Muse

You're not oversharing. You are not oversharing. Boring people came up with that. Boring people made that up. They made up oversharing because they're too boring to handle an interesting conversation. You're not oversharing, keep sharing. I want to hear everything. I want to hear it all. And then I want to hear a little bit more. Make them, make them, make the boring people uncomfortable. Share. Keep up the good work, everyone.

T-V-T-L!

I was shaking, my tummy was shaking, my head was shaking, my arms were shaking, and my legs, my feet, too.

Hey, you know, if we knocked down that wall, it would really open the place up. You know, clean up the blood, maybe add some French doors, maybe a ping pong table right there. You know? I'm just riffing.

Hey, dummies. A while back you guys explained that SCUBA is an acronym. That's for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Did you know that the word TUBA is also an acronym? That stands for terrible underwater breathing apparatus.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's like someone punching your brain, but in a weirdly satisfying way. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Back away, banana breath. What the hell did you just eat, a banana?

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, first high above the mighty Columbia, where it is just absolutely dumping rain.

Man, it is nasty out there.

But it's also bizarrely warm. It's like 65 degrees.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

I believe in the greater Seattle area yesterday, they broke the record for rainfall for one day in December and also temperature in terms of how warm it was.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

Like, so you break both of those records in one day. That's really quite something. I was loud wrong, as they say on the Levitard show yesterday. At the beginning of this program, I said that it was forecast there was going to be 34 or 36 inches of rain. I've made a huge mistake. That would be, I mean, I don't know what the implications of that would be, but it would be so incredibly bad. It would, like, I mean, probably, like, you know, T-Mobile Park would come loose from its foundation and float into Elliott Bay. It was about three inches of rain forecast to fall over the course of 34 to 36 hours. I saw the number of hours that it would be raining, and I took that for the number of inches. But if it were to rain 36 inches in a couple of days, we'd have even more trouble on our hands than we already do here at episode 4090 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. The Oxford American Dictionary has released its Oxford University Press, I should say. The Oxford University Press has released its word of the year. And, well, we've been hearing about it a lot from you, the listeners.

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Because it's a word that we've been using a lot lately over here. We will talk about that. And also, in the last, I'm going to say 12 hours, let's see. it's as we're recording yeah in almost exactly the last 12 hours my dad has done two things my dad waltby has done two things here that have made me legitimately furious at him i'm mad at you dad which like never happens my dad is the nicest guy on earth but i'll tell you what that was coming up plus we'll talk to this guy the longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships i'll warn you about one thing he's got like every meme

ever produced on the internet he can knock us out with his memes so don't test him he's andrew

walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend is my microphone working did you listen back to that yesterday i did yes was i when was it one of those things where i didn't i should not

have brought it up friend talk here for a second when somebody says is my microphone walk is my microphone working you have to respond immediately i almost died in the second it took you to respond to my question because i assumed you couldn't hear me you just took years off of my life Oh, I'm sorry. That must be the delay.

From my experience here, I didn't even realize I was taking, as we say, pregnant pause. I don't know if it was that big of a deal. I'm sorry, persons who can become pregnant pause. Use the right terminology, Andrew, for once.

Sorry about that. I know we've talked about this before, but a radio producer bonding moment. I mean, if you could take all of the little moments between a host saying hello to an ISDN guest and then waiting for them to respond. Do you know this feeling? Was this part of your world as well? Oh, yeah. You would book a guest who would be in a different.

part of the country but they you'd set them up in a radio studio somewhere and you would connect via a technology at the time called isdn which is kind of what luke and i are doing now only it's a different you know program but essentially it sounds like you're in the same room together and you get it all set up and usually the isdn are often it was like in a different room than the studio it was like in the rack room and you were ready to sprint like when the host says and Joining us now from the Too Beautiful to Live podcast is Luke Burbank, and there's a slight delay, and you wait. Will Luke say hello? Is he hearing us? Are we hearing him? Do I have to run into the rack room and just start screaming and just tearing at those wires?

And let me, for people that have never been in a rack room, let me explain to you what you then had to do. there were a series of patch cables not unlike a 1940s telephone operator and they all had little like labels as to this goes from this to this to this to this and you'd be furiously pulling out patch cables and patching them into other things now you'll be shocked to hear this Andrew I had no idea what any of those things did so me pulling those out and plugging them in at random was probably making things worse but it was always a roll of the dice and until you heard the person talking to the host you were you could net your bunghole could never unclench as the producer or

booker of the segment yeah you're like lily lily tomlin back there just ringy dingy ringy dingy

is that too new of a reference to i believe lily tomlin was just on all things considered this week so it's not only it might be too new that might be too recent of a reference my friend i

am nervous do you know what i'm talking about and do i have the is it lily tomlin the one for she had the phone yeah yeah okay okay okay gotcha okay at least the reference is right uh whether or not it whether or not it was up to date uh is another question you need a win today and i do

because i got a text from you this morning that had me very concerned for you and veeves and also very empathetic towards your current situation because i have been through it you are in the midst of all of this atmospheric rivering you're experiencing basement flooding yeah i don't know

if you heard we we are getting 34 inches of rain here uh by the way quick question on that dangerous you said that on the show you know you like to get wet though it went right past me i remember you saying something in your intro and me thinking wow that sounds like a lot of rain but like not fully like thinking it through but with your mea culpa at the top of the show did a bunch of people reach out when when how did you i just had one of those moments where this is usually kind of

your brand andrew where like i was just kind of doing something in the house like with my dad yesterday maybe i had the radio on and they said you know this atmospheric river is coming through it there's gonna be a number of storms they're predicting up to three inches of rain over the next 36 hours and i was like i said 36 inches of rain and then realizing that that's a factor of 10 yeah that's a lot like that's i'm just like the empty like hydrologic implications of 36 inches of rain is way different than three and because three inches is a record we're freaking out about

three inches could you imagine what 36 inches would do yeah and i'm um yeah i have 36 gallons of water under my house right now actually more than that probably so here's the deal though at first I didn't know it was the rain so I wake up around 7.30 today and usually I would like feed the cats maybe around 8 o'clock maybe I woke up at 7.30 I'm not going to lie to you Luke I had to use the restroom I'm a human being I go to the bathroom one leg at a time just like everybody else I go to the bathroom on each leg

one at a time just like every man of a certain age

anyway so it's like 7.30 there like there's this moment of almost every morning if i'm waking up around that time where i need to determine like is it early enough for me to go back to bed or is it so late that i need to just stay up and usually i feed the cats around eight and i see it's 7 30 i'm like you know what i'm just gonna go downstairs and feed bingo so i come downstairs in the basement and i probably don't have my glasses on either at this point and i'm i really cannot see shit without my glasses but as i come downstairs i just see in our little kitchenette area in the basement which is a very small little area just like kind of a kitchen sink um and uh in some counter space uh and like a little heat what do you call the a small tiny tiny little glass surface stove like a hot plate is that what you call that yeah sure anyway it doesn't matter uh in this tiny little area which does have like some sort of a you know plastic flooring or whatever that is vinyl flooring i noticed there's just like standing water down there now it's not floorboard to floorboard that which i think is kind of interesting it's like it's coming out from underneath one of the cabinets it looks like i think the the first thing and i don't know if this is true of everybody or if it's just like how i treat myself but my first thing was what did i do like i just I immediately was like, what did I do? Because I had cleaned my bathroom.

I often, when I encounter an issue, think, what did Andrew do?

What did Andrew do? Yeah, so it's not just me. That's good to know.

A lot of people are thinking that very strongly.

I did have a somewhat unconventional evening because I decided to clean my bathroom at like 1030 at night or something like that, as one does. And I'm glad I did. It needed a good cleaning, and it was very satisfying. But because of that, you're like, when you come downstairs the next morning and you see water all over the floor in the basement, I immediately was like, what did I do? Like, when I cleaned the shower, what did I break?

But this is not even in – people – ideally, the listeners don't really know the landscape of your basement. I mean, most of them haven't been in there.

You know, more and more have been coming to Genevieve's parties. Exactly.

So, oh, are they all suspects for head bonking your drywall that one night? But like, if I got this kind of map of your basement proper in my mind, the area where the water was is fairly far away from where your bathroom that you would have been cleaning is. I mean, they're separated by, there's a staircase in between them, walls, right?

Yes, but the staircase isn't between them. It would actually be kind of a wall or a, yeah, like, there's definitely a wall. But the shower, if I knocked down my shower wall in my bathroom, I would come out in that little kitchen area. Got you, they have a shared wall. Yeah, I believe so, or close to it. So like kind of proximity-wise, as the rat burrows, it's relatively close. That's what we always say. But not as we use it as humans. But anyway, so I come downstairs, and I immediately look to the refrigerator freezer that is there. I'm like, did I leave the door open and everything melted? You know what I mean? It's just like in a split second, your brain just goes in a million different places.

Our mind is searching for a logical explanation for something that is illogical. And the way your mind works is like, what did Andrew screw up? that made this happen.

Did I anger the gods?

Is Neptune mad at me and unleashing water in my basement? So, by the way, great use of the relevant mythical, you know, god. That's good. You didn't say like Loki or something because although Loki could also come into play as the god of history. Yeah, that's true. But Neptune's a perfect example. I mean, I'm trying to, again, Andrew, I'm really trying to rack up the Ws for you here on this Tuesday because I know how terrible that feeling is of water intrusion in the basement.

