragnet like was that his personal politics as well that we need to like you know that we got to eradicate the hippies or was he actually like a more kind of nuanced and interesting person who would like to sit around and maybe listen to some jazz and smoke a jay himself I have no evidence to that end I'm just curious about like was he just walking around in joe friday mode all the time or did he have like a normal side that was like and was this his his attempt to un joe friday himself like

he definitely seems like i mean his only background is in like performance and in acting it doesn't seem like you know like he was somebody who was involved in law enforcement in any way no and then found himself to the radio waves and then the small screen no he was like somebody who always

it would appear was fascinated with and obsessed with what we would now call first responders because I think he also made other, yeah.

And then got maybe, maybe it wasn't even his choice, but like once he, cause even before Jeff Regan, I think that he, he played a cop on another radio show. And my guess is like, once you just sort of develop that sort of sound, then that's what you get hired for, casted for.

have you been staying with your uh lion's eye and also your um actuary insurance and what is it

insurance investigator oh Johnny Dollar um yours truly Johnny Dollar I gotta say yeah no I Jeff Regan I like so the Whistler was the one that brung me um and that I started hearing late at night on Kixi radio and when I say late at night I mean after eight um and so and the Whistler is more like kind of a radio version of maybe like the Twilight Zone or something they're all like independent little stories or honestly almost a little bit like um tales from the crypt only like 1940s versions of that you know little mysteries and intrigue and then um then I think I graduated to Jeff Regan investigator aka the lion's eye which I'm looking at something here it says a lot of people at the time just started calling it the lion's eye like I just don't get how you missed

the mark on the marketing on that well don't you think that it's probably was was wait was Jeff reagan uh the character's name or the actor's name jeffrey no jack webb was the actor oh jack webb was jeff that's why i'm going off about this wait a minute but who was gen alpha

oh i didn't that's why i'm going off on this jack webb jack webb played the original jeff

reagan well that's why when i said did he have a sitar record that made no sense to you because i didn't realize jack webb was the original jeff reagan i for some reason thought that a guy named jeff regan had just gotten them to really in the way that when i used to do traffic reports on the radio and you're supposed to make up a pretend name for yourself like bev devlin or uh sprints arbogast that's actually sprints his real name but kind of well her name's cynthia but like yeah you're supposed to make up a fake name because you're on a bunch of stations and i was like hell no i'm jeff regan i'm gonna i want if somebody likes me on kicking country if they hear that traffic reporter and they think why he did a good job i want them to know it was luke burbank who did it who done it um so much like that i just assumed that somehow it was like jeff regan had just gotten a really he had a really good contract where he was able to get his name as the thing even though it made no sense considering it's the lion's eye i think they replace um jack webb with

another actor down the line but and i know i've done this already but let's just do it again oh no are you gonna give me a modern ad here hold on a second please don't get that okay sorry about this this isn't going as well as i thought it would we need an ad blocker for this stuff okay

hold on here's the kind of program you've been waiting to hear hard-boiled action and mystery as told by jeff regan investigator so stand by for trouble stand by for suspense stand by for

adventure in tonight's story the lady with the golden hair that's also one of his songs i believe and now here's jack webb as jeff regan well this is the way it started i was sitting in the lion's

den waiting for him to get off the phone so i could ask him about my expense sheet on that New Orleans thing. He was playing the usual games with his lawyer just about the time he hung up.

His boss, the expense sheet thing, that's just a... That's a...

That's a coincidence.

That's a coincidence. This is not the one about the expenses.

I understand your confusion. Okay. What part of yours truly, Johnny Dollar, and Jeff Regan, investigator, filling out his expense reports, don't you understand?

God, they need one. Yours truly, Larry Elardo. Why is this guy trying to stay by Disneyland?

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.

All right, emails or emails or just expense reports that you need to clear with me or John.

