Muse

I will not tolerate monkeys living on campus. If I wanted to run a monkey hotel, I'd install a banana buffet. I'd use vines as elevators, and I'd put tail holes in the bathrobes, and I'd lower all the shower knobs. Well, you've really thought this through. And now it's your turn. Brainstorm. Idea shower. Spray your solutions all over me.

Well, we could seal all the vents and then pump the ducts with some kind of gas that...

knocks out monkeys. Monkey knockout gas. Now that's the kind of grounded, sensible thinking I want to see this year.

TBTL! Don't you latte-sipping leeches understand? I've seen enough of these Hollywood super hunks. We need a dumpy, unappealing loser. An everyman.

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd say, but if you thought a sausage couldn't really hurt anyone, frankly, think again.

I have never heard someone say so many wrong things, One after the other consecutively in a row There is something about the soul of a snake

Call Kenny Loggins because you're in the danger zone From Topcon Just be careful No You heard it here first ladies and gentlemen And the it that you heard was the things that these people have said

Alright, hello, good morning and welcome everyone To a Monday edition of TBTL The show just might be too beautiful to live

Hey, where's the freaking gabagoo?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Targus, Targus.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is going to be extremely wet over the next days. 36 inches of rain in some places. It's not leaking. It's overflowing. Atmospheric rivers overflowing left and right. We're going to try to get through it together here on episode 4089. Let the fun begin. Speaking of getting wet, though. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. We are going to be finding out live on air if the water line that sends the water here to the Madrona Hill studio, if the water line is intact or if there were any punctures in it when they put the siding up. And we're going to find out together. I am me and my dad, Walt B., and you, the listeners, are all going to find out in the same moment. More on that coming up in just a second or two. Also, we had a busy weekend putting down leveling cement that had something called a hot time on it. It's going to be very hot. It's going to be very uncomfortable for everybody. I also had a silent football retreat. You never hear about the silent football retreats, do you? And I had one. Plus, penguins, they nap a lot, thousands of times a day.

Early bird gets the worm, but who wants to live on worms?

So we'll try to talk about that, too. Plus, we'll talk to this guy, longest-running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Right there for you. You could have rearranged the top stories. You could have said speaking.

You know, your mic was off for part of that.

Oh, you couldn't? Are you being serious?

Yeah, yeah. It glitched, I heard. Right there for you. Are we having a connectivity issue?

I'm not sure. I wonder what hit the tape. I don't see it.

See, normally I just let it go, but I learned last week that sometimes that stuff is, you know, maybe it's for all the world to hear. So I'm trying to be very responsive and very feedback, maybe too much feedback.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, no, that throws me for a loop, but I'll put it out of my mind for now. What I was saying is you could have introduced me by rearranging the top stories and saying, speaking of a hot time, here's my co-bro-ist with the mo-o-ist, Andrew Walsh.

Anyway, it's going to be very hot, going to be very uncomfortable for everybody.

I'm just trying to stay out of the way here. You're going to turn on the water to your building?

So I've got my dad standing by, the very patient Walter Burbank. He's been here for now four minutes and five seconds. And what is about to happen is he's going to go outside and turn the water on that comes out to this building. And we're going to find out if, in fact, that line has structural or fluid integrity to it. What's going to happen, Dad? First of all, welcome to the program. Can you just kind of get over closer to this microphone so we can hear you?

Hey, Andrew.

Hey.

I can't hear you.

Yeah, but he said hey back. Okay, so, Dad, you've got to get really close to this mic, like weirdly close. So, we're about to turn the water on. What is the thing we're hoping does not happen?

We're hoping that we don't hear any funny noises inside the walls. Because that would mean what? Leaking water inside the walls.

So, there's a water line that's running along this wall that's kind of in front of you and I. And they put up this stuff called Hardy Panel. And is your concern?

that when they were putting the hardy panel up they may have the nail may have

gone into the water pipe that's exactly right what do you think the reasonable

chances of that are because you're very belt and suspenders I am more like mom I am always assuming it'll be fine even though oftentimes it isn't you're a little more cautious do you think there's a real chance that that when we turn this water on it will start making weird noises and coming through the

literal walls of the studio there's a slight chance like 10 10 to 12 okay 10 to 12 percent okay i could be wrong i've been wrong before wait you could be wrong that it

could be more than a 10 to 12 percent yeah okay um okay so then um i guess maybe the only thing to do pops is do you want to go outside and turn it on i'll turn it on and then should i just be i mean you're going to come in and like sit on the couch and just listen is that how this is going to work exactly what i'm going to do all right all right godspeed pops go go turn her on i guess andrew will just continue with the show i will know my dad's going to be in here he will i'm sure uh start doing some kind of wild gesturing and gesticulation if we do have a water leak so i'm i'm really hoping this is one of those things where he's just kind of extra cautious because he's been making it in conversation uh he's been making it seem like it's like 50 50 that this is going to happen but i feel like we did a lot of planning to avoid this scenario when i oh sorry

you guys getting ready to go here no he's out there okay he's turning it on he's i could actually

hear through the wall the of the faucet or the not even the faucet the like what do you call it it's it's just basically a kind of an off yeah not yes but it doesn't it does not let water this is the shut off valve to this building and this former garage how's it sounding so far dad did you hear that andrew we got a so far so good from the back okay uh no leaks in the uh in the bathroom area so far wait let's hear your dad how much time before we would be able to declare this to be all clear like kill the music though tonight tonight

if there's a nail hole it'll leak slowly oh great and we'll see puddles coming out through the

floorboard so basically the plan is to just live in terror for the next 10 hours but so far what is your read it sounds okay right it's just about cigar time oh wow okay wow dad it's like 9 30 okay come on uh okay good so you're feeling that are you saying that percentage i'm also pausing because trying to like legit here myself are you saying that you feel like that percentage is dropping now maybe down to my like five percent no it's still 10 okay all right but but nothing immediately happening that he's leaning he's my dad is on his hands and knees and is putting his he's literally putting his ear up against the wall i'm trying to get a photo of this he's like a doctor listening to someone's chest if like he didn't have a stethoscope so uh you're not hearing anything though in there right now that's giving you concern okay all right it could leak outside see this is are you picking this up andrew yeah so i want to just i want to just kind of restate for everyone the inside appears to be fine but we haven't ruled out that it could be leaking leaks in the outside yeah it could take hours possibly the leak could actually be going directly up right up into the sky into space and that we may not know for days if not months or it could be wait are you being serious well no okay okay hold on i want everyone to know what i what i live

with yeah yeah no the pipe goes up this left hand wall okay and then across the ceiling in here but

that would be there's no likelihood of that one being pierced because it's it's in the wall in the ceiling it's not out where like a nail would have hit it so that we should be pretty safe that

that that one is going to be okay this is the area that i'm most concerned about okay he was

pointing right at my head and yeah yeah no we're all there he did that we're there well okay pops well listen i'll be out here i will i'll be broadcasting with one uh headphone off so i can hear for anything bad and i'll also be obsessively checking that corner of the room dad to see if any water comes in now andrew the reason that all of this is is happening today is because not to brag but uh we are soon going to have a working toilet here in the madrona hill studio and a uh a sink no oh hey look at that jeopardy phoebe is still playing was that on some kind of like

that was some kind of loop why was that you probably made a really long version of it at

some point i feel like we know this is now you want to when you want to know what my what my roman empire is andrew what my toxic trait is yours is if there's a bit of audio glitchery your brain kind of wants to

iron it out you know mine is why are my drops being weird like in other words i just play this jeopardy drop is 45 seconds long i cannot figure out why it was just looping like that i must have clicked a button somewhere accidentally because that should have been long done by then but i

won't i won't weigh less with that by the way we don't have to get into this now but speaking of me getting obsessed with and cranky with technology i was telling you about an issue i had before the show that i did not want to talk about but now that it looks like there's a happy ending at some point i am willing to tell that story on the air i don't think that today is the day i think there's a lot of there's my story also involves getting wet though and i know i didn't know you like to

get wet though i do not get wet though one of the most surprising turns of events in maybe tbtl

history we will we will tell we will tell that story on a different let's talk about that tomorrow