So I, so anyway, so I do immediately run to my bathroom so I kind of run around the basement come in into my bathroom and I see is there water around my tub as well so again we're kind of back near the same area where the water was coming out the other side of the wall and as I walk up to the tub I see that there's a little bit of water starting to pour out from underneath the tub too and then as I step there it really comes out and it starts leaking like not leaking but like kind of seeping onto the floor but like a good amount of water and so i'm like this is a pipe or something like this is a lot of water i've had some issues with what seemed like leakage in my bathroom before and in my body um but we will talk about that another time but um and like genevieve resealed my my shower and tub area a while back because we realized oh water i was taking a shower and water was kind of getting into the walls they did not do a great job of assembling that shower um and so that's how we solved that problem and so i've and then i had an issue with my toilet like six months ago so again i had experienced some some water seepage into the floor that we had to deal with and it dried out and everything but this was more than i'd ever seen before and i'm just like this must be a pipe at this point like it's just like the the reason i think it's notable though that the water was not like floorboard to floorboard in the kitchenette area and that it just came out

from under the tub what does that mean floorboard to floorboard like the entire hardwood floor area

was not covered in other words there was there was the the edge of the water had not already reached the other side of the kitchen area so i wasn't crossing the entire the entire area was not yet it seemed like the source was somewhere under the cabinetry under the wall which would also be the wall to the bathroom and so i'm sort of identifying that that's like the central location of the water coming up somewhere you know in this tub kitchenette area but also i'm pointing out that it's not floorboard to floorboard because i think i caught it relatively quickly it would have been nice to catch it quicker but water was still making its way out so in other words if i had come down another five minutes i think it would have had a lot more yeah and also the well the carpet unfortunately did get hit pretty bad at the bottom of the stairs too about i don't know maybe a i don't know how big of an area but we're kind of drawing that out now but in the moment i'm like i don't know what this is so i go wake up genevieve i'm like hey we have a problem in the basement please fix it and then i went to bed and so she's out there now working on my immediate problem is salt back to slumberland yeah exactly also while you're down there could you feed the cats um no so anyway i wake her up and i because i was at first like really hoping this was just some small thing that i could not wake her up over nobody you wants to be woken up to we have a problem in the basement and uh anyway we come downstairs genevieve says that i said this i thought it was her idea but one of us apparently said check the sump pump and genevieve went outside and so right outside of our basement let's give him something to talk about write it down show title i'm adding it to the list i'm working on But we open up this door that leads to the outside, a little stairwell that's like maybe five steps down outside of our basement door here. And it's standing water. What should be there is a, you know, somewhat wet because it's been raining.

But there's a drain there that's probably clogged, right?

Well, not clogged. There's a drain there that leads to you could take the grating off. It's very heavy. and then the sump pump lives in the bottom of that little square pit, right? And it's like a toilet floater kind of mechanism. Probably most people know this, but when water collects-

A float switch, it's called.

Yeah, exactly, in that area. When the float switch gets to a certain level, it kicks on the pump and then the pump pumps water, groundwater, out from that area and then shoots it somewhere back in our backyard. And Genevieve walks out there and it's like two inches of water or something. She puts on some sort of rubber boots and goes out there and gets a crowbar. This is all her, and she pries open the grate. She had messed around with the sump pump before when we were concerned that we might have had an issue with it, which we didn't, but she had familiarized herself with the sump pump. Yeah, definitely, and I think had cleaned out that area or something, and so she's like poking around down there like through the water. She can't see anything. She's got a flashlight and a crowbar, and she's like kind of poked but it doesn't look like there's a clog it's unclear what's going on it's not that bad down there then Genevieve just reaches over and by the way this is as dangerous as it sounds as she's standing in water she famously something that does not conduct any kind of electricity I'm just you know I'm just hearing this now I like honestly the danger of this didn't even occur to me until now and I shouldn't be saying this but she reaches over unplugs the sump pump because of the the power source is above ground it's like right there so she unplugs it from like the outside wall of the house and just plugs it back in all of a sudden kicks on everything drains down like watching like when you unplug your sink you know it starts kind of swirling down which is amazing um but then i didn't realize this is kind of how the structure works down there again if you can picture a small little pit it's a square pit with the sump pump in the bottom of it but it is square so like kind of four walls down there and there must be like four holes drilled into each wall and we just stood there and watched for it may still be doing it but we watched it for like an hour just water pouring out of those holes from our you know the area around our house and under our house water water just pouring into this pit raising the float switch then it kicks on just over and over and over again i mean i I don't even know how many gallons of water we're accumulating underneath our house to the point where 36 inches where it started to push up. And then we discovered now we're discovering other we're really stress tested the foundation because unfortunately, like it came up, you know, in this area that would be connected to both the kitchen and the bathroom, as I've established. And that might make sense because you have plumbing around there, too. I don't really know how that stuff works. But there's also one other place where we have no plumbing, just like near the north wall of our basement where our couch is. And I noticed that water was starting to seep up there, too. So we just spent the morning like kind of sopping it all up with towels as much as possible, setting up some fans. Genevieve was doing some blow drying of the floor. Again, a great way to start your Tuesday is to blow dry your carpet.

But anyway, I'm sorry, man. And that's just, there's something, particularly when you're a homeowner, but really anybody, but like that feeling of like an early morning when you, when you realize, nope, there is water coming in here and it is, we're gonna have to deal with it. And also it's somewhat inexplicable. Thank goodness this sump pump accounts for a significant portion of it.

Yeah.

But I've, you know, of course I went through this when I was in the Bellingham house with Carrie and I talked about it a lot on the show. And I will tell you, I don't know who's been scoring at home, but she actually a lot of things got better about her life, Andrew, when I moved out of that place, including she actually got that thing fixed. At one point, we had this guy in there and I don't I don't think this guy was a, you know, sort of a flim flam artist. I mean, this is a real thing. But if you have a basement that just I mean, our basement was it wasn't just like it was like maybe an inch of water that would go at times almost throughout the entire basement. Like it was not. like a little like the corners getting a little damp it was bad news and at one point the the the suggestion from this guy who had a whole like you know kind of like laminated book of things of different options was they trench the entire interior of your basement and they basically build a french drain with a series of like tubes and a pump so that as the water's anytime water is trying to come into your house it's getting pumped out because there's i mean in extreme cases what can happen is when it rains a lot the water table itself rises meaning the it doesn't even have anything to do with if your foundation is waterproof enough the water under your house is now rising and it starts to come out in your basement potentially what carrie did to fix it was just and i i thought there was no way this was going to work i was like it's so funny because as we were remodeling that house and as you know we had so many forks in the road of decisions about things to do and i was always very convinced of my rightness and this would have been one of those ones that had we still had i still been there i would have been like i don't know if fixing the concrete around the house like if this there's some cracks in the cement but could that really be it well she had it all broken up and re-poured so that it sloped away from the house and so there were no cracks and guess what interesting fixed it so i guess my my my thought is if this continues and the sump pump is working and you know you've got friends like rodent that know more about this probably than i do but it's amazing how much downspouts and just a little place where the ground slopes towards your house so that when it rains the water wants to in fact i have currently here at my place um some water intrusion in my basement although it's not a huge priority because that basement is gross like it's one of those classic gross cement basements so if there's like a little dribble of water i'm going to fix it eventually but it's not doesn't really mess with my life a lot it's like this basement is kind of designed for that but i was going to say is it might be worth looking into that all your downspouts are working and that there aren't any places where that water is kind of pooling up against your house because it's simply piling the dirt up so that the water goes away from your house it's shocking how big of a difference that

can make yeah so a couple of things like first of all while this wasn't an ideal situation to wake up to i mean this just could have been so much worse yeah i mean just the fact that genevieve while standing in water unplugged the son of a gun and plugged it back in and it just started to work again is a goddamn miracle i mean that's a real strong argument for the unplug it and plug

it back in culture that we currently live in have you powered it down and powered it back on she didn't count to 10 which has a little disappointed in yeah but um yeah so but i mean can you imagine

if we did that and then that didn't work and then we're just like well i don't know like we couldn't get down there it was it's hard to work on a sump pump when it's submerged when it's submerged

can you just remind me and again this is probably not interesting to the listeners but it is to me as your friend and as a person who spends time in your basement where i i was picturing something different when you were describing where the sump pump is where is it actually located in the kind of general uh layout of your like basement slash downstairs so it's outside so it's outside picture

the door to the so it is that base those basement steps yeah the little stairwell the okay so that

is what i was picturing it's in it's in that so those steps that i've gone out a few times to go into your yard at the the lowest point there there's a grate and under that is the sump pump it's a very heavy metal grate yeah interesting so that is purely because i've had that again i've lived in a lot of places with a lot of water intrusion it turns out but that's a biggie that will happen is a lot of times if you have stairs to your basement and then there's leaves and debris and stuff and then the the drain gets plugged up our house our rental we lived in when i was a kid one of my jobs was to like sweep the basement stairs and try to keep them leaf free because that would happen all the time that drain which didn't have a sump pump it was just a drain would get super clogged and then the water would want to come into the basement like literally through the door but y'all have an entire pump system to make sure that never happens yeah and

um that's you know again i just keep thinking about the scenario in which it was the pump but during it was like broken yeah but can you imagine like the calls that plumbers are getting right now I was like somewhere I was around the city this weekend and just so many areas where the storm drains are clogged because it's just like this unrelenting rain.