I actually did have to send in some receipts just earlier this week. I'm going to do something today that is a little bit risky. I'm going to play for you some sound that I have not previewed yet because I wanted to be surprised and delighted along with you today. We have a decision to make about the order in which I play this audio, but let me explain it first. I don't, unfortunately, have the email in front of me, but listener Stephen, who has messed around with some AI programming and has sent us...

Is this who did the Andy Rooney?

Exactly. He's created the sound of Andy Rooney's voice saying nice things about TBTL. I don't know if we have any of that available right now, typing in Rooney, just as a little reminder. I think we have Andy Rooney reading a bunch of, like, TBTL drops here.

You know, I've always considered myself a bit of an old-fashioned average guy. Give me a typewriter, a newspaper, and a cup of coffee, and I'm content. But there's this modern phenomenon that's managed to sneak into my routine and capture my attention. The podcast, too beautiful to live. Now, I don't know much about this podcasting business, but let me tell you, there's something about this show that just gets me hooked.

Okay, so we've played that before. That was a creation by Stephen. Now, you brought up Paul Giamatti the other day, and the fact that I was convinced for a long time that there's some movie where he says, I could really use a win here, and it turns out that the internet and history has proven me wrong. Apparently, that is not a line that Paul Giamatti has ever actually uttered in a film. But with the power of AI and the power of Stephen, our AI in chief, AI creator in chief, apparently we now have audio of AI Paul Giamatti saying, I could really use a win here. Wow. Now, what Stephen has sent in is two MP3s. And again, I have not previewed these. One is the one that he plucked as the best one. OK. And actually, I should read this email for you, because apparently Paul Giamatti played, did he play John Adams, Luke? Does that ring a bell? OK, he did. So there you go. So apparently some of the information that was fed to the A.I. was also him doing John Adams, which apparently messed up the algorithm a little bit for like half of these. Do you want to hear the one that Stephen has plucked out? It's two seconds of him saying that line as the best one. Or should we listen to the montage first and then hear which one Stephen has deemed the best?

Is it a montage of him saying I could really use a win here?

That's my understanding. Yeah, let's hear the full thing and then let's hear the best one. And this is 22 seconds. I'm legit excited about this.

I could really use a win here. That's not the best one? I don't think. I don't know. It's just the first one. I'm delighted. This is wonderful. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here.

That was John Adams, right? The second one? Yes, probably so. I'm not going to keep doing this.

Sounds like he has walrus teeth.

Oh my god. Okay, I'm going to start from the beginning again. I swear that second one was John Adams.

I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here.

Okay. Golly. There is a lot of good stuff. Really strong ones in there.

Now, here's, I don't want to be a pooper on the party. Those were great, and I am delighted. In my imagination, which is where this originated from, it's less yelled and it's more kind of gritted out it's more like through gritted teeth you know

almost like i could really use you're gonna really like the holdovers because this is that's basically his character choice throughout he's not yelling all that much there's the trailer makes you think he's yelling but really mostly he's just kind of grimly confronting the reality of his life and potentially almost under his breath saying i could really use a win here when that is available

on streaming.

streaming because I don't know if they released that in the theaters and streaming at the same time and I don't want to be I've never like requested an AI creation from Stephen before and I don't know if I want to get in that business I don't know if Stephen wants to be in that business with me but if we could grab some of that sort of more like frustrated like kind of like you know not yelling Giamatti but sort of like grumbling Giamatti saying I could really use him in here I'd be interested in hearing what that sounds like and see I mean could we actually create something that i invented in my brain and and create it in an actual audio form but i mean

as a person who didn't invent it in their brain but who has given it far too much thought because of you telling me about it and then me just watching a movie with him in it i gotta say some of those oh um are like if you told me like think about this edward this is where we get into deep fakes like if because you know you thought that that's something he said you investigated it wasn't but if i were to if you didn't know about deep fakes and i found and i took a couple of those like the best one and i guess we're going to hear one that's maybe even better or the one that that steven thinks is the best from that grouping and if i played i was like andrew holy shit dude i was watching uh big fat liar and and that's the movie where paul giamatti yells i could really use a win here and i played that for you would believe it yeah yeah it's believable like you know some of them more than others but that's incredible okay can we hear the