i'm by the way i'm very glad that that has had a happy ending for you i want to just let people know my dad is now just pacing like some kind of a caged puma in front of the madrona hill studio looking at the at the part of the uh exterior roughly where that water line is is run to to make double sure and again it sounds like i'm kind of giving my dad grief i mean this is what i appreciate about my dad and this is why he's really good at doing this stuff because he is um you know extremely extremely careful extremely thorough i mean we had so um over the weekend one of the things that we did was put down i'm talking like close to a couple thousand pounds of of self-leveling concrete uh because uh basically this house is really old and even after all of the work and there's been a bunch of structural work you know beams being taken down and replaced with bigger beams and walls opened up and moved and all kinds of stuff going on, architectural plans, engineering plans. Despite all of that, there was still the simple matter of the actual floor, like kind of over where the kitchen area is going to be, was like sagging by like an inch. And the only way to really fix that without tearing that all out and like rebuilding it, which is apparently like an insanely complicated task, was to mix up a bunch of this self-leveling concrete, which you basically pour into an area that is not level, and then it kind of settles itself, and then you've leveled things out. The problem was it has something called a hot time of 15 minutes. This is on the bag. Hot time, 15 minutes, meaning you've got about 15 minutes to work with this stuff before it starts to harden up in a certain way, That if it's not in the right place If something is off You're kind of SOL And we had 25 bags of this stuff Each bag is 50 pounds And then you add the water So each bag is probably 60, 65 pounds Like when you get a bucket of this stuff And we were mixing it in 5 different buckets When you get a bucket of this stuff And you're picking it up and carrying it over To where you're trying to dump it It's probably then maybe 65, 70 pounds or something And uh it was like so we sort of were like okay here's the plan um we'll use these buckets for mixing and then we'll take it over and then as soon as we started like within like the first within a minute of dealing with the first bucket i was like and kids everyone cover your ears i was

like we're fucked like everyone cover your ears okay everybody yes everyone back now i'm talking

adults i'm talking grandparents i'm talking children um i was it i was like oh my god we're so screwed because the other thing Andrew was that I had to run so my job kind of quickly became try to keep at least two buckets of powder so a bucket that I had cut open this bag so these bags are 50 pounds you cut them open and then you dump them into a bucket now the powder is a pretty it's 80 to 90 percent of the square foot or the area in the bucket so you pretty much fill this bucket with this powder which also immediately goes in your lungs which is pretty cool and then and then you have to measure out this amount of water very carefully in a different bucket that has markings on it so i was trying to constantly keep two buckets of powder ready to go but the thing was i kept running out of water so i have to run outside fill this specific bucket up with water up to a certain line run it back in run back out it was it got real sorcerer's apprentice real fast like and i put this video up on instagram which is kind of fun to watch because it's like 23 seconds it's the whole afternoon but in 23 seconds but what you do not the sense you cannot get from this video is just how much this whole thing was hanging by a thread i was sprinting in and out of the house i'm trying to fill this up with water i'm trying to get it back in we're trying to You couldn't pour all of the water into the bucket at one time because it would be too much. So you'd have to pour in like two-thirds of the water. My dad would get a mix going, and then you dump the last third in. But if you didn't have enough water in there, the entire bucket would start spinning. Because basically we had this big, heavy drill that had a kind of mixing thing on it, right? If the mixture was too thick, the whole bucket starts spinning like some kind of a demented dervish and throwing the leveling cement out of it, which luckily only happened a couple of times. But there was just, it was a very stressful and fraught situation. Dad, how's it looking, by the way? It's looking good. Okay, he's back in here. He's still in inspector mode. Dad, was that leveling cement thing yesterday? Was it more stressful than you expected once we got into it?

Yeah, but I knew it was going to be stressful.

He's saying he knew it was going to be stressful. So, you know, I guess he knows everything. I did not, I mean I sort of thought it would be stressful But I didn't realize until it was go time That it was, as you like to say Andrew, it was meatball surgery It was just like

I believe that's like Gammillism I believe that's where The old Pete Gammill from Cairo Radio I believe he was the one who would always say everything was like It's like meatball surgery We're just trying to That was it

Here's the other complicating factor After one of these buckets Had been used twice it would the amount of the leveling cement that would have kind of even if it's well mixed the amount of it that would have sort of accumulated on the sides that was like impossible to get out of the bucket right that you had to go out and wash it so basically you got like two uses out of each bucket before i then had to run outside and grab this hose and try to spray these things out so that we could get them back in the rotation it's you probably heard that it's pouring rain And also, the other thing that I was battling, Andrew, was the nozzle on the end of the hose. You know, this is kind of one of those pistol grip type of things that we've all used to water our gardens. I inherited it and this whole hose setup from whoever the previous owner of this place was. And that little nozzle, the little kind of sprayer thing, it kept breaking. It wasn't fully breaking, but it was coming apart. So in other words, when you pull the handle down to open it to spray the water, It's pulling this little mechanism open at the top of the, I'm going to say, hose sprayer. Is there a term for that? Is there an agreed upon term? You know what I'm talking about, right?

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the part where the water comes out.

Yeah. It turns out some little area where one piece of plastic is sort of pulling back on this piston mechanism. And that piston mechanism has a tightening screw on it or a little thing so that you can control how burly the water stream is. is well that little area it was all worn out and so just every time I would try to like use it it would pop off so I'd have to I'm out there in the pouring rain I've got these big gloves on

and I'm trying to like carefully the little threaded cap was popping off into the yard no

the plastic housing around it was going over like it was it was it was slipping so in other words I would I would essentially have to reassemble this this mechanism on this thing as I'm trying to wash out these buckets as i'm trying to run between the living room and the outside to keep this sort of assembly line if you will of of of leveling cement happening within the hot time we got it done and it's so satisfying now i will say i think that a lot of people uh who saw this on instagram and even actual friends of ours who reached out were were misled i think i might have confuse people into thinking that's the floor of the house which would be pretty dope actually like it would be like as you're pouring it out it's very shimmery it kind of settles it's reflecting the sliding glass doors it looks like i'm gonna have this like beautiful finished concrete floor in the house that's not the floor that's just so when i my dad and i put the wood down over the floor it's not like insanely janky um so then did you hide any messages in the

concrete then or sorry cement i know they're different i can't remember you know what i

I actually don't know the difference, and I've probably been alternating between the terminology.

But, like, since you're covering it up anyway, did you put, like, your handprint in it anywhere? No. Was there any shenanigans at all? Zero shenanigans. Not even a tiny little pin just to write your initials?

It's not that kind of a thing, dude. It was like, I'm not even kidding. I was legitimate. When, you know, did you ever work at a restaurant or like a thing?

No.

I think you'd be really good at that, by the way.

No, I don't. I think that would be one of the hardest jobs. people like oh my god I think that would just be so hard well um you know servers will talk

and bartenders and stuff will talk about being in the weeds that's the kind of sort of agreed uh terminology when you work in food service about when you're just like royally screwed you just got like

25 dinner tickets backed up and no one's getting their food and oh i've played the diner waitress

game oh excuse me i've clocked hours that's why you thought i used to be a do you remember when i got obsessed with that on the show do you remember that old i do now it was just like a very like burgers it was like an eight-bit game and you're just like this waitress and i mean it's the most low tech game you could imagine but you just keep going back and forth back and forth filling people's orders and then it just becomes like you could play it for an hour and it just becomes like this this juggling act that it was weirdly um addictive anyway so yeah that's why you know what it's like to be in that that's why when you look at me you're thinking i have food

experience yeah that is exactly uh it's exactly why i got that theory uh feeling so so i just had the strongest feeling of being in the weeds when we were doing it like like if we don't like if there's any mess ups in this and if we like like if if if this drill breaks at one point so it's like a very very big i think it's actually maybe called like an angled drill it's for like the the horsepower the torque on the drill is for like if you're drilling through the sill plate of a house which is kind of like the base of your wall if you're trying to go through like the floor literally the levels of your house so that's what we're using it's got this long kind of stirring kind of thing on it and at some point the um the bit where you tighten it down around it had gotten loose and the whole thing just like flies apart and my thought is like oh my god if that thing just broke i cannot get to home depot and back here before the hot time has expired like it just i was the other thing i realized later and i told my dad this was i think this hot time deal is kind of like how your gas tank tells you that you're on e but you got probably another five miles like they they they're they're you know they're trying to help you help yourself by like telling you it's It's empty, but there's really a little more in there. I bet you the hot time has got to be like 20 minutes. But they're like, we're going to make people really, really worried about this 15-minute thing so that they don't get themselves in a predicament.