So I would imagine we were listening to or we were talking to our friend Anna on the Weekend Review and she was talking about how she had been clearing the storm drains in her neighborhood.

That's right. Yeah, that's right.

And was trying to figure out how to kind of dispose of the of the leaf matter. Right. Right.

It is her responsibility to fill up her bins with it.

Right, but to avoid exactly, like, weeks like this, where it's, like, anywhere where water can start backing up, it's pretty much going to.

Yeah, so very lucky that it just needed a reset for some reason. But here's the deal. Okay, also lucky that the damage wasn't worse. I, again, went through all that detail of catching the water. Wait a sec, hold on. I'm sorry.

Hold on.

That basement door is all the way across your basement from that kitchenette area.

Yes. Yes, it is. I think there's some system under there that I think, I would assume, sort of funnels water from under our house and directs it towards the sump pump area. Again, with these holes. Oh, with those holes. Yeah. So because, again.

Maybe they trenched it in some way.

Once she got, once Genevieve got the sump pump working again, and then it would drain down. but then there would just be spouts of water like four per side of the square hole just pouring and

it still may be doing it like it was right before it sounds extremely satisfying it is it was just like draining so much water can you videotape that and can i watch that to fall asleep

and this might sound bananas but once we got that working i think like literally like i just think water was there's so much it's just coming up through the floor that the water well of course I had towels down and I was cleaning up but when there's still a source of water that doesn't help much I think as soon as we got that thing working again the water started draining from our basement floor you know what I mean like yeah it was easier to clean up and like it's still squishy in some areas and now here's the deal so lucky that the sump pump is working because I can't imagine getting a plumber out here today I would assume a bitch I would assume that they're workshopping you know this was probably the worst time they're probably as busy because of this exact thing happening all over the area you know and it would just cost an arm and a leg so we're lucky it works also like we're trying to dry out the carpet in the bad areas as much as possible the carpet wasn't hit too bad but also we do have plans i would say like medium term plans in the next year or so to like kind of tear out all this carpeting anyway and put down some sort of um i don't know if it's going to be a laminate or a wood or a wood like laminate or something like that but some sort of laminate yes a laminate that looks like carpet but when you step on it it looks like

a shag rug but it's totally waterproof it's genevieve's been looking into this thing where

it's a laminate but when you walk out on it it looks like you're in the top of the space needle

do you know what i'm talking about oh that's perfect for you it's something that fills andrew with terror at all times while he's playing dark and then genevieve just keeps on saying make

him fly make him fly um is that what happens in game of thrones doesn't he make him fly through the moon door yeah bad man fly yeah a bad man yeah so anyway so lucky that lucky that we plan on kind of tearing the stuff up eventually anyway but that comes back to something that you just said about like due diligence i think that we should maybe get somebody out here like a professional to really just look at our whole situation to make sure that we don't put down new flooring and then something like this happens like again i think the fact that we're going to be having hard you know some sort of a a non-carpet surface down here they make a lot of stuff that's

actually waterproof not that you want to be like dealing with water intrusion but there's stuff that will that will stand up to that pretty well much better than carpet yeah yeah yeah so anyway

i'm super lucky that none of this hit any of the areas i can tell if my office like where all my electronics are and everything like behind the board here that would have been messed with your audio board somebody was messing with that trim i don't know why but no anyway yeah so as far as these things go like i just feel so there was a moment as i was unlocking the garage to grab a crowbar and just thinking like what how would i how would i feel right now if i were calling a landlord instead of dealing with this and at this point the pump is not working well your old

landlord i mean i would say worse right well that's that's that's that's kind of my journey

here because my whole life it wasn't that i just happened to be a renter i was a steadfast a renter with the exception of this house we bought in new hampshire and lived there for a couple of years but there were extenuating circumstances there and um it was what it was when we were very young but as far as like actually like being an adult my whole thing was i want to be a renter because when shit like this happens i don't want it to be my problem and also i like the mobility of it and everything of you know renting and being able to move if need be um but you know i've just changed a lot now because as i'm unlocking my garage i'm like okay how would I feel if it was more like get the landlord or the property manager on the phone I'd be like that'd be worse because I'd still be doing all of this shit but then I'd be waiting for them to come out look at it like at least it was just like this room I was like no I'll take care of this better than anybody any landlord that I've had in the past two decades you know like certainly your

most recent one yeah generally blame you and Genevieve yeah and also take the for him least

expensive route right he'd make us go use a toilet like okay well do you have your pickaxe

because i'm gonna need you to trench that out i'm gonna need you to get into the cement there and

that might have that might have colored it and also the the property managers before that and it's just kind of like oh i guess i did just get to an age where it's like well this is part of our long-term planning of this place now we're gonna get new flooring so maybe we should keep an eye on this we're learning a little bit coincidentally my friend sarah who's also our realtor who you know secured this house for us um she happened to be texting me something right as this was happening too so i ended up getting into um house talk with her about the flooded basement and she said that especially in this area with a sump pump you should have a water alarm which i didn't know that that was a thing but i can plug one in down there so if this were to happen again if i get one that uses that i can use on my smartphone or something we could even be away from the house and get a message that says hey you know what your water's building up or something like that

we could react even quicker yeah uh i was telling my dad this morning i was like yeah andrew's dealing with some basement stuff and he was like oh well if he's over there by where your aunt mary lou and uncle mike have lived which you in fact are um he was like yeah that that area and those houses of that vintage um you know and it was reminding me speak of landlords this is such a tangent but my aunt mary lou and uncle mike um i think it might have been right when they were first married this is my mom's sister Mary Lou um uh they lived in this little teeny tiny house across uh Aurora from probably a mile from where you are but like they lived in this little teeny tiny rental and their landlords was actually their their landlord or the people that owned the house were this husband and wife that actually lived down the street from my family coincidentally and the woman was this very lovely woman who was a librarian um and I loved her she was super friendly she smelled very nice when I'd go to the library she would be there and be like here's some books you would like Luke she might have even recommended the White Mountains books for me I can't remember her husband was a guy named Don and he was an oddball and he was the guy kind of in charge of landlording this particular little house my aunt and uncle were renting they subsequently bought a house like five houses down and have lived there off and on for like 30 plus years but anyway in this house I remember as a kid going over and they had a leak in their roof And the fix that Don had put together was, and it was a leak coming through their ceiling. So imagine your living room, you've got like a leak in your roof. And so now you have basically water trying to come in through your ceiling of your, of your living room. And he took a garbage can lid, a metal garbage can lid. He punched a hole in it. He pressed it up against the part of the ceiling where the water was coming. He attached a garden hose to the underside of the garbage lid and ran the hose out the door, and he had affixed the garbage can lid to the ceiling by putting a broom through the handle of the garbage can lid and jamming the broom somehow into something. So you imagine this cantilevered broom arm that's holding an upside-down garbage can lid to the ceiling, underside of the ceiling, with a hose coming out of it. And I believe for about a year, that was the fix. No, I thought it was just temporary Oh no, no, that was there I remember because I watched The NBA All-Star Game where Tom Chambers Was the MVP I can tell you the exact year If we figure out, hey Google What year was Tom Chambers Tom Chambers All-Star Game

MVP

So this was 1987, Andrew Let's see, I would have been 11 years old

Oh wait, hold on, hold on He appeared in All-Star Games 87, 89, 90, 91 earning MVP honors. He was the 87. Yeah, so you were right.

Dude, that was such, that was an amazing game. I remember sitting in the little living room, my Aunt Mary and Uncle Mike's watching that game by myself. One of the things that happened was, I think Tom Chambers might have been a last minute alternate for that game. He was a Sonic at the time, so I was obsessed with him. And I remember he made two free throws with almost no time left on the clock. I believe he was fouled by Rolando Woolrich. And he made two free throws to send it into overtime and ended up being the MVP of the game. that's clearly burned in my brain.

Yeah, Luke, we all know.