best one okay you're ready you don't have a drum roll there do you the drum roll from john adams

i could really use a win here interesting funny that's i that's not that's that's not my number

one me neither and i and listen i don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth i can't um because of the program i'm using right now i can't kind of needle drop on that 22 second montage again But there was some stuff near the end. Can you just go back? Can you go to the beginning? Oh, the very, very beginning.

Can we hear the very first one from the montage? Because that one, that was pretty solid right out of the gate for me.

I could really use a win here. That's pretty damn good.

Pretty good.

And then you get into kind of the John Adams stuff. Now, I'm just going to fast forward. I can't see the waveform here, but I'm going to move about halfway through this file of montage and see what else we got. Because there was one that you and I both really reacted to.

I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here. I could really use a win here.

Yeah, I'm not sure which one of those it was. The long drawn out one, though, is probably not my pick. Again, no offense to Steven.

Because what I feel like is that one is a little bit more scenery chewing. I mean, listen, Paul Giamatti creates very memorable scenes as an actor, but in a way that feels more grounded to me. Yeah, I agree. i love that we're going inside the ai actor studio i love that i'm trying to break this down like i'm freaking james lipped it or something but like um but yeah there's something about even when paul giamatti is doing and i guess this is the nature of being a really talented actor or an actor who's really put in the time is even when paul giamatti is doing stuff that's ridiculous it doesn't and i'm talking about you know certain movies with him like uh you know uh the holdovers and stuff maybe less so in Big Fat Liar co-starring Frankie Munoz aka Malcolm in the Middle but like it feels to me like even when Paul Giamatti is doing stuff that's wild and out there it feels like something that his character is really doing it doesn't seem like it doesn't seem like he's just being

silly for the sake of being silly yeah I agree with you and I feel though that he could have gone in that direction he could have teamed up with directors and and taken roles where it is a lot more scenery chewy um but I I think you're right like while every now and then he will have a scene i mean he certainly is not an under actor but it's not his reputation because

i think he chooses more complex roles yeah and approaches even the trying to think i mean i the thing about my relationship with his work is i've really only seen probably what would be considered his sort of best stuff so in other words like i really love sideways i mean sideways is a comedy and i think a very funny comedy at that um you know uh what else have we seen in american splendor That was like probably my first awareness of me He's playing Harvey P. Carr, I think

I always think of, I know it's weird Because I've only seen this once and I saw it with you But I remember really enjoying the movie Win Win

Yeah, the wrestling movie

Yeah, he plays a wrestling coach and lawyer I think this has come up on the show before Which is why I kind of remember that But I don't remember much about the movie Other than seeing it in the theater And really, really enjoying it And it might have been by one of those directors Who, I want to say like maybe the station agent guy does that sound right because who directed the new Giamatti movie who works with him a lot and did Nebraska Alexander Payne Alexander Payne like I've seen some of his stuff but Alexander Payne is not the guy who did the station agent right I don't believe

so win-win uh was directed by oh you know who was directed by tom mccarthy and if that's the same tom mccarthy i'm thinking of that's the guy that played templeton in the wire remember when they do the media season in the wire oh i'm seeing him now okay so he's a director

and an actor because it looks like he did do the station agent as well i don't think he was in it

I think he directed it. Good memory. No, yeah, he is both, but Andrew, I mean. Wait, am I right about that?

TVTL bragging. Yeah, Station Agent was his first film. And he did Spotlight?

Andrew remembered, I knew that one too, but Andrew remembered that Tom McCarthy directed The Station Agent. Very good.