Do you know that this is going to sound like a total, total left turn, but I think you'll understand why I bring it up. But I showed up for a haircut at the barbershop, maybe about I probably walked in the door maybe a minute after my appointment should have started or maybe two at the most. And I felt like the biggest criminal in the world. I don't think I've ever like like just the reason I'm bringing this up is because you're talking about, first of all, your dad's tendency to be very cautious about things. And then you having this tendency to look at an empty tank of gas and assume that it's lying to you.

and like i mean i think that's i think that has been confirmed i mean sure but either way you

know that i'm not like that you know what i mean like we're obviously on the different ends of the spectrum for that and so i don't think that i've ever been to a haircut in my adult life where i haven't been there at least five minutes before the time is you know before my appointment is supposed to start because you're died if i'm not sitting on that bench if i'm not uh what do they say in baseball if i'm not grabbing pine is that what it's called when you're sitting on the bench riding the pine riding the pine is that it or is that a rush well that's a basketball

riding the pine is the basketball terminology for being on the bench for being on the bench yeah so

anyway if I'm not riding the pine five minutes before it starts I feel like I'm late and I walked in I mean everybody was absolutely cool I think I apologized five times for being late and they kept looking at me like I was bananas but uh yeah so I I'm more like I'm more of a walt

obviously I guess the thing that got me talking about that floor leveler was we had a moment my dad and I wear um let's see this would have been on Saturday morning so he came here on Friday night I was at an ugly sweater slash uh Pac-12 championship watching party Andrew which much to

much to discuss on that yeah you know in all seriousness I almost texted you like many times over the weekend because I watched that game I listened to part of it and watched part of that game and um you know i had some advice for you on friday's show about how how you how and where you should watch that game and i was really tempted to text you you know was my advice good did you take my advice and it felt like maybe my advice was bad in retrospect so i'm dying to hear about

your experience there well um i got here saturday morning my dad was here and we were looking around at this project and the initial plan had been to just live with the fact that this floor was a little wonky because i've had many an old house and it's not unusual for the floor to be a little wonky and also a lot of the area in question was going to be underneath like a kitchen island it was going to be in the corners where like uh you know appliances are going to be like i was doing an okay job of rationalizing that like honestly you just shim just get a box of shims a big old box of shims you just

shim everything out meaning you you can you know you put the floor over everything and then like if you need the cabinets the cabinets are sloping a little bit you just you know put some shims under one end of them so when someone walks in the house unless they're going around with like a level like everything looks fine you know like that was kind of where I thought we had left things and then my dad was like well actually we can do this leveling cement situation and I was like well what should we do should we really do this or not or you know this is going to be an extra by the way the material alone is like a thousand dollars like what is happening like for that many bags of that stuff it's like it's each bag was like 38 or something i was like if i drop one of these bags i just dropped and it bursts open i just dropped 40 like these bags are worth their weight in cement or concrete whichever one it is like so well that's what i was going to ask you before

because i feel like you skipped over the most interesting potentially part of the story which is when you open up one of these bags you cut into it do you cut into it is it like almost like a a swollen sack and you take a knife and you cut right in the middle of it like a cop cutting into

a bag of drugs to see if it's real that would be so much more fun but no you can't do that because of the dimensions of the bucket yeah what you have to do is cut it actually fairly carefully along the edge the top edge because if you do it if you gotta you have to get the whole bag into the bucket and then kind of like grab it and sort of you know shake it out but you're trying to get as keep as much of this like very light fly away concrete dust to stay in this home depot bucket um so no you i didn't get to like i didn't get to do one of those cool ass moves but i was using an exacto knife and i did feel like you know i felt like i was by the end of it i was honestly like kind of pretty proud of our of our little system that we had worked out and it's also amazing by the way how quickly and this is a kind of I guess a good life lesson for me about a lot of stuff it's funny how quickly as humans we can go from a really like confused inefficient state like I'd never done this before and the first like three buckets it was just like a disaster because I was I had cut one of the bags in the wrong place and so then it's I can't the powder's not coming out and I'm reaching down and trying to re-rip the bag in the bucket it's just like a mess it's all coming out you know and you know by the tenth one it's like we're getting this like military precision and it's just this is what happens as humans is things are scary and weird and we haven't done them and we're bad at it and then we just do it and then you start to find the efficiencies I think I tend to shy away from a lot of stuff that I'm not just like naturally good at which is by the way most things but it's good for me to remember that there's a learning curve for a lot of things and and and so maybe I shouldn't be so daunted by

everything especially when you can lean on repetition like you were saying too it's right like one of the most satisfying things if anybody sorry i was just gonna say i get that from tech things like working things out we've been doing more video related stuff for newsletters and what have you and it i used to use this video software adobe premiere all the time and then i hadn't used it in like 10 years and so like getting back into it was pretty daunting but then i realized like oh god I'm like god making these videos take so long but like there's a learning curve and then once you get over the learning curve you can it just feels so goddamn satisfying just like oh the reason it was taking so long is because I was learning how to do every single aspect of this yeah I'm

trying to be a little bit um uh sort of I'm trying to remember that more about a lot of things in life um of just like okay I don't know how to do this now but it doesn't mean that I won't ever know how to do this it's just a thing that i currently don't know how to do um and with this house and with the budget spiraling out of control um and more me needing to do more and more of the stuff like initially i was kind of like anything that seemed hard if my dad wasn't around i was like we'll just hire it out now i'm realizing that honestly the stuff gets done only the stuff mostly only gets done when me and my dad do it and and that's also the slightly more affordable option although still not still not free but but but like this is really what i have to do if i'm going to get this project over the line i'm going to have to really push my comfort levels because i no longer have the resources to just keep being like i'll find someone to do it now it's like no i need to get on youtube and figure out how to do this thing and i don't know why i'm defensive

about this but you have mentioned on the show before that your dad you know he he's a he's a contractor he does this work for other people as well and and you've hired him in fact you were even talking about some um some negotiations some negotiations between you he and who's the third party the the swansons the annonsons but anyway i saw somebody uh post something somewhat snarky on the blog the other day something about like using your dad as as free labor or something i got a little defensive on your behalf thank you no god no this man is this man is as he should

getting paid for his time. And by the way, mileage. That part, I don't know. that you're paying the mileage well it's a trip but it's a trip but if people want to know people want to know this is a legit this is an above board to the to the point and i don't i don't think my dad would be would not want me to share this with people but he's paying taxes on the money i pay him like in other words like this is let me just put it this way without his business well yes but let me let me tell you this if anybody listening knows if you've ever worked with contractors certainly a lot of the subcontractors a lot of the like you could say smaller jobs there's a whole world of people that are very insistent upon being paid in cash that's part of the challenge around this financially is like this is not stuff you can put on a credit card most of it it's like cash on the barrelhead and in fact some people will be like well do you have like we don't accept anything other than cash it's like okay so like my but this is how kind of like this is this is how meticulous my dad is it's like he logs all of his hours he logs his mileage he probably is able to write his mileage off but like he is you know my dad is a very very detail-oriented guy and that is serving us well on this project is the larger takeaway uh speaking of finances maybe we should thank some donors and then i will hopefully not belabor it too much but i'll tell you about my friday night watching the university of washington huskies do what many me included thought was the impossible

I just had the worst impulse.

I don't know why. This would be so uncool. I was thinking of, like, texting my dad and being like, it's leaking. That would be so mean. Yeah. But then he'd be really happy when he came out here and it wasn't. But then I'd have to stop the show to explain to him that it was just a hilarious spoof.

Yeah, I have to fight that instinct sometimes, too. And I don't know. Like, sometimes just, like, somebody asks you what time it is. Like, Genevieve asked me what time it is. And, like, my impulse is just to lie.

To say hair past a freckle?

Yeah, I'm being serious, though.

To say half past a monkey's ass quarter to his balls?

Like, just to, for some reason, like, just make it seem later and then say, just kidding, it's actually, we're not late. And then it's like, why? I was just spoofing. Yeah, like, for real, that is an instinct that I have to suppress, and sometimes I don't suppress it. And it really makes you think, like, what is, why would you live with someone like me? I don't get it.

All of the free cleaning, I think is the answer. All of the housekeeping duties. We need to thank some of the people making today's episode possible Folks like Jonna Beving Out there in Camarillo, California Thank you, Jonna Lovely Camarillo, thanks, Jonna By the way, these are the donors That we're thanking today These folks are supporting the program I know that I bring this kind of stuff up So frequently, Andrew But I woke up this morning And the first piece of news I saw was And I'm not making light of it But Spotify to lay off 1500 more employees oh i did not see that yeah wow and it you know this was like probably the new york times coverage of the story it was spotify laying off 1500 employees uh and these were my senses a lot of people who were hired on to try to expand spotify beyond being a music service and into being a content service i.e podcasting and every time i see one of those stories i am just unbelievably thankful for the people listening to this show who think it's worth supporting financially and like it enough or are emotionally dependent on enough whatever it is that they that they donate money folks like john abeving and hank sonder who's in north providence rhode island thank you hank thanks hank appreciate you alana sweeney out there in Brooklyn, boy, this is a great distribution today as well. We got Alana, maybe Alana, Sweeney, keeping it locked down for us out there in Brooklyn, New York. Then Sam Charner is in Chicago. So just to repeat here, Andrew, we got Camarillo. We got North Providence. We got Brooklyn. We got Chicago. I mean, that's a great distribution. And then we pop over to one of my very favorite places on planet Earth, And I mean that the small maritime village of Port Townsend, Washington, where Mary Dutton is supporting the show from PT. Mary, I am I am I'm I'm I'm envious of anybody who gets to live. Sometimes what I like to do is go on like Redfin or Zillow and look at houses in Port Townsend that I I have a lot of emotional problems. I like to look at houses in Port Townsend that were for sale when I lived there. and particularly when we first moved there, which was kind of coming off a bit of, I think, a financial rough patch. And I like to look at those houses and then think about what they were on offer for when I was looking at them and then see what they're going for now and then weep heavily into my-

pillow wow so things are going well it's but it uh it's it liberates me i don't know why it's you know it's it's somehow cathartic so mary thank you for supporting us from out there in beautiful port towns in washington and then where would we be without jennifer buehrman of jersey city new

jersey wow okay great back up yeah they're in the northeast you consider that's the northeast so

nice they named the whole state for it yes that's what they famously say thank you jennifer thanks to all of our donors for making the show possible today as the podcasting financial landscape continues to uh go through all sorts of upheaval here we are five days a week doing this little thing for you because of all of you so thank you so much hello and welcome to top story okay i just legit had a moment of panic i heard a little knocking sound but i realized it was my heater it's my DeLonghi space heater

make sure that the heater is near the wall where the water might come through

and I've got a toaster running

I've got a few different appliances

and they're just all at ground level just to kind of I did, I was late, my dad by the way is back outside looking at the building Andrew now again I want to say this is why my dad is amazing and this is why the work that he does here is so it's all like above and beyond what anyone would do But like this is the real snapshot of the difference in our personality is like, OK, we know how long the nails were. They put the hardy panel in. We know how far back the water line was set. We put nail plates over a lot of it. In other words, a little metal kind of flat piece of metal that is actually designed so that if someone's trying to nail into an area where you have sensitive plumbing or wiring, it will actually stop the nail. So every sort of caution that could be taken has been taken, but my dad is still occasionally coming out here and giving it a look-see.