But I remember alternating between watching Tom Chambers dominate in the NBA All-Star game and looking up at this contraption, this Rube Goldberg contraption. This was before we threw around terms like renter's rights. Yeah, right. There was a time, I remember my parents, we rented my entire childhood, and I remember, actually, my the first people we rented from his name was mr ferris i don't know what his first name was but uh he was the guy that owned this house by northgate but he was a curmudgeon and was always kind of doing my parents dirty but you just had no recourse in those times or limited you know and and i remember us having sort of bad landlords a lot of the time so um that was a that was a little five minutes of everyone's life we'll never get back but it made me it made me remember

the olden times it's somehow wonka-esque and i'm trying to avoid going to the usual golden ticket

well i was a little impressed oh you mean you you mean in terms of everything like yeah it's just

like this whole dickensian but also like the contraption aspect i mean it was kind of

impressive engineering that's why it stuck in my mind i remember looking

at it and just thinking like that's kind of dope it was kind of dope when i thought he was doing it for like an afternoon or a day while we got this it was like a day or a lifetime i believe they

then uh moved i don't think i don't know if that ever actually got fixed i think that they just ended up buying a house which um let me just throw a little gas on the fire of everyone who's uh upset about the sort of economics of purchasing a home in major cities in America, including Seattle. I could be off on this number, but my memory is they bought their house there on again, just kind of the other side of Aurora from where you all are, but then up a ways on, I can say this, Evanston was their street. They bought their house, I believe it was $36,000 or something. Might have been $41,000, but it was definitely not more than $50,000. Jeez Louise. And it was a charming little cottage where they have maintained a residence for many many years so anyway uh i guess uh i guess we should probably get to some donors thanking and then andrew i will tell you about uh what's been going on around here with me and walt and our simmering odd couple-esque relationship is turning into a real jack lemon walter matthow type of sitch uh so more on that after we thank these donors i want to jump in briefly here and

remind everybody that when you're done listening to today's episode of tbtl surf on over to the terrible things for asking podcast and check it out if you haven't already i think there's a probably a zero percent chance as luke might say that you don't know what terrible things for asking is but just in case it's a podcast hosted by our dear friend nora mcinerney who's been a good friend to tbtl and tbtl listeners and in ways too numerous to count honestly and it's a narrative interview podcast that talks to real people talking about the hard things in their life in many cases talking about the hardest moments of their life and how they got through those moments and who they became by going through those moments it's not a bummer it's quite inspirational but it's also very real nora also hosts it's going to be okay and the terrible reading club and she's got a million great projects going on and if you like tbtl i know you're going to enjoy everything that Nora is producing. You can find Terrible. Thanks for asking anywhere you listen to podcasts.

We've got to thank these donors of the day, Andrew, who are helping TBTL exist as a business, as an S-Corp, I believe, at this very moment.

I think. Luke, I never answered your question at the top of the show about whether or not my mic malfunction, my microphone malfunction, actually clung to the tape yesterday. And it did. It seemed like it was a bit of it was you only missed like a second of audio top. So it wasn't an issue this time. But, yes, there's still some ghost in the machine that doesn't make any sense to me. So now I'm paranoid every time I open my mouth, not just that I'm going to say something stupid, but nobody will hear it.

that's like the classic this soup is bland and the portions are too small do you remember that joke from when you were a kid a guy I don't even know if there's like a written joke or a scene in a movie but like a guy sees a fly in his soup and he says waiter what is this fly doing in my soup and the waiter looks at him and goes I think the backstroke

yes I remember that joke

I have to say there's a ghost in the machine known as Wikipedia Andrew because I'm still looking at the 1987 All-Star Game.

I was wondering what the distraction was at the very beginning. I was like, what? Are you on the 1987 MVP game? Or what are you doing?

Yes, I'm just, well, I'm on whatever Gorgle brought back when I put in Tom Chambers' All-Star Game MVP. And so you've got the kind of basic information, but then to the right is this little kind of box that says, sort of, it's like the sort of crib notes on the 1987 All-Star Game. It says, you know, when it was played, but then it says location colon climate pledge arena comma kingdom and i got i've got many problems with that first of all it could not have been in both places so it was either in the kingdom which is possible it was probably a big game or which by the way adds to the excitement because tom chambers was a hometown guy that is part of why i was especially obsessed this year that year because it was happening in seattle but i don't think it would so it would have been in either what was then called key arena or maybe the arena it might not have even had key bank on the name yet but it was not called climate pledge arena it'd be as if you know an event happened at a ballpark and then they changed the name and now we're listing it as the name of the new name it's not he didn't do this in climate pledge arena in fact he probably did it at the kingdom but what he Definitely.

didn't do it is both places these are different physical locations get it together wikipedia yeah

you know it's interesting because hey let me take it to it can i take it to an uncomfortable place help me like so i have to be very careful of my words here but when a team a professional sports team like the washington nfl team the dc nfl team changes its name because its original name was offensive or cleveland's baseball team now the guardians when you're talking about the accomplishments of players who did something or if you're talking about the team in like a previous era do you refer to them as the guardians like oh you know the guardians did

this in 1965 i don't i would argue that the social harm of using a racist name is is is pronounced enough that we should use the current name that would be my argument for it so calling them the guardians because or you could even say what the team we now call the guardians but i just don't think that there's i don't think we need to use the racist name so badly for accuracy or or whatever that we should trot it out just particularly when we're talking about something as meaningless as sports stats yeah that's my argument but when can i say it then

you can't say anything no no no no no that no that's a good point and definitely from a broadcast perspective like for me i would just probably not say it i wouldn't say the 1960 guardians i would just say you know the 1960 cleveland team or whatever you can just say you know if it's in the context of baseball there's a lot of ways around say cleveland was playing the dodgers that day or something you know i mean there's a ways around it but it's but i guess for wikipedia though you would maybe use like the the name of the team as it was at the time and maybe even say something parenthetically as it was called at the time maybe here's what i think they're doing and

boy this is a real i didn't realize they were going to get this kind of parsed with it what they're saying was it the arena was the kingdom the seattle center coliseum which is by the way What eventually became the Seattle Center Arena, I think, and then became Key Arena and then became now known as Climate Pledge, was where the All-Star Saturday was held. So it was like over at the smaller location where the Sonics played most of their games. That was where you could probably go, you know, do a try your luck at a free throw and buy, you know, some merch. God, I would kill for whatever 1987 NBA merch was on offer. I mean, for me, and this is something none of the donors have asked for, but I'm going to honor everybody with this anyway. Just reading who was in this game, if you're somebody my age and you were really into NBA basketball in 1987 as I was, just this list of people. I mean, the Western Conference team was pretty much just the Lakers. It was Magic Johnson, James Worthy, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But you also had Sleepy Floyd and Joe Barry Carroll in there.

Wait, Sleepy Floyd?

Oh, yeah. Eric Sleepy Floyd? Sure. I mean, they had great names. Like, you had World Be Free. You had Eric Sleepy Floyd. You had, let's see, who else? There were just some real... You had Vinny the Microwave Johnson because he would heat up fast when he got in the game. It was a real wild time. And then you had, let's see...

Sleepy Floyd sounds like something Trump would call somebody as an insult.

Sleepy Floyd.

I love it, though. I feel like I can picture Sleepy Floyd

I also might be wrong about I think I'm wrong about something critical, Andrew I think I think I had I think I had one detail wrong about this I can't believe how I went from Deciding to shoehorn in a bunch of facts about a game That no one except me cares about To shoehorning in wrong facts To now having to correct myself on probably the wrong facts It might have been Rolando Blackman Who hit the free throws Because he was a Dallas Maverick which I think would have put him in the Western Conference, I think Rolando Blackman actually, not Tom Chambers, hit the free throws to send the game into overtime. And that's the last I'm going to say about this.

I was going to say something, but I didn't want to call you out. I know.

It's a particularly embarrassing thing when you decide to try to flex and then you're just wrong. This is a real self-own for me, right? This is a real, like, what's the, there's a term for it, like unforced error. we're gonna use tennis terminology this is a real enforced error for burbs nobody asked you to bring this game up nobody asked you to try to recite the end of the game from memory like this is all just on me and i think it hurts annie hayward the most andrew because annie is in seattle washington it was probably well i don't know annie's age but let's just say if annie was old enough to watch that game she probably vividly remembers that rolando blackman was the person who hit the two, not to be confused with Onyx Blackman from Strangers with Candy. This is a totally different dude. I'm an obtuse man, so I'm going to be oblique. That guy passed away a while.

ago by the way RIP I'm trying to figure out if I knew that and you're reminding me or telling me for the first time but oh man I know what I was really surprised he must have gone so early he

I don't think he was particularly old but I was also really struck that Strangely with Candy was kind of the biggest thing that he had done he was I sort of figured he'd be in a bunch of those I don't know procedurals and stuff and I mean he just had such kind of gravitas um I figured that He'd be somebody that was working, you know, in a lot of kind of television and film. And when I went back and looked at his IMDb page, it's my memory was that the Strangers with Candy was really kind of his sort of his big thing.

Wait, you're are we definitely talking about the same guy? Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm I'm I usually this falls on me Googling too quickly. But it says Greg Holloman on Wikipedia. Does that name ring a bell? And it says I guess it doesn't say was.

Wow. What's the fine for that? Penalty box. Send me right to the penalty box. Greg, I am sorry. How did I get that in my mind? I don't know. Well, I can tell you this. There was a reason, and I guess it wouldn't have been the passing of that actor, person, slash actor. I was for some reason on his IMDb page recently, as I'm sort of want to do. And I think it, so there's one of a couple of reasons why I would go check someone's IMDb page out. One, I'm just in a weird mood, and I'm like, hey, what else does this person do? and then sometimes because maybe somebody has passed, and it's a way for me to sort of see the range of their career. So I must have been looking at this guy's IMDb page for whatever reason and misfiled it, much like the two free throws at the end of the 1987 NBA All-Star game.

All of these things, by the way, are severely ruining the show. I'm saying this seriously because I'm concerned. People come here for information, And if we're giving out false information, I don't know why people are going to be tuning in or donating to the show.