Now, I wouldn't have been able to pull up his name for whatever it's worth. I just kind of remembered that Win-Win was by the same guy who did The Station Agent because I sort of felt like he was kind of creating. He was one of those directors I feel like we sort of talked about a lot because those were kind of beloved movies, or at least The Station Agent was. In my memory, I'm seeing now that that came out in 2003. I wonder if that holds up as well as I remember it. I remember there was just a time when all of my public radio friends loved The Station Agent.

I saw a clip from it. I told you that now how I experience a lot of my media, even full-length movies, will just be a clip pops up on TikTok. and I don't know why it decides to show me like a moment from the station agent where Peter Dinklage and one of the other characters is just walking along the railroad track or whatever talking but I found I mean I really loved that movie when I saw it 25 years ago but I that scene that I saw whatever was happening I thought this feels like it really holds up like it seems like a very well well acted well constructed movie

and Dinklage has been great about taking good roles and there's one other actor I mean there's I'm looking at the cast now and there's a bunch of people you'd recognize but I'm going to try to get you to guess one of them with a one word clue are you ready for this you're not looking at the cast I am not no I am this is a game we play where can I get you to guess an actor yes by saying only one word love it I am 100% confident I can do this by the way

okay Lewis

Richard Kine Indeedly do, my friend Richard Kind is in the cast, I don't remember

How is it that that's all we need? That's all we need

I told you the story

I must have bored you and the listeners On the show recently with the Story, and I know, you know We are trying to expand into more pranking On this show, Andrew, so this is in the service of that But you know, I think It's pretty well known that George Clooney and Richard Kind are Lifelong friends, or at least have been friends For their whole adult lives, and that George Clooney was like like kind of crashing on richard kind's couch when he was trying to make it and richard kind was already i think having some success as an actor and you know the story about the the richard kind's cat box with george clooney oh yeah yeah yeah i remember that prank he was stealing the richard kind's cat's poop out of the box or at least just taking it out without him knowing it for a month so that he thought the cat would had not gone and then he went to the bathroom in there he also i think told richard kind that he had really that george clooney had really gotten into painting to the point where he set up all these fake painting supplies and canvases at his house and then he went and bought like one of the worst just like side of the road paintings he could find and then presented it to richard kind as his work and so of course richard kind like hangs it up in his house this really bad painting because like george did this for me and it was only years later that he learned that at no time had george painted this painting that's very charming pranks because nobody gets really hurt.

Except for the person who had, well, it wasn't there. Well, I guess I would be very concerned about my cat, I guess, if I really thought it was, like, really stopped up.

I mean, the unnecessary bowel surgeries on the cat were regrettable.

Right, exactly. The midnight squeezings. Exactly. But other than that, everybody had a fun time.

Now, is midnight squeezings a show title?

sorry Mike Johnson I didn't mean to say that your phone is now blowing up with war

Midnight Squeezings it's not just the name not just the name of a Beck album anymore it's also a TVTL episode so

Midnight Squeezings on USA up all night that's great

alright Ali that's gonna do it for today's episode of the show but we will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio and it's gonna be a fun one because Andrew I'm gonna be

at your house that's right we have some packages to open here

yeah we're gonna play a little round speaking of brad pitt we're gonna play a little wait we weren't speaking of brad pitt i guess i think of clooney as so brad pitt adjacent uh we're gonna play a little what's in the box in the next couple of episodes and uh we're gonna be recording there at andrew's place so that'll be fun uh in the meantime everybody have yourselves a great wednesday uh we'll see you tomorrow in the meantime please remember no mountain too tall good luck to all

The End a hole through the top of it. A pair of suede gloves and a white carnation. He stood there, looked at both of us. The lion looked at the $50 bills. I looked at the little man.

Aha! You are Mr. Lion, no? I, Max Vladne, have come to see you unappointed. Where you are? My name's Regan. This is Mr. Lion. Aha! You will do it. Uh, won't you sit down, Mr. Max Vladne, Vladne, Max, one, six, four, two, more Holland drive power out.