Well, first of all, there's the, yes, being careful part of that, but also just the satisfaction, right? You know, that's a really good point. It must just be nice to feel like water is running through there, and we're not seeing any leaks.

It just feels good. And soon, Andrew, I will be able to, during the various TBTL breaks, go from here into what, let's be honest, is still a very raw space, but still what is the future bathroom of the Matrona Hill studio, and there will be a functioning toilet. Will there be a sink? No, not yet, but there will be a lot of hand sanitizer.

You can wash your hands in the back of the toilet. You know what I mean? You keep the lid off the back, the tank. Absolutely. You pee, you flush, the tank fills up.

You've got to make sure you've worked through. I don't understand plumbing, even though I once worked at a plumbing company. The pee doesn't go back in the tank, does it? No. Okay.

You remember, like, I actually know a bit about toilets now because I had to, we must have talked about it on the show. I remember you had to fix your toilet. Yeah, I had to take it off completely and put it back.

I thought of you yesterday in the wax ring section of the home.

Yeah, they're only like $2.50. You can buy yourself a whole bunch of them.

But then there's the ones that are waterproof. There's ones that have a rubber coating over them, and they're, like, better than a wax ring. And you know me, I'm like, well, if the wax ring is good, but it's $1.50, but there's a $15 thing that's got a rubber coating over it, isn't that better?

Yeah, except the thing is the one that had caused trouble in my turlet in the first place was something with an extra rubber gasket on it or something that had worn away. And so that's why I was like, I was kind of like, you know what, classic might be best. Yeah, you're a classic man. I'm a classic turlet man.

Ha, that's a decent show title.

um but uh i think hot times at the household at the burbank household is okay that's gonna get

the clicks nice yeah we got to get that seo and those clicks um anyway the other thing that was happening kind of this weekend when i wasn't uh trying to get this whole leveling cement situation ironed out with my pops was uh friday night uh there was a really big football game between the university of washington huskies and the oregon ducks it was played in las vegas it was for the championship of the league that the Huskies are in, and also it was for a trip to the playoff of college football, a chance to be the national champion of the whole country.

Can I add one more thing here, too, just for the drama? And also both of the Same drama for your mom. I did, and then she said she didn't want it anymore, so I brought it back here. I've got

so much drama. My closets are full. Could you just take this with your drama?

And both quarterbacks, you know, Heisman candidates. I mean, just like I think those are especially in term from the perspective of the Washington fans, maybe those that's maybe a further reach. But there are just so many narratives and so much on the line. And Washington was like this kind of disrespected. underdog in this storyline and i'm you know i'm trying to keep this from being too much of a football talk um and more just a like uh how i try to relate to the people that the family i've dated into talk right but um uh the the thing is that the um oregon fans do not like u-dub fans and u-dub fans do not like oregon fans sort of traditionally speaking uh and and i don't know exactly when and how that got started because a lot of times these rivalries tend to be cross state it's like you've got your you know university of washington and then washington state university and their natural kind of enemies or you've got uh you know uh oregon and oregon state somehow in the in the division the the conference that we've all been in used to be the pac-8 went all the way up to the pac-12 now it's down to the pac-2 somehow in all of that this thing between washington and oregon just took on a real kind of actual life of its own an actual thing where like there's some pretty kind of some pretty long running pretty deep running bad blood now between these fan bases to where it's like it's one thing to kind of be like you know we got you or like you know you're our nemesis and then there's like you can kind of tell there's a sort of an actual emotional like a legitimate emotional component to it for some of the fans for the people that are really really deep into it i'm talking about on both sides here so it just so happens that my girlfriend uh went to the university of oregon and is a duck fan and that her whole family went there her parents went there her dad went to law school there um her grandparents went there uh it's it's a this is about the most like this is i don't know if there's ever a family that's been more steeped in the culture of one particular university they're all runners they're late they love oregon track and steve prefontaine i've been i've i've had to visit the pre's rock in eugene which is a kind of a slightly macabre place it's the place where prefontaine crashed and his life ended and people go out there and leave their track shoes like this is a very very oregon focused family meanwhile i went to the university of washington like i actually went there i grew up in an era when that team was really good too in the 80s and 90s and And so it was really like, as a kid, I was just really into them. So I feel like I sort of come by my fandom, pretty honestly. They come by their fandom, really honestly. And most of the time, it's just kind of a funny, jokey thing. Like one time, we were at Becca's mom's house, and I was chilly, and her brother loaned me an Oregon hoodie. And I put it on because I was cold, and then he surreptitiously took a picture of me in it. And has now occasionally redeployed it just to burn me, which actually is a pretty good spoof, Jeff.

Nice work on that. but like i'm just it's generally like that right like it's just kind of haha but i will tell you that friday is game because of all the plot lines that we've already mentioned and like you said the fact that both quarterbacks are kind of touted as possibly winning the heisman and and and whoever wins is going to go on to the to potentially win the national championship just like and also it's the last time there will ever be a championship of this league it's like someone saying the NFL is over we're going to play one more Super Bowl anyone want to win the last Super Bowl it's like you kind of couldn't make this whole thing more like weirdly cinematic and so it also happened to be uh all happening on the night that there was already a long planned party at Becca's uh brother and his wife's house and so we had you know we're already going to the party and then you know through a series of events it just so happens that this game this unbelievably kind of like emotionally charged game is now happening basically like two hours before the holiday party was already supposed to start so now the game is rolled into the overall festivities so it goes from being a thing where let's just say the game's on a saturday andrew i could just be here at my house i could just be uh yelling at my tv safely far away from anybody whose feelings i might be hurting with my kind of like um emotion around the topic but now that was no longer a possibility because this thing is happening like there's now a watch party so what end what ended up going on was i watched the first half beck and i kind of watched the first half at a a little kind of pub in her neighborhood which of course i was the only husky fan there and i got into the weird spot again without getting into the x and o's of the game the the university of washington got out to kind of a lead early and i could tell everybody in this pub was getting really depressed because they're all oregon fans and i found myself somehow emotionally managing them which was not what i saw happening like everyone was nice you

know what i mean no one was a jerk so i wasn't like in your face well it's easy to be the gracious that is true leader or gracious winner and i consider myself the leader of that room like honestly like when my team's doing well sure i'm i'm the most reasonable mature person in the room you shitting me

I don't know.

I was very proud of myself, but you're right. That actually is easier to do when you're winning. When you're sitting on like a 17-0 lead or whatever, you're kind of like, in the back of your mind, you're like, I kept telling everyone, hey, it's a long game. You know, the last one was like 38 to 36. This game is nowhere near over. But in my mind, I'm going, please let this game go.