Or donating people like Claire Walsh, your actual sister. That's some more factual information I can share with the audience. Your sister Claire Walsh in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Wow. We're learning a lot today. We sure are. And then your other sister, Kelly Welch in Sherwood, Washington, who spells it just a little bit differently.

Yeah, that's a coincidence, though, huh? We have a Walsh and a Welch.

That was the branch of the Walsh family that started spelling it Welch.

Exactly. I mean, there were there was some, you know, crimes to cover up and.

Exactly. People were various, you know, law entanglements. I'll tell you, Christopher Morrow's side of the family in Seattle, Washington, they had real problems where they had to change it all the way over to Morrow.

You're talking about my cousin, Chris? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Life of the party, though. Life of the party. Yep. Christopher Morrow, Seattle, Washington. Thank you. Appreciate you. Thanks, Kelly, as well. Zach Jones is in Conroe, Texas. Dad? Zach is probably 27. Thanks, Zach. I wonder where Conroe, Texas is. I wonder if Zach is a University of Texas backer because they will be playing my University of Washington Huskies in the, I want to say, Cotton Bowl. That's part of the Bowl Championship Series. No, you're playing the Sugar Bowl, aren't you? Sugar Bowl, is it? It's one of those ones.

I think, yeah. I think. Where is the Sugar Bowl?

It's the Onyx Blackman Bowl.

Do we know where the Sugar Bowl is played? That must be one of the most famous ones.

I assume it's in Texas. My whole locus for that, my whole mind map of all that is really, I know the Rose Bowl because that used to be what you would go to. That's Pasadena. That's the only one I know. And then the Citrus Bowl, which would be in, and the Orange Bowl, which would be in Florida. The Orange Bowl was in Florida, and that was another big one. If you got to that, that was really, you'd done something. And then the ones like the Cotton Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, Those have been championship, the Fiesta Bowl. Those have all been the championship game. It kind of rotates, but the Huskies were never in those bowls for a championship,

so they're kind of a bit of a gray area for me. Do you think I'm wrong about them playing the Sugar Bowl? Because it says the Sugar Bowl is in New Orleans, but I thought you were right when you said they're playing in Texas. Yeah, it says here, yeah. Washington is going to play Texas in the Sugar Bowl. Okay, yeah, gotcha. So it's in New Orleans.

Well, that's yeah, exactly. Yeah. New Orleans, which is one state over from Texas. Completely neutral. Totally neutral. What a great neutral location. Why don't they play it somewhere in western Wyoming? Why don't they figure out the exact midpoint of it? Actually, why don't they play it at Climate Pledge Arena? Like, whatever. I don't want to get into it. It is what it is. But I just a game in Louisiana between Texas and Washington. Just everyone take a moment, and I'm talking mostly to our listeners in Conroe, Texas, folks like Zach Jones. Just take a mental snapshot in your mind of the layout of the United States of America.

And then think about the state of Washington and think about the state of Texas and then think about the state of Louisiana. And then just we have to literally cross Texas to get to this neutral site.

Yeah. And also the Rose Bowl would just be more fun anyway. Right. Also, the Rose Bowl is closer to Texas. But right.

Well, and I don't think it's equidistant, but think about it. If you're going from Texas to L.A. and you're going you're going left, you're going west. And if you're going from Seattle, west faced east. Right.

Yeah, right. If you're going from Seattle to Pasadena. Take a left at Nevada.

If you're going, take a left at Albuquerque. If you're going from Seattle to Pasadena, you're going south. Each team is probably traveling a couple of, maybe 1,500, 2,000 miles. It's like that is a, that, my friends, would be a more fair outcome than let's just, let's go to a place that you can drive to from Texas in one day. But anyway.

Okay, here's the deal. I have some follow-up questions for you about whether or not you're glad that you got matched up with Texas as opposed to the other teams because I don't know that much about this stuff, but we can't ask this now.

We've got to thank Michael Seton of Westlake, Ohio.

That also reminds me that you and I need to at some point, whether we record it or not, we need to talk about what the fuck is going on with the Mariners right now because I have a lot of questions.

Should we convene? I mean, this is a bad week for it, but should we convene a special middle point?

That's what I was leading up to. Yeah, probably. I don't know if we can squeeze in this week because of travel schedules and everything. Yeah, bad week. I don't know. Let's consider it because the game is the – when is the Sugar Bowl? Is it this weekend already? That's January 1st. Oh, we have some time. Okay. Yeah.

Really?

So you take off that much time between the championship games and the bowl games.

So these student athletes can celebrate the holidays with their family, by which I mean be in the weight room.

Are they coming back rusty? That is something that we can discuss. Yes, at some point before these bowl games. And let's do a no point. I would love that.

Yeah. Reading the explanation of why it is that the Mariners have had their payroll cut in the offseason. Our big issue last year was we didn't have the firepower to do what we needed to do. And now we're trying to do it with $30 million less because of root sports. Because of Comcast, man.

It goes back to frickin' Comcast slash Roots Force. I mean, that is amazing. I mean, whoever you want to blame it on, I just mean that the fact that this goes back to media rights is my mind is blown.

I mean, yes, but also I just like the fact that the Mariners have no financial incentive to put a good team on the field. I mean, listen, there are no good guys in this story, whether you're talking about Xfinity or the Seattle Mariners' ownership. They're all bad guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the idea that the bad guys, the Mariners, are blaming the bad guys Xfinity for making, for cutting into their media revenue, therefore we have to send Jared Kalanick away. Like, it's just. Yeah, we got to talk more about this. Should we just do this right now? No, no. Because I know Michael Seaton in Westlake, Ohio is riveted.

Now, Michael Seaton in Westlake, Ohio, I don't think I've had the chance.

Do you think he suffers from a chain mail addiction? Chain link addiction?

Oh, a chain link. I was going to say it. I think it's okay to say this, but my folks live in Westlake. So when I'm visiting Ohio, I'm visiting Westlake. So I didn't know we had a Westlake brother out there.

But that's not where Chainlink Addiction was. No, that was Lakewood, Ohio, Lou. Lakewood.

Mm-hmm.

Everything's named Lake around there.

Well, yeah.

What, is it on a lake or something? No, not that I can think of. Okay, yeah, all right. The success on the lake.

The success in the prairie.

hello and welcome to top story all right i'm actually i will get these out of the way fast these aren't big long involved stories just two things my dad did that made me crazy in the last 12 hours one is we were watching shetland last night this is our deal that's a like a some kind of a british crime show it's so good andrew i could i really particularly the season that we're watching i cannot recommend this show highly enough shetland because i'm glad to hear your

dad was telling us all about that when we were in uh polsbo and it sounded great it sounds like the type of show that really kind of transports you to another beautiful place well it's great

because it's so dumb oh like it's just i mean it's but it's beautifully it's beautifully dumb no one ever has to get a search warrant everything like they get so much done in 57 minutes on these crimes it's remarkable it's like no one keeps any cards close to their chest ever so if the police find out that someone's lying about when a phone call was made they don't go like well let's bring them in first of all let's uh let's see if we have probable cause let's go uh you know let's Let's go execute a search warrant. Let's whatever. Let's bring them in.

then let's um let's lock them into a story about when the phone called like they don't do any of that stuff because that would take too much time they just go to the person they go why'd you lie about the phone call and the person goes because i did it and i don't regret it one bit it's just like it's so it's just a wonderfully compact look at how actual investigating and law enforcement goes like they'll be like i need the cctv from it's like somebody you know where this island shetland is or the shetland islands they're on an island called larwick it's like larwick actually the closest thing to it is really like norway like bergen norway so they'll just be like get me all the cctv from the bergen airport for this day and literally a minute later they're

looking at it it's be i just love it down to the relevant point enhance enhance enhance it's like

god if this was real life i would i want to live in this world where every like it's just an amazing place but it's also i mean it's still it's a very interesting and fun show but it's like it's it's not it's not interesting to me because of its rigorous kind of dedication to in i'm not like look i'm not saying the wire was realistic either but the conversations in the wire where you've got like an investigator trying to lean on a on a da to actually bring the charges and the da is like we don't have enough here like that's there's a little more realistic that is That does not exist in the world of the TV show Shetland But anyway we're watching So we're watching last night This is not the first time my dad has done something like this I don't know what is going on in his brain Because my dad is really the kindest person that I know in the world And I love him dearly But he has some kind of weird thing Where his brain does not track what the idea of a spoiler is And he makes no apologies I think I told you like maybe a few trips ago when we were working and something was happening and he just started telling me the end of something. And I said, Dad, don't tell me the end of this. And he just barreled through and told me the end. And I go, why did you just do that? So last night we're watching the show and there's somebody who is a major character on the show who as of we just got to the penultimate episode of this season. Right. It is looking for all the world like this very sympathetic and very primary character in the show might actually be the murderer because of, you know, a bunch of evidence that seems to be emerging. Now, here's what I know about this show. Anytime. They're making us think that someone did it, it's always like that person didn't do it. Obviously, that's how these shows work. It's like if they if if they telegraph it too hard, then, you know, that like, well, that's the big the the big twist is going to be it wasn't that person. So I already kind of have a sense of that, but I'm enjoying the experience. I'm watching the show. It's going to the credits. And then my dad just goes, well, that guy didn't do it because he's in the later seasons and he's not in jail. And I go, why did you just tell me that? And he goes, what do you mean? I'm not I'm not spoiling it. I go, that's literally the definition of a spoiler. And he goes, I'm just using my logical reasoning. I go, I go of watching all of the seasons of this television show. Your logical reasoning of just ruining it for me. I go, does mom get mad at you about this?

Did he say, yeah? He goes, I'm sorry, okay? Is that enough? And I was like, I guess. I was going to ask you, because I'm looking this up, and I see that they just wrapped up their latest season. Season 8 just aired in November and December. But that's new. That's new characters, I think.

We're still in the Jimmy Perez phase.

How far back? Any idea?

I think we were on season 3 or 4.

So you're way back, yeah.

We're way back. And it's like, but it's funny because my, again, I can't overstate this. My dad is really just the sweetest, kindest person that I know. He, he would never do anything intentionally to ruin anyone's like day or experience. But this is the weirdest thing that he, like his brain cannot wrap itself around the notion that that's ruining the experience for me. I was like, why did you, why would you tell me the end of this, or at least as it pertains of this character why would you tell me that and Eddie and it's not even like he's speculating because I want to make a point speculating is one thing we all do that you're watching a show with someone and you're like oh I think it's that person or oh I don't think it's that person that is fair game anyone I in my opinion is allowed to speculate all they want but when you just have the benefit of having watched all the other seasons and you know that this character is like not incarcerated in the future seasons that's that's not speculating that's just taking a giant steaming crap on the final episode of Shetland season three or four or whatever it is

so you haven't gotten to the part where Rona Kelly's car gets into that fiery crash and it just impacts the rest of the no do you even know what is that a real character do you know what a Rona Kelly yeah I'm just looking at is Rona Kelly the district attorney does she have black hair uh let's see it says Julie Graham as Rona

kelly procurator fiscal i don't know what that means fiscal pro i don't know who that character i think i'm maybe we're in season three are you on season four no i was just i mean i just pulled this so randomly i just pulled somebody who says they were in seasons two through five and seven so i was trying i actually in my joke of trying to pretend like i was spoiling i was actually trying to be somewhat careful to make sure that you had heard of this person but that i wasn't

Could you do me a favor and, like, hip Walt to that idea of being careful? I know that. But, again, what's fascinating about it is that it is totally out of character for my father, who is just such a sweet, loving, thoughtful person. Like, he never would ever want to make anyone's day worse. But this is this one thing that he just, like, does not give a shit about.

I want you to look at Julie Graham's face and tell me if you know this character or not. I don't know why I care. I've never seen this show before. The listeners probably think I'm nuts. But if you type in Julie Graham Shetland.

Yeah, yeah, she's the, I get, I'm thinking, yeah, I was calling her the DA. I guess maybe the term, you know, it's, Andrew, it's Larrick. It's Shetland, okay? They have different terminology. But she's, if I understand right, I believe she is like the district attorney of this particular island. And has to, so our guy, Jimmy Perez, he interacts with her. But it's funny because he will just storm into someone's house and go, I'm charging you with this. And I'm like, I don't think that the tech maybe that's the rule over there as far like the police don't charge you. Am I right? The police don't. Well, I guess they charge you initially. Right. Who charge? You think I would know more with all the trouble I've gotten into my life. Who charges you? Is it the police? I guess you're arrested on charges.

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. So technically, I don't know.

It's it's it's a little confusing because I think some of it is like they're just because they're just making juries. Sure, there's often a grand jury inquest I just wanted to throw another word out there Sure, voir dire You know who voir dire is, right?

Isn't that part of the jury duty selection? Yeah, see, you try to play

You play dumb We know you've been in a lot of legal trouble I thought we were just naming legal things We were, I love it The other thing that he did Yeah, that, LLC Okay, this was actually much less like intentional and more just like not reading the room but like this morning I'm like on the treadmill I'm in here on the treadmill and I'm huffing and puffing and I'm listening to a podcast on my on my air pods and I'm like I'm kind of in the last like maybe half mile of my little running exercise and I'm it's I'm I'm it's taking a certain amount of concentration for me uh and uh willing myself to do it because i was feeling a little tired and i have again this american life blaring in my ears and i am in a zone i'm just staring at the display screen as it so on the display screen of my my nordic track treadmill which to this day andrew is still trying to make me sign up for some service called i fit but i figured out how to i just have to click basically two tiny little things that go manual sad manual and then i'm then i have what i need so it shows you like a picture of a track you know a quarter mile typical track and then that little like a little progress line goes around i need that progress line so i was gonna ask you people need air it's like and some people it's funny because like becca doesn't ever like to know what the progress is like she'll do um she does all kinds of exercise stuff including um she'll plank you know what planking is where you're kind of like doing a push-up type position But she'll have to do like two minutes of plank And if I'm at her house, she'll go, okay, time me But she'll be like, don't tell me Until the two minutes is up And I'm like, whoa, okay I would rather know You're at a minute, you're at a minute and a half We're calling the ambulance Like, that's what I want to hear I need progress reports for myself That's how I get through the stuff Is like, okay, like I have a whole For my little jog that I do On the treadmill, that is I have a whole system and then when I have one mile left which is four laps so when I have one and a quarter mile left it's five laps so now I'm on one hand is what I tell myself so in other words five laps is five fingers so when I go from being like when I have eight laps left obviously two hands I get excited when I get down to one hand which is five laps and then I tell myself four laps which is that's a mile four laps and I just have all these weird things that I do to sort of like, just keep myself from despairing. So I'm in like, I don't know, I have two laps left, and I'm also, this week's This American Life is quite compelling, and so I'm just like engrossed. And my dad has come into the Madrona Hill studio to talk to me about something that he needs to talk to me about, which is fine, but he just, all I know is,

i'm just jogging and then i just hear so when you're done he's he's yelling he's yelling at me to get through the noise of my headphones and the treadmill which i sort of understand but there's no like walking over and waving in front of me like hey i'm here or like tapping me or like just standing in my line of vision there's none of that what there is is just yelling to me from mildly out of my field of vision which any amount of cardiovascular benefit that I'm enjoying from this exercising was more than undone by the minor heart attack that I had I could not have been more in another world I was in two other worlds I was in the world of this American life and I was in the world of trying to gut out the rest of this jog and he pierced through both worlds with yelling at me and I seriously just screamed the f-word like I had one of those reactions like this is a thing on like tiktok where they um you know there are people that have a really strong kind of startle reaction and a lot of times they're kind of partner or spouse and this is pretty cruel I think they'll just start like setting up a cell phone camera and then just intentionally scaring this person starting I hate that I'm a

high strung person um and my my old roommate I had a brief period where I had a roommate in college And like he would come up behind me and startle me and I jumped out of my skin. It's terrible.

That's not it's it's it's one of those things that for the people watching it, when someone has a really extreme startle reaction, it is sort of funny because, you know, they're not in danger. But the problem is when you're having the reaction, your body is not realizing you're not in danger. Like that's what that is. and so all of the stress hormones and all of the bad experience of a momentary thought of I'm in danger you really have to have that experience which is that's why I don't think that's particularly nice thing to do my dad was not doing that on purpose my dad was just trying to talk to me about this washer dryer that we're putting in today but it was so startling Andrew I don't think I've ever been that startled in my life like and it was just because of this particular weird moment where i happened to be engrossed in listening to something and engrossed in looking at this little quarter mile track slowly turned from white to blue two it was two engrossments it was two engrossments outside of ebbing missouri and i was i was i literally was like my poor dad he's such a sweetheart but i was like i just yelled the f word really loud and then i was

Did you almost stumble or something on the moving treadmill?

Shockingly, I didn't, which is a miracle because the deal with me on this treadmill is I run on the treadmill way faster. Like I said it at a much faster speed than I run when I'm running out in the wider world. Because what I do is I run a shorter distance on the treadmill. But it's in the running community. They call it speed work. I like basically run not as far, but I run for me way faster. that's like the deal is uh so harder work but for a shorter amount of time to the point where it's totally like i've thought sometimes i'm in almost like i'm not going to say a sprint but i'm in like a very pretty hard run for me like from a from a gate standpoint if i were to stumble i kind of picture myself like bonking my head on the treadmill and then just sliding off it's just like propelling my body off of it and that's how they find me yeah i can imagine that not a good outcome yeah but i didn't in this case i didn't stumble thankfully because seriously it could have it could be sort of a bad deal i'm i'm i'm at a going at a pretty good clip for me when i'm when i'm doing that but no i just was mad though i was like dad what are you like like you what and i i took my head my airpods out i was like what and he was like well when you're done just you got to come in here and uh let me help me with the thing i was like okay can you like just wave or something he's like oh okay and then he just leaves the um that story like i can't like