Yeah, right. And I want you to know that at this point, because I was finishing up some work and then listening to the first half of the game and then making my way over to the Eagles to watch the rest with Genevieve. And as the Huskies mount more and more of a lead, and again, a surprising, unpredicted, uncharacteristic lead, I was so close to texting you and just being like, did you take my advice and not watch with Becca's family? are you like in a pub somewhere watching this like i what i wanted to text you was did i give you the worst advice in the world because wouldn't it be nice to be sitting in a room full and i don't care about this shit that much but wouldn't it be nice from your perspective to be sitting in a room

full of ducks fans just being like gracious that well not that room full of ducks fans and by that i mean with with my you know with the sort of extended family you could say of mine now like that that is a very fraught dynamic for me because i really like all these people and in fact not just Becca's family who I really like and love but also like this extended group of people who I know from other get-togethers like a lot of people at this one location who I know and really like and they are deeply invested in their team and I'm pretty invested in my team and so it's not one of those things where like it would have been a pleasant thing well let me just tell you how it actually ended up unfolding so after the first half the other problem was it was getting kind of late like so I was like well we could watch the whole game at the pub and then go over afterwards but then we're going to be arriving at the get-together at like 9 30 or 10 which is like kind of late and I wasn't looking to have a particularly late night anyway so I was kind of like if we get there I mean this is how you know I'm getting old Andrew I'm like well if we get there at 8 then we can leave at 10 30 and and uh and that'll seem like a that'll seem like a very good socializing as opposed to like well if you get there at 10 then you gotta really just like go ham until one so at halftime we we jump in the car and we head over to uh to the to the house and uh we we go in and and what i realize is pretty much everyone is downstairs watching the game so i kind of stake out a spot upstairs in the living room watching the game because they have a couple of big nice tvs set up and so it ends up being me and becca is watching even though she's an organ fan she's watching it upstairs with me and i keep saying to her you can go downstairs she was no no it's fine I want to watch up here and I'm like listen I don't want to keep you from your people but you can go downstairs if you want and I'll just be up here by myself what I didn't realize was I was now also the official greeter of the party because of the position of the TV because of where I was when you come into the house the living room is like one of the first things you'll see so everyone who's showing up and many of them regaled in Oregon clothing are like hey there and I'm like hey how's it going and they're like what's going and I'm like everyone's downstairs and they're like oh are you people would literally come in and they would just start watching the game and they would assume that I was rooting for Oregon and like if something good was happening for the Huskies they'd be like oh no and I'd be thinking secretly oh yes but I was like I was so deep under I wasn't undercover in that I wasn't telling people my allegiance but I was not like broadcasting it to every person that came in I was trying to be like hey how's it going nice to meet you I'm Luke and then I'm kind of going back to the game

I respect that you're not trying to get too much into the game here, but it's worth noting, too, now at this point, it's after the first half. Now you're watching it at the house, and the dynamics of the game have shifted significantly in that third quarter. Like, you know, the Huskies start to really lose a grip on their pretty unexpected lead.

Oregon is leading. They've scored 21 unanswered points.

Okay, right, and so now you're like, oh, you're watching it all slip away, And then all of your worst fandom scenarios start playing out in your head.

I assume, yes, a little bit like I'm starting to kind of I'm starting to kind of snipe. I'm starting to kind of do this thing where I'm just like I'm calling every call on the field that I think the officials are missing, which it turns out elevates dramatically for me when I'm starting to feel a generalized frustration. Interesting. Somebody should. Yeah, I know it's I'm different than a lot of people that way in that. I'll be like, well, of course, that's a hold. How do you think the guy got open? That's a hold. You know what I mean? I'm like starting to do that. This is also the time when I'm telling Becca, if you want to go downstairs, you can. But like every time, so it's me basically upstairs and now it's the fourth quarter and this game is just back and forth and lead changes. And every time something good happens for the Ducks, this eruption happens downstairs in the basement. And then every time something good happens for my Huskies, it goes silent downstairs and I am doing like a silent fist pump and drum like i'm like i'm like and then eventually i'm just pacing in the corner by the christmas tree but like the loudest i'm ever getting at any point is like if something good happens with huskies like we score touch and it's this yes that's the loudest i got the entire time because i literally thought if well first of all i didn't want to be rude but i also thought if i start whooping it up here someone might come upstairs and want to like have words with me me because it was like i'm and i'm not you know i'm not trying to like say that i know the like behaviors and motives of anybody who was watching the game downstairs but i can just let me put it this way it would not have been a good thing for me to go down there and start just being like in your face huskies like it would have that would have gone beyond like hey we're rivals that would have gone into like hey do you remember when luke ruined the christmas party although i i don't feel

like that would ever be your move like you don't see like it could be my move at like a sports bar

Where I don't know people Let's say that we go to watch the Seahawks game At a sports bar in some town Maybe we're traveling or whatever And it's like we're playing the Niners And there's a contingent of Niners fans In fact you know what this happened to me In Mexico I was in Tulum The game that the Seahawks played the Niners To try to go to the playoffs And it came down to literally the final play And a Seahawk got stopped at the one yard line And I was watching with a bunch of Niners fans Now I guess I actually kind of became friends with those guys so maybe this is a bad example but i could see myself being a little more like in your face if i didn't know the people but what i would not do is go downstairs like i guess my point in all this is to say it was really good that scott and tiffany have two televisions because if there had been one television i would have been downstairs watching this game and outnumbered probably 30 to 40 to 1 and it would have been it again i don't it would have just been one of those things where it feelings would have probably kind of gotten a little bit hurt a little rankled a little stepped on like in a way that's not just it's all good fun and again we're all rivals here in a way that it's like i want to go home now like either me like if they lost and people there was one person who i've also noticed this a little bit it does seem like the people who are the least invested in the game the least kind of aware of what's going on and really honestly aren't living and dying by it they're the ones that kind of like to be like you know sort of like ah we got you like there was one person who was like ah uh because i don't want to get too specific but basically the ducks did something really good and somebody who was upstairs who i know and love was like go ducks oh sorry luke and i was like i said to this person i was like you have you do not need to apologize for when your team does well like i totally get it i'm excited when the huskies do well and then another person overheard this conversation and that other person was like i'm not sorry i don't feel bad and so then like the ducks did something and then this person was just like uh the ducks i don't feel bad i don't feel bad for you and they're like really kind of close to me doing this like kind of thing and i was like and that's at you that's not it was directly at me but i knew that this person had had no idea really what the actual emotional stakes were for me and that's almost always what happens usually if people are like taking this stuff way too seriously the way that i tend to they actually take a more chill not a more chill approach to it but like somebody because let me tell you but this person who did that to me was only vaguely aware of what was going on in the game like they're not like oh i can't believe that uh oregon has decided to chip uh they're deciding to pull the running back and chip the uh blitz to try to buy a little more time for bo nicks like this is not the thing going on in this person's head they just think sports and like you like this and we like that so we don't like you in this moment and it's like yeah but let's all try to be nice because this is the kind of thing that can really bum a weekend out for a person if they lose so finally this sort of

final moment happens which took a long long long time i mean down to like the last minute it was still like it could felt like it could go either way and then there was this this moment where the huskies kind of like officially sort of put the game away and i don't know andrew if you know know what hitting the gritty is but i literally hit the gritty around the upstairs just a silent dance of joy and celebration and then i finished doing the gritty all the way into the kitchen and back around in the living room and then becca was sitting there she was like all right that's

enough buddy is she the only one who witnessed that she was the only one thank god the only one who witnessed me widowy hitting the witty but what it was the mood like i mean what is where does the party go from there is that well i will tell you this scott becca's brother who

is uh one of the most socially adept people i've ever met in my life like i like to really you know me exactly and i've met an andrew like i tend to think of myself as a pretty decent kind of like reading vibes and rooms and and people and kind of getting around the world scott has got me like hands down he uh immediately intuited that the party was actually in danger of breaking up so he threw on the stereo tub thumping by chumba wumba i get knocked down but i get up again he immediately changed the vibe of the rube so that everyone was like we will and i believe a round of shots might have been passed like very he very uh adroitly like kept the like he sort of like changed the mood very quickly so that it went from being like a oh we're so bummed to a like hey we're at a party let's just keep that going which was very very savvy of him i was almost kind of nervous to go downstairs because it had become you know people were sort of aware there's like one dude here who's like you know the husky guy and so i was trying to be very like you know again it's easy to be gracious when your team wins if the huskies would have lost particularly on like a bad call or what i thought was a bad call i don't even know what i would have been doing but i i knew it was time to go down and integrate myself into the get together so i was trying to do that first of all my plan was don't even talk about the game that was step one like just that happened it's in the past let's just move forward with this holiday party and i get down there and a couple people are kind of like you know razzing me or whatever and i'm like yeah you know and what my standard thing i kept saying was and i actually believe this i was like that is as close to a tie game as i've ever seen except for the previous game which was as close to a tie game as i've ever seen both of the games between the university of washington university of oregon this year were both games that could have very easily been won by either team they were almost a stalemate it fell in our favor but it didn't feel like one team was like way up here and one team was way down there that and i i genuinely believe it so i was trying to say that to you know be sort of whatever and then this one person came over and said like oh you're a husky fan don't say anything about those and this was where i was like is this person being serious it's like don't say you better not say anything about the huskies down here my husband might try to fight you and it was right on the line of like is that a real and their husband was kind of sullen looking kind of a soul looking character who wasn't making a lot of conversation with folks and i was like well i had no intention of like coming down here and and you know like trying to uh rub it in anyone's face but um i also think physical violence would be an overreaction on any of our parts over this and again it was one of those things that was thrown out as a joke but also i was like there might be five percent of a like hey buddy don't like legitimately don't don't make this don't don't don't rub this in anyone's face because we don't know how everyone's going to really take this in this very moment the game ended three minutes ago which i was more than happy like

honestly i wish that i could have given everyone one of those like men in black mind erasers so So that we could just get on with the holiday party and have a fun time. I really didn't want to discuss the game because I knew it was a sensitive subject.