Like, being in the room with a person who doesn't kind of understand spoilers or whatever, like, I feel like I've gotten taste of that in my life. And it's funny, like, I've been in a conversation with somebody saying just, like, stop, stop, stop, but they kind of can't stop. It's an interesting phenomenon. This one, I didn't know where you were going with it. I don't know that I can, like, kind of recreate that exact experience in my head as you describe it. But one of the reasons why was because I got the impression that this is a kind of a common thing, that your dad – because, like, I'm somebody who wears headphones around the house a lot now, right? And I have been for a while. I finally recently switched from like big over the ear wireless headphones to just like, you know, wireless earbuds like the rest of America uses. And so that helps as far as like Genevieve calling to me from another room or walking into the room and me not seeing her and her talking to me because it is sort of a weird move. I wonder how other couples feel about that. Like, is it rude just to have earbuds in at home all the time? But anyway, I thought that. maybe your dad just sort of has this habit of constantly doing that to you but it's like it was almost out of character and that's what made it so like shocking to you or startling to you in

that moment my I will say this my dad has a really unique relationship with perceiving how do I put this he's got two he this is the first time I can remember him startling me like this but it's because it's not very frequent that I have headphones on and I'm trying to jog so this was a unique situation but the fact that he just walked in the room and didn't think oh that could be a thing that throws someone off when you and and that he was yelling because and the reason he was yelling was because he realized that i was listening to something and on the treadmill so he was trying to get my attention but that's a unique situation but the other thing that he does that's confusing to me is i will be walking through the room let's say it's the area that we're doing the primary work which is going to be the living room and kitchen and stuff and i'll be starting to go upstairs so i'm crossing the room i have laundry with me in a basket i'm going through this big open area and i'm about to go up some stairs and it's a closed door behind me he'll start talking to me when i'm like 70 through the room at a just normal speaking volume well something that we need to do and i'll go be going up the stairs and i'll just hear him continuing at a totally conversational volume as i go up the stairs go down a hall go into the room that i sleep in dump out the laundry he's just talking to me and it's no no amount of his volume of his voice has changed he's not like oh hey stay here i need to clear that like it's like i'm like talk about magical thinking like how do you in what universe am i hearing anything you're saying like i'm upstairs also i'm like half deaf at this point like i legitimately have pretty lousy hearing from wearing these headphones for the last 20 plus years of work experience and it's like i guess i'm just i feel like i'm hypersensitive and maybe it's because of the kind of work that you and i do like energy work is what i mean i'm opening a practice here it's mostly reiki and some sound

healing no but like the amazing thing is we're both working on that together yet this is the first we've actually put voice to it uh-huh well that's how strong the energy is that's exactly we

didn't need to speak about exactly like i think i feel that i'm very aware of if someone is able to if someone is picking up what i'm putting down like if my dad were walking out of the room or starting to go up the stairs because sometimes it'll be like i'm literally two steps up the stairs and i just hear him in the background talking to me but i'm already not in the room and then he just continues to talk to me at again a normal speaking volume and i'm now upstairs and i'm just like how did how did anyone think that was gonna work as a way of talking i feel like i'm very like is this person listening to me are they all also i mean are they even looking at me maybe this is just my narcissism am i talking at a volume that's loud enough for them to hear me Should I wait till they come back in the room? Do I need to shout so that it can be heard in the other room? Like, I feel like I'm is what I'm about to say worth saying.

Does that ever? Well, no.

I mean, I think the listeners will testify to that.

No, sorry to interrupt. But one thing that Vives and I say all the time, and I think I started this because Genevieve is and I don't want to dunk on her. And also she may be able to overhear me right now. But Genevieve is a person who will just kind of start talking to me from another room. but Genevieve is also the type of person who will sometimes maybe talk to herself, not as much as me. Again, I'm not trying to dunk, but, or, and Genevieve is also the type of person who will hold a conversation with one of our cats, you know? And so if I'm wandering around the house with earbuds in, sometimes it's kind of difficult to tell like, you know, who's being addressed. Um, one thing that I started doing, and I think Genevieve does it a lot now too, to me, is we'll just say to each other, are you an earshot? Like I can't tell you how many times a day that I'll be like, are you an earshot? And if the answer is no, and if it's not important, I'll just wait if the answer if I don't get an answer I should say it'd be funny if I said are you an earshot and she just said no but that's the ultimate flex it really is nope but anyway yeah and also even being in the studio like Genevieve's desk is right around the corner but I'm often sitting here with my headphones on sometimes reviewing tape sometimes just with my headphones on so it kind of blocks out sound accidentally too see that's to me that's a good

that's a good system hey are you within earshot and then you just know that's and you know again i want to say all i want to i want to say that if in any of these cases if i ever said to my dad hey hey pops other than the spoilers he just seems un he seems unbowed on the topic of spoilers he just it's i literally think it's his only the own other than the cigars it's the only bad habit he has it's all it's the only enjoyment he gets in life but like anything else like if i was to say hey, Pops, I can't really hear you when I'm in the other room, so you might want to just wait until I'm in the room with you or if I'm upstairs. He would go, oh, okay. There's nothing behind it. There's nothing passive-aggressive. It's just, I mean, he's also a guy who has not heard of Fleetwood Mac. There's just, the more time I spend with this dude, the more mysterious.

he becomes to me like how are you 70 and you have not really you're vaguely aware of the band like what like that was that was a big thing in this country in the time when you would have been i mean grand i think that he was moving into his sort of life as a very christian person who wasn't like listening to non-christian music but like you think you would have seen a a poster somewhere you could have been like walking through a department store and they're playing don't stop thinking about tomorrow like it just seems like that's stuff that would enter your consciousness

but it just doesn't 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 andrew this is not technically an email or v-mail but it is something that has been emailed yes and probably v-mailed and instagrammed and emailed to us Bordering on hundreds of times at this point I say this semi-frequently on the show You really start to know Kind of what your brand is with the listeners Based on the kinds of stories That really light up their imagination And then are sent to us a lot And it turns out our descent Into sort of Rizzler madness of late

Digging at your gap for the Rizzler You're so skibbity You're so phantom tax I just want to be your Sigma Freaking come here Give me your Ohio

Our descent into madness with that song Which has spurred so much conversation About kind of what Gyat might mean And, you know, rizzing people up and stuff It made quite an impression on the listeners Because when the Oxford University Press The publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary Released their word of the year It was in fact Riz And people have been telling us about this A lot, a lot Because it's been making the news And because we've been talking about Riz a lot Yes

This is You said there were some dazzling details in there So I don't want to take away from that

Well, what I was trying to say to you yesterday Is there's at least one or two more things I think your thought Well, I don't want to tell you what your thoughts are on this But my sense is These kinds of things might feel a bit like The Oxford English Dictionary looking to get a little earned media once a year by declaring the quote-unquote word of the year, and then everybody talks about it. I think what jumped out at me a bit about this was what one of the experts they talked to, his name is Casper Grathwold, who is the president of Oxford Languages, which is the dictionary division, said that Riz actually has some interesting features above and beyond sometimes other words of the year that get picked. Usually shortened forms of words Are taken from the start of a word Like app Which would be application It's weird they use rhino Is another example By the way this is a piece by Jennifer Schussler In the New York Times Let's see Not refrigerator though That bucks the trend Are you reading this article? No So smart I was going to quiz you on this Andrew So you are having some W's

no no i flood really really turned your brain on buddy you went into fight or flight this morning

at 7 30. probably gonna crash hard everything's firing on all cylinders i didn't know where you

were going with that but i was just sort of i like word games so i started thinking about it yeah

because i was gonna say andrew can you name i only can because there are two of them are listed here one of them being fridge um usually shortened forms are taken from the start of a word like app or rhino or the end sometimes like hood or bot but what's more unusual but not unheard of abbreviated forms yeah neighborhood or robot um what's more unusual is abbreviated forms that come from the middle of the word so fridge is one riz is one yeah and can you i have no pressure but Can you think of another one here?

Wow, this is fun, but I don't think it makes for great podcasting. But the listeners, let's give the listeners. But that is interesting. Yeah, maybe that's why. Because I was going to say to you, like, you know, we went really hard on that silly song that you play. And, you know.

Nothing comes to mind. By the way.

That's the wrong one. And when you introduced me to that New York Times article about all these slang words and that sticking out your gut for the Rizzler song, you might have told me this, and I'm guessing you already knew. But one thing I did not know that I've been getting a lot of emails and voicemails about is that that was already an existing song sticking out your tongue for the camera that then this kid. Did you know that? No. I think this is the version here. I think it sounds a little bit different, but, oh, and I honestly do not know if I have the right version.

version here i'm not spoofing you on something but um let me just play it because you know how this is you know way better than i do that like this is news to me though everything you know this was some song on tiktok that then this kid you know put those slang words to and i believe

there's an f-bomb in here somewhere if i'm playing the right version oh my gosh oh there it's supposed

to go a little bit let me hit play one more time this is like welcome to tiktok yeah and there's another one that i know had the uh this is iconopop oh they cut that one off short well there you go but it's like effing something i don't know who it is i keep on trying to track down i think somebody told me in a text or something It's so impossible, by the way

Like, I mean, this is the oldest of men yelling at the oldest of clouds, Andrew That's why people come to the program But, like, it's also part of why I'm so error-prone on the show Is, A, because I'm just, my brain is Swiss cheese But also, it's so hard to figure out Because everything is so many layers of now inside jokes and referential That, like, even to figure out what that song is If I go to TikTok, because I'm seeing someone who's using it on TikTok but I can't it's so hard to get back to the source of material sometimes yeah and you know I guess

I guess trigger warning on this it looks like the artist's name originally is suicide idol I think maybe if you google that you'll maybe get the sorry if you've bowed down to false idols

yes exactly sorry if you're a Billy Idol fan who's sad that he never had a hit after white wedding

trigger warning um oh sorry let me see if this is the I'm just trying to google this on the fly I I mean, some people hipped us to this.