If the Huskies had lost, and specifically in a heartbreaking way, I almost feel like if it had been a blowout from the get-go and the Huskies end up losing, you wouldn't have been invested in it. But these tight games make for much tougher losses afterwards. We were talking last week about how I felt after the last Seahawks game, which was a really tough fought battle that didn't end up going their way at the last minute. And I was like, wow, that, I haven't felt that kind of sports pain in a while. Do you think that if it was a close, painful loss, especially if maybe even you felt like they had been, you know, there was some bad calls or something like that, would you have left?

I would, you know, it's very hard for me to know because that isn't what happened. um i can't rule that out i i think i think i um i think i definitely would have been pretty bummed and pretty salty i went into that game thinking like what everybody else was thinking which was oregon just looked much stronger at the end of the season and so i kind of thought the hunsies are probably going to get blown out here so i already was trying to make emotional peace with it and i think if it would have been one of those things where they just got blown out i would have been fine something about the game being close and in the fourth quarter a really dramatic kind

of thing i because there would have been a lot of celebrating that's the one thing like because the majority of the energy there the vast majority almost all of the energy is is around the ducks and so therefore if the ducks end up pulling out a very um you know a close win that feels so good to that party then it is going to be talked about and celebrated they're like they're they're mostly they mostly want to move on because they're bombed let's move on let's talk about the let's talk about the goddamn holidays uh you know whereas if they had won it would have been party time there and that would have been a hard environment to be in i think i think that would

have been tougher on me um uh but but here's here's the and i was texting with our friend john goodwin who's a cbs producer i work with a lot and an oregon duck Thank you. um and a good good friend of mine we were both i i i think for my part anyway i had an emotional breakthrough again it's easier to arrive at this point if you got lucky and it kind of worked out in your favor for your team but because the university of washington is now leaving the pac-12 as is oregon i kind of feel like the next phase of this maybe we can build a bridge maybe it can be us the form of the pack 12 refugees against all of the other big names in college football i would love to see that because for one thing i am i you know my girlfriend and her family again people that i love dearly are all really into this one team my friend john goodwin who i really dig is into this one team i'm into the team that i'm into i to me it feels like i'm hoping that it's like it's like something out of like a lord of the rings movie where first you're kind of like battling with some people, but then eventually realize that you need to team up to take on Sauron. So now it's like, and that's always the most fun part of the movie, right? Where the people that you thought were your enemies like stand up for you and then you realize, no, we need to take on our common enemy together. That's always a very triumphant moment in the movie. Maybe we can all have that moment about football.

And Sauron is the SEC?

Sauron is Nick Saban.

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

All right, just if you can you humor me for a second, Mr. Andrew, just so that I don't have to keep promoting this and we don't get to it. This penguin story that I thought was kind of interesting was research that basically found that penguins sleep. they call it napping but they they basically fall asleep for like micro amounts of time thousands of times when they're nesting because when they're out in the water and swimming it's so stressful they never go to sleep so they have these long periods of like no sleep and then they come back to where they're sitting on their eggs or where they're kind of chilling and in those cases they're able to fall asleep for very very very short amounts of time like a second here and there and it's interesting scientifically because we've always thought that in order to get useful restful sleep we need to sleep for longer amounts of time and maybe animals do too um so some scientists are saying this might prove that like these small moments of sleep are actually um useful to the penguins what i thought was really wild was one of the scientists a neuroscientist at the university of oxford named vladyslav vyaski uh said uh question how much the penguins benefit from these fleeting bursts of sleep by the way i'm reading from the the New York Times, this is a piece by Carl Zimmer, wondered how much penguins could actually benefit from these fleeting bursts of sleep. It's possible, he argued, that we may be thinking about sleep backward. It may be the default setting for the animal brain. And scientists should be trying to explain why animals wake up when they do. You're basically spending your life asleep and you just wake up when it's needed said dr viazofsky in other words how's that for a paradigm shift we're all supposed to be by his he's questioning anyway the idea that maybe our default setting an animal's default setting is sleeping and every once in a while we have to break into being awake to do some things so we can return to our natural state of sleeping which i felt like that a lot i

believe it is a low-grade depression bordering on high grade the penguins are depressed i mean

that's the headline seriously but anyway i just thought that was a really interesting way to look at it like what would that how different would that be we all assume that life is about being awake and that you have to go to sleep to kind of charge up so you can be awake but what a different world it would be if the default setting was to be asleep and you have to wake up so that you can get enough food in your system and other things so you can go back to being asleep i've been at

the airport before i believe we're inching towards that you mean just because so many people are conked out people are just like kind of shuffling through the airport in their pajamas just like

in a sense in a state of sleep don't do it luther don't do it am i setting you up to say something cruel cruel might be an overstatement critical i don't know i don't i have a i have an email here that i think it has to do with pajamas in public and what i saw this morning yeah let it go okay

We all know. I mean, unless there's a twist ending where you loved it and it changed the way you're going to consider going out in public. I think we all know where that goes. Okay. Can I share with you an email that I thought was interesting? I'm guessing that this was a moment that was more lost on me than you, and you maybe just didn't want to clarify things. But I had a good laugh on the show the other day when you were talking about going on some adventure.

with some buddies of yours and you were explaining how you ended up going on this adventure because the original adventure had been a friend of yours had heard that Fenway Park was closing in the late 90s I think and the idea was let's all load up in a van or a car drive out there I think and uh and go to Fenway Park before they destroy the park and I laughed at that and you guys ended up not doing that you did something else and I laughed at that like oh did they end up destroying Fenway Park or not what I didn't realize was oh yeah of course there could have been a legit it wasn't just a a weird rumor that your friend heard it really could have been something that was on the table that then went away maybe you maybe you remember this but we got a note from caitlin here who i believe lives in new england and says yeah um the boston preservation alliance for which i volunteered a few years back was instrumental in saving fenway back then um it seems crazy to tear down a historic iconic ball field like that but it wasn't so nuts at the time given the limited developable space in boston so anyway did you know that when i laughed my butt off at this idea of tearing down fenway for some reason i thought it was just some rumor that never came true but it actually was something that was taken seriously at the time yeah but i looked at that email and

i looked at that timeline and that timeline is well after that was in 98 which would have been my senior year of college and this road trip happened when i was in high school i graduated high school in 94 oh so that particular um that particular you know if you will movement to possibly demolish fenway or conversation around it that one that the listener was citing was like four to five years after i see this road trip happened now i guess what we can't rule out is that there had been maybe another rumor that that that sort of uh didn't kind of make it as far towards reality if that makes any sense like because it sounds like this preservation society had to really step in and go like what are you doing do not demolish fenway park which obviously would have been such a bad idea now maybe there was a more nascent movement to demolish it that dave hill heard about but the one that the listener specifically cited i looked at the website because i was like oh this is great we're not crazy and then i was like well either we're prescient or we were crazy because this was many years before that but there was something

legitimate maybe in the air about it it wasn't yeah you know because i laughed at it as if it was absurd and maybe just because here it is 2023 obviously it's still standing but yeah of course we were hearing about a lot of things and they did tear down they tore down a lot of historic

stadiums around that time so it's not bananas well it um it is it it wasn't bananas well i guess here's what i would say it's interesting how i think our sense of historical preservation has changed one because of like literal laws about historic preservation and two like i think if you were to say we should tear down Fenway Park right now you would be laughed out of the entire state of Massachusetts but there was a time when a number of people proposed it and they weren't like worried about the blowback so what has changed in our idea around what is meaningful and what you know like I feel like there was a you're right there were a lot of new stadiums built um but I think a lot of those stadiums replaced other stadiums that were not particularly beloved you know famously the kingdom was imploded and they built safe co field i think that's what they called it in those days you know camden yards in baltimore that was one of the first newly built stadiums that baseball stadiums that was um specifically designed to have an old kind of feel to it what jacobs field in cincinnati or in cleveland of course uh yeah so there was

maybe people didn't care about this but didn't they tear down like the original yankee stadium

they did like wasn't that was that seems like a biggie yeah you'd think you know i went to old yankee stadium when i lived in new york and i don't think i even realized they were building a new yankee stadium which is obviously now what they're using if i have this all right yeah i think that you know yankee stadium is a different place now like it's a physically different building which you know the house that ruth built you think you would have heard more like protest around that There's probably some stuff that I don't know about just like, I don't know, local laws and the amount of traffic. What I remember about going to Yankee Stadium, you want to talk about being behind enemy lines as a Mariners fan, going to see the Mariners play at Yankee Stadium? I remember that this was in my phase, Andrew, where I was really into taking a briefcase places. I mean like a legit, like a 1960s business dude briefcase everywhere. I didn't need this. It was an affectation. I was taking the subway around New York. I thought I'm briefcase guy now Like I would keep my stuff in there But it could have much It would have been handled much better In some kind of a messenger bag or something But I was like I got this I got this vintage briefcase And I remember going up to Yankee Stadium After working to go see the game And having my vintage briefcase with me And they were like you can't bring that in And I was like what So I had to go wait in this line My memory is it was at a bowling alley That had a bunch of locks oh wow and it just so happened that that's this was the place they were doing it i went in this bowling alley i checked my stupid briefcase it probably had a a skull and an apple core in it lionel hutt style and uh checked it and then got it back afterwards and i remember i think the mariners got shellacked and i think the yankees fans really satisfied all of my suspicions about being not particularly uh generous with the opposing fans and i went home and that was uh

that was it do you know that I'm getting very very close to buying my own bowling shoes

well you've been mentioning off air to me about a couple of different bowling trips you've been like and I was bowling you just like throw this out casually yeah I did not know this I sounds

like you're getting into bowling I've only I went bowling twice recently with a buddy and I uh I love bowling my mom and I were on a mother-son bowling league one year we won I think mother boy we had a big trophy exactly like strong mother boy vibe uh my mom was very into bowling she's a very good ball uh bowler she had her own uh like kind of a pearl colored ball uh that was very nice um she was in various leagues bowling was on television a lot growing up for me that's asmr the sound of like 1980s bowling just like uh on in the background so anyway i do love bowling But it had been a long time since I'd gone since I think maybe pre-pandemic, maybe once since the pandemic. I don't know. But I'm also getting to I'm not like a germaphobe kind of person. I think you're much more kind of in your head about like, you know, laying your head down in a hotel bedding or what have you. Like that stuff just doesn't get in my head much. But I got to say, we're thinking about going bowling and making a little bit more of a regular thing. And those shoes are nasty, man. Like I can treat myself better. Like, I just sort of feel like the like I'm not going to save any money at the bowling alley if I have my own shoes. It just kind of comes with the price of bowling, you know, of the alley or whatever the lane, I should say. So it's not like, oh, these shoes will pay for themselves after three wearings. But like they'll pay for themselves after three wearings like me just not having to use the nasty ass bowling shoes that are at. And again, I shout out to Linwood Bowl and Skate. I love you guys, but let's face it, like an old-ass bowling alley has old-ass bowling shoes. And the thing I'm running into, which I think you would find, I think you can relate to this, is bowling shoes have been updated. So they make bowling shoes that are, you know, proper to be wearing on the lanes, but they don't look like good old-fashioned retro bowling shoes. At least a lot of them now, they're like, hey, like tiger stripe. They look like lame-ass tennis shoes, sort of. And I'm like, I don't want lame-ass tennis shoes. I don't mind that they look like the traditional bowling shoes. I love that look. I had friends who wore bowling shoes just around town in the 90s.

I was just going to ask, did you, I don't, I might have been that person for a minute. I would definitely not rule it out for me. But, like, person who wears bowling shoes not at the bowling alley as a way of asserting their personal style brand is very much something I would have been doing probably in college.

Yeah, I think in high school, my buddy Sean Riley did. Bowling John. Bowling John. No, he was like a skater kid. He was a good friend of mine, and I feel like he was the guy in our crew who would wear the bowling shoes. And I love the look. I think it's really cool. I don't think you're going to have two guys in a crew wearing bowling shoes. No, no. Unless you're bowling, I guess.

Right. Then everyone in the crew should be wearing bowling shoes. Although, I mean, that's its own, that kind of, by the way, at some point we should, this week, we should actually really dig into the whole topic of shoes in what environment versus no shoes. There was a big New York Times article about which Addy was sending around Hawk Squad on Sunday. Oh, I didn't see that. That's right up our alley. so to speak um but also the question of you know we take it as a given that we must wear the bowling shoes while bowling but it's like really why exactly like what are we someone's going to email

in and explain this oh god seriously yeah i mean there's you can't you couldn't just wear like rubber sold why not what would happen you need some you need to be able to slide if i if i were

i see i see so it's the sliding there's a little bit of sliding yeah you just like and also i think

it's not good for the for the um wax and everything too i think that the alley doesn't want the wax that's a foul but like genevieve says um that i or you know the wax on the floor i just mean um but uh genevieve says that i have a weird bowling run-up she exaggerates everything about me but

also i'd like to have her on to get to the bottom of this please but she says i take like eight

steps and hurl myself towards the lane i do throw my body into it and i do take several steps to get All right.

of that momentum and yeah if i was wearing rubber shoes i would just stop it would be kind of terrible um imagine like sliding on on your socks across a a newly cleaned kitchen floor but then

suddenly risky business style right but then you know imagine those old records right off the shelf

imagine you think you're going to do that but you're wearing rubber shoes yeah i never no that's

a really good point i had always i had always thought that the because the bowling alleys are very much they're they're you know depending on who's working they're very enforcing of the Bowling shoes only, bowling shoes only, which feels to me like it's them, like protecting their bowling alley versus them telling you, you're going to have a better time doing this if you're in our shoes. Because you're right, you can do that little slide move. It's kind of nice to, you know, it's nice to have your feet have a little bit more, I'm going to use the word slide ability. But I've always taken the bowling.

But I also think that a lot of shoes would ruin a bowling. I mean, I don't know about tennis shoes. I would imagine that it might like. Like cleats, probably golf shoes. But even like if somebody came in and dress shoes or something that had that were kind of clickety because like, you know, bowling shoes are smooth on the bottom, but they're a little bit soft, you know, like you wouldn't want to damage the floors. I think not damaging the floor is a big part of it. But that doesn't seem that doesn't seem strange to me.

Well, I just I mean, I guess, you know, this is listen, we're talking to the guy who assumes that they're lying to me about when the gas tank is empty. I assume in the one year life Of an average bowling alley If we're taking performance out of it Which I think you make a good point I do think it'd be way harder to bowl in tennis shoes Because of how grippy they are And you'd be stopping I would make the argument And there's no way of proving this That over the course of a year If they relaxed the bowling shoes only rule The bowling alley would not get totally destroyed By people wearing their sneakers uh you know because i i mean now definitely if you step across that line if you step onto the which have you ever done that accidentally i have and it is bad news like how oiled up you know the lane itself is like a whole thing like of course you're never supposed to step on that in any kind

of a shoe but have you ever done that accidentally um no not not full i mean every now and then my toe will go over the line and they'll mark it zero donnie um zero but uh no i i haven't like

taken a full step or anything or you're slipped i you know probably drunk i'm not gonna lie have i've gone so far as to fall onto the lane oof i think because again see alcohol consumption and then like probably trying to be funny and then probably getting you know too far over the line where i'm actually slipping on the like you know the oiling up of the of the lane itself i mean that's again no matter what shoes you're wearing that's a bad idea and you should probably get kicked out of the bowling alley. I just, I've always thought it was one of those odd things where definitely scuffs could happen. Definitely scuffs would be a bad idea. I mean, here's the analog to me.

And debris, I would think from wearing your shoes outside.

Debris, sure, outside shoes in, that's very legit. And maybe that, I mean, I wonder if that isn't maybe 50% of it is they were like, look, if the only shoes that are worn in here have never been outside, then we know that there's not gonna be a massive amount of debris. Someone's not gonna have a rock in their shoe be scratching like i i definitely i agree that they're that that it's much better for the bowling alley if they do that and also they're trying to um just say like we want it we want to know we want to know the origin of every shoe or at least if you bring your own bowling shoes it's probably been in that bag yeah you're probably not wearing it around town like but i guess i'd be curious to know because again i'm the kind of person who reflexively has a problem when anyone tells me to do anything like i wonder what the i wonder what the impact would be if we could just wear

our own shoes while bowling we'll never know i even asked the folks um this group of like young people i've been again to linwood bowling skate twice in the past like three weeks or

something i'm not trying to make are they calling it so are they there's no longer linwood roll away

linwood bowl away huh oh um maybe i'm calling it the wrong i'm i don't know that for what my you

know growing up all of my roller skating happened to linwood roll away and next to it was linwood bowl away oh interesting just the fact that they had roll away and bowl away i thought was the

most beautiful kind of symmetry for the name yeah no it's bowling skate now yeah god nothing bowl can stay it's interesting because when you're bowling you can easily forget that there's a that there's a roller rink attached you know i mean there's a door there it's not like it's hidden or anything but you're not it's not like all kind of combined so sometimes it can be somewhat shocking when you're just like sitting on the bench or getting ready to bowl and then somebody just like rolls by like you can't see their feet and it just looks like they're floating by it's a very strange uh feeling anyway i i like the young people who are running this bowling alley um and uh they they're just i i i've seen them interact with children before in a way that i was just like very very charming and they're consummate professionals and they're like like half my age anyway, but I did ask them. I said, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm very close to buying some bowling shoes, but I just want to make sure like you allow outside bowling shoes to be used here. Right? Like, I mean, it would be crazy if they didn't, but I was like, what if there's a scenario where I got out of, where I go out of my way and actually buy bowling shoes and I'm all ready, but then there's some rule that I didn't check with that. It's like, Nope, you have to use our bowling shoes because they're approved. I would be very upset about that whole situation.