So I will, again, I'll just restate. I had no idea that the sticking out your ghiat for the Rizzler. Yeah, this definitely sounds like you got the right song.

And then it goes on from there. And so, yeah, I think that's the original track right there. Although it does say slowed slash TikTok version. This is what I mean. I still don't think we're quite there That's chopped and screwed

Right, I mean, and again I think that's somewhat owing to our age But somewhat owing to just the fractured media landscape That we currently inhabit It's not terrible So often the version of a song When we're talking about TikTok So often the version of the song that becomes popular Is like the sped up version Or the slowed down version It seems pretty rare That a song I mean it happens, but it seems pretty rare That a song is just released by the artist And it goes right on to the platform Of like TikTok And then becomes hugely popular there It's so often a kind of weird Like you know Somehow adjusted version That just randomly catches on And then becomes the point of obsession Okay all of that is to say By the way that explains so much more It also The whole Why would you be sticking out your ghat Right It's kind of irrelevant

Because somebody was spoofing on this song Right

What they're parodying is the lyrics Because at the very beginning of this I was going Well why would they We were trying to get to the bottom of what Giat actually What part of the human body that refers to Or giat or whatever people might want to say It was like well why would you say sticking it out And you were even saying Well what do you stick out You stick out your tongue You might stick out your rump That's a young youthful term Yeah rump

Yeah definitely derriere

Yeah But So it makes so much more sense now Because they're just parodying that song And so that's where those words got sort of slotted in Here is what else our linguist from Oxford likes to say. Again, the person's name is Casper Grathwell. There are words that do use, Andrew.

What was the third word that uses the middle thing? Or is that what you're about to tell me? That's what I was going to ask you.

If you want to try one more, if you want 10 more seconds to try to figure this out, it's a word that uses the middle of the word. Oh, nice.

Oh, I thought you were going to give me more of a hint. Do you want to give me a hint?

Oh, I can. I can. It's actually something that is seasonal, and we're in the season of it right now.

It's a wreath, because the full word for wreath is roundy wreath-y thing.

Yep, yep. God, that was a good hint I gave you.

Well, that goes back. I mean, I was leaning on sort of my studies. The old tradition. Poland. No, I give up. This is terrible. Flu. Flu. Influenza. Right. Damn, that is satisfying.

right yeah it's kind of fun right yeah the other thing so part of according to the new york times which again i feel like led us a little bit wrong the the whole how about wait tabula rasa means blank blank slate is that what tabula rasa yeah it's not tabula rasa what do i want what term am i looking for when i say the kind of genesis of this like the original text the original manuscript on the topic of Riz for this show and for me was that New York Times article, right? What that New York Times article failed to mention that would have been relevant information is that the whole song, that song was based on the Sticking Out Your Tongue for the Camera song. That would have been really helpful to know, actually.

Yeah, and I do wonder, and also, I didn't read that whole piece, honestly. You told me about it, and I was sort of scanning it while we were talking about it, but even the mystery around Giat and the origin of that, That should have been explained better too

Well and if you would have said it's a parody song And these are the lyrics of the real song Then that explains There was a lot That would have been really helpful So we're back at the New York Times Andrew We were in a very dysfunctional relationship With the New York Times writing on the topic of Riz We're back at the New York Times And here's what the New York Times is saying But again, caveat The failing New York Times So caveat emptor They are saying that part of what really rizzed up the term rizz was when the actor tom holland was um doing an interview with buzzfeed recently and they were asking him about his rizz and so tom holland is like spider-man right he's the actor that plays spider-man in those movies and i believe he's dating zendaya um and he seems to be you know a person who's having a pretty good life for a young person And he said that he has no Riz whatsoever. He said, I have limited Riz. And that created a bunch of memes, according to the New York Times. Now, here is what Casper Grathwal says about that. He said, I hate to be a linguistic watchdog, but Tom should know that limited Riz is still Riz. He's not being very precise. So, in other words, if you have limited Riz, you're still doing better than me, who has no Riz. Well, no, but even you saying you have no Riz is a form of Riz. Oh, he's saying that by observing it, you're changing. By low-keying your Riz, no cap. Okay. By observing the Riz, you are changing the outcome of it. Yeah, Schrodinger's Riz. Listen, low-key, by sort of understating your Riz, no cap, bet that you still have Riz. That's going out to Langley.

This is so cringe. Okay, can I bring up another topic? Because this kind of just came in front of my...

Only if it's short, because I've got to go move a washer and dry.

Okay, yeah, actually, I think this will be short. But I'm just actually interested in this, because you brought up... I mean, I guess I brought up the topic of bowling on the show yesterday, and the fact that I think I'm in the market for some bowling shoes of my own. Because if I'm going to be bowling at all with any kind of regularity, I don't want to be renting the nasty shoes at the bowling alley anymore. And they really are near the end of their life. They should replace those shoes. But anyway, that got us talking about, like, why do you need to wear bowling shoes? And we, I think, covered some pretty good theories on that off the top of our head about, like, getting a little bit of slide when you bowl. And also, you know, the people who run the bowling alleys being concerned about tracking in outside dirt and debris that then can get ground into the wax of the floor or what have you. I did get an email here with a video attachment. And I see that the video is only 30 seconds long. So I want to play it if that's OK. This is from Alan. I know this email. Oh, did you click on the video?

Is it worth playing? No, I haven't clicked on the video, but I read the email from Alan.

Yeah. So Alan says, remember the last time you watched or heard an NBA game that squeaking of the player's shoes on the court is exactly what you don't want while bowling. And that's kind of, I think what I was saying, like that, the almost visceral feeling of running up to the lane and then stopping short like that would suck. But anyway, so Alan submitted this video. This is a video, 30 seconds long, bowling tip number 11, why wear bowling shoes? And this is from WBBZ TV. I'm guessing one of those B stands for bowling, but I don't know. And it's a video of Doug Heim of the National Bowling Store.

I'm Doug Heim of the National Bowling Store. I just said that.

By the way, I haven't heard any of this tape, but it feels like intro tape to me.

I think you're right. I'm very excited about this. I'm Doug Heim of the National Bowling Store, and here's your bowling tip of the week. Bowling shoes are designed to slide or glide as you approach the foul line at the front of the lane. Don't try bowling in sneakers or street shoes. This may cause you to stumble or even stick and slip awkwardly over the line onto the oily lane. Even worse, your street shoes may leave a rubber tacky spot that will cause other bowlers to stick. to be

saved the sorry i hope this helps now let's go bowling that is amazing that was produced oh you

know what uh by the way that's great intro tape i think that absolutely works let's go but also maybe i'm thinking of a different email because i was under the impression i i didn't click on the link but i i what i was expecting we got an email about like why it is that you shouldn't wear street shoes there and the nba thing that all jives but i thought what we were going to hear And the tape was what it would sound like If you had an entire bowling alley Full of people wearing their regular Kind of rubber-soled shoes And it would sound exactly Now here's the thing I gotta say I love the sound Of basketball shoes On a gym floor It's like right up there With like a lawnmower running in the distance In April for me And it's because, you know I grew up playing basketball and it is some of my fondest memories were playing you know middle school and high school basketball and it's just that sound I just spent hours and hours and hours of my life running lines now by the way running lines really sucked I didn't like that part of it but that sound is very comforting to me now maybe not at a bowling alley and again you know I'm willing to concede that it's better for the whole situation yesterday I said I don't know why it is that we have to wear these shoes And I'm willing to admit that there are some good reasons.

Yeah, definitely. And I don't I don't think that Alan was implying that we don't want that noise in a bowling alley just saying that, you know, that sensation, that phenomenon of what rubber does to a court or whatever. And so I that's how I interpreted that. But anyway, I'm glad I did have a chance to hit play on that tape.

And it seems like again, we I think I think that that has all that is all the makings of TBTL intro tape.

And that was number 11, man. I mean, that implies that there's at least 10 more.

Andrew, I hear a winter game.

I don't know what is the game.

The existence of an 11th bowling tip presupposes the existence of 1 through 10.

Man, if I weren't so shy about people seeing us recording, it would be fun to do a TBTL from a bowling alley, don't you think?

What do you mean shy about people seeing us recording?

Oh, you mean the bowlers. Yeah, just other people in public. Phyllis and I did a show years ago from Kenmore Lanes, and I don't – you know what? I've done a TBTL from a bowling alley. I don't need you. You're just embarrassed to do it with me? No, Phyllis was cool. I forgot. I remember pulling tabs with Phyllis, and I think she won at Kenmore Lanes, and I think that was all caught on tape. I forgot. We actually – I think we were rolling while we were rolling, I think. I should go back and listen to that and probably be filled with deep embarrassment on my hosting skills.

You've got sump pumps to electrocute yourself with, my friend. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourself. Stay dry. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

So I had that song stuck in my head. But, of course, as an old, I'm messing all the lyrics up. But my mortified youngster informed me it goes a little something like this.

Speaking of your Gap or your Riesler, you're so somebody, you're so phantom tax. I just want to be your stigma.

Power out. Power out.