Then you would be guy who wears bowling shoes, not at the bowling alley guy in our friend group.

Or I would be guy who finds another bowling establishment. Although it sounds like Kenmore Lanes. Did I tell you about this? Sorry, we got to wrap up the show. But a few weeks ago when we were going to go bowling, I assumed we'd be going to Kenmore Lanes. And I kept on meaning to reserve. It was like a Wednesday night. And I kept on meaning to like reserve a lane. And I didn't until about 90 minutes before I was supposed to meet my friend there. And I called and I said, hey, I'm going to meet my friend there in about 90 minutes to go bowling. Do I have to reserve a lane or anything? And the guy on the phone says, we have no bowling.

What?

And then just like, wait.

Is it just a poker room now?

He just says that. And I probably just stutter and stammer. I'm like, you have no bowling anymore? And then he just jumps in. We have 50 lanes of league bowling until 945. And I was just like. Leave with that, bro. I know I could see the lizard on his shoulder. I could see the sword on his wall. I know that's a rude thing to say, but like I had this guy summed up. Like, why would you just say we have no bowl? Just say, hey, oh, sorry, man. We have league bowling every night until about 945. And then you could come in after that. You know, like that's all you had to say. I was just like, well, this dramatic flourish really irritated me.

That guy, if he worked at the TSA, would be the TSA person who has taken it upon themselves to yell out the directions to everyone as they're passing through the TSA. Like, that's a personality type. Like, that's a guy who's getting some kind of subtle charge. And you know what? Like, whatever gets you through the night. But, like, that's a guy who very intentionally like to say something extreme to you to either get a reaction or somehow flex when a simple, oh, it's league right now, but there will be open bowling at such and such time. That is totally what he should have said that. But instead, he went with the more confusing, extreme answer because honestly it probably made him feel alive for 10 tenths of a second i'm gonna i'm gonna say

something that i don't think you're gonna agree with i'm developing a theory after my last trip to the airport i think somebody is assigned to do that yelling because there was a woman who was doing the announcing um the last time i went through the the you know the tsa check and she didn't seem to be loving it she i mean she was fine she wasn't like bad at her job or anything but she did she just was not that like kind of look at me louie kind of vibe she seemed like she just had to kind of do this and didn't like take a special joy out of it you know i am

flying to chicago later this week i'm doing wait wait maybe if i'm feeling if i if i see an opening if i get a tsa person who seems like you know friendly and not overly harried in the moment maybe i'll ask because i've always assumed that was just like a thing that some people took upon themselves but you know that might be if you're in position whatever that might be also part of the assignment it's very possible so i should get to the bottom of that because i've always assumed

that was just a personality type yeah um i i have a feeling that maybe somebody has to do it but if you're gonna investigate this um i would recommend not doing it to somebody who is doing the yelling especially if it's one of the people that you sort of think is doing it because it's a personality type because i think that that that will i think that they'll be able to see see it as a type of criticism sort of like you could ask somebody who's not doing the yelling maybe no um yeah i

know i would not ask the person sorry andrew i'm getting a text get this and you don't believe in a god i'm getting a text from a cbs producer that i'm working with about this interview that i'm doing with the comedian taylor tomlinson and we're doing it in a bowling alley she and i are going to go bowling together you just found that out right now or no i knew no no i knew that this has been in development but trying to find a bowling alley in los angeles is where you can film is apparently ridiculously hard because we need them to turn the music off it can't be too like can't just roll in it you know can't just roll in like joel otto from the calgary flames so it was a whole thing of trying to find i did recommend to our producer the bowling alley that i tried to buy All Star Lanes in Eagle Rock I don't know if that's where we're going to land But as we're talking I'm getting a text that literally says Oh wait I have a lead on a bowling alley So we have a lead on a bowling alley But anyway on the subject of bowling But yes back to the TSA I will not ask the person who's doing the yelling Because that does

seem loaded that seems like yeah are you just being a weirdo i'm just talking about like some other person who's just waving me through the back scatter machine or whatever if they seem like a friendly sort yeah i might just go hey i've always been curious about something yeah that

would be nice i would love to know the answer to that what do you think of the new year you know

what i'll spend more of my off time creating content for the show andrew it's fine what do

you think of the asking the tough questions the new year's eve packages available at uh linwood Bowling Skate, because while I was bowling, I kept seeing these ads that said, book your New Year's Eve package at Linwood Bowling Skate today, but it didn't say what was in it. They were also advertising a kids camp, a bowling day camp, which is like $275 for like six hours. It's a great rate for just daycare, I think. Unfortunately, you have to be under 13, which sucks, because I was really hoping that Genevieve would send me to bowling. I don't think you can pass. I know. I don't think so either. but I was like well maybe New Year's Eve I'm not a big fan of New Year's Eve but I'm like maybe if it's at a bowling alley that would be fun get some people together it's 200 bucks it is $200 for two hours of bowling from 11pm to 1am and you get a celebration pack slash swag bag for each person and then the New Year's Eve countdown on the skate floor oh hold on it's not 200 per head it's 200 up to eight people this is so affordable we can't afford not to do it never no it sounds like there's

it sounds like the uh the new year's party is going down at linwood i'll never get over that the not calling it roll away and bowl away i understand why because they want they want you to understand right away that there's both bowling and skating like whereas if you have something called roll away and then something else called bowl away that's just you're not telling people all the information right there in the title because you don't say linwood roll away and bowl away they were kind of like two distinct sort of entities like for instance i never went to bowl away it was all rolled away but do they still have the sign with the guy whose arm is doing

the windmill motion throwing the bowling ball uh i don't think so that what is that is that a um

that was the linwood bowl away sign i'm gonna find you a picture of this it was so awesome it was like a neon sign where it was like a dude big kind of hefty guy who was bowling. My memories was a big kind of hefty guy. He was bowling and his arm, it was one of those things where the neon would go around and around so it was like his arm was doing the bowling motion as it would light up. That was the Linwood I can totally picture it. The Linwood bowl away

sign. I wonder why you'd get rid of that unless the neon started to go. Because everything sucks now. Yeah. I wanted to make sure because that rang a bell to me but I think you've told me about that before. Probably. But I'm on there. I'm on like Google Maps now looking at Street View. No, it's definitely it's just like some modern bowling skate sign.

So, yeah, no, you're not wrong about the name. But I'm also wondering, I'm just doing a cursory Linwood Bowl away sign. Is this one of those things that like only I remember and that like because I'm doing a Google image search and I'm not seeing it. It's one of two things are possible either. uh it's just one of those things that no one thought to take a photo of because it was probably before like it probably went away before we all were carrying cameras all the time with our phones or this is a real mandela thing this is like some other bowling alley somewhere that i saw that i've like in like i've made this like this is canon for me this idea of what the sign was at this bowling alley that again i never went to but i'd be going into the roller skating side of things but I can't find any evidence of it online right now, which it's possible that this is fully an invention of my mind and it literally never existed.

Have you made your way, because I'm Googling around while you're talking, but again, and I apologize, I've really introduced a lot of evidence near the end of this show that is dragging us on, and you have to go see if your water pipes are haunted.

No, they're good so far.

There is a piece in the Linwood Times saying, Linwood Bolenskate celebrates 66 years of being a community staple. I can't see when this was originally oh oh this was just August of 2023 well when next time you're

up there celebrating New Year's Eve Andrew what I'll be doing okay I'll be asking the TSA if the yelling thing is an assignment or just somebody freelancing will you ask somebody who seems nice at Linwood Bowl away if uh there was ever a sign where like a guy's arm was going around in a

windmill fashion I will need to find the right person because again the people running the place are very young um way younger than me so they won't have any institutional memory of that

certainly but i will pass down this is relevant everyone who's hired should be told on day one we used to have a bitchin sign and we got rid of it because nobody likes cool shit anymore that's

part of the on that's part of the onboarding it's part of the onboarding absolutely man i am seeing

some dope bowling alley signs like is there an industry that overperformed on good signs in the Good night.

1960s and 70s more than bowling alleys yeah bowling number one and then your maybe your

neighborhood bar there are some good signs sure and if you had a bowling alley with a bar

you've you've got leilani lanes my friend you've got sunset bowl that's the thing i know i hear the music which means it's time to go but like you're traveling all the way to linwood and maybe even to kenmore to bowl you used to there just used to be so many bowling andrew there was a bowling alley like a mile mile and a quarter from you LaLani Lanes which was just with the LaLani Kai room it was everything

yeah if I could walk to a bowling alley that'd be great we never see you again I know because like I don't drink when I bowl do people ever drink beer when they bowl or would that be a new thing because I don't know if anyone's tried it

alright thanks for listening take the e-line thanks for listening everyone we will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you in the meantime have a great Monday stay dry if you're in the Northwest, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

Please see him, Jeffrey. He's a good man. And thorough. Power out.