Muse

Okay, the computer is tabulating. Oh, you got category I9C3G6.

I9C3G6. Is that as good as it sounds?

You have a robust sense of self and are well-suited to leadership positions. Characteristics, strength, determination, tenacity.

Yes, I suppose that's accurate. They do call me Tenacious Ray down at the country club because for the past 10 years I've been suing them for discrimination.

TBTN! CBTL, I love your imagination and your imaginary show. I've got to have that thing on 24-7. I love the patter.

We can save any segment we've done in the past, okay? Remember that segment where we did the world's fattest pets? Glenn lost all the tapes? We made that work. You mean when we got those two rabbits and we tied them together to look like a big fat one? Yeah, people loved it. They bought it.

I see you exhaling, sir. We're going to be with you in just a moment. You've got to be patient, okay? We're very, very sorry. Our apologies. We apologize to you. You will not have to wait that much longer at all.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host, coming to you once again from just off of Chumstick Highway, mere miles from the beautiful Bavarian village of Leavenworth, Washington. The final day here, final day of our special improvised recording scenario. Tomorrow I will be back at the Madrona Hill studio. I'll have my full complement of audio drops. So let's all just get through episode 4096 in a collector series together. And really, let's look forward to tomorrow's program being a lot better. That being said, we've got some good stuff to talk about with you today on the show, including what I think is a major misunderstanding on Instagram. That's it's I don't know if I would say it's impugning my character, but it certainly may be people misunderstanding who made what joke to whom. So we're going to talk about that. Also, I find myself oddly intrigued by the new Grand Theft Auto video game, as does the estate of Tom Petty. So we'll explain what's going on with that as well. And we'll talk to this guy, the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's baby-stepping. He's doing the work. He's Andrew Walsh, and you're joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, and I also just flipped a switch at the very last minute that saved the show. I won't tell you why. I won't get into the details.

Were you not recording yourself?

I just promised I wouldn't get into the details, but we're recording in a way that I didn't quite realize today, and I realized at the very last minute, right before you opened your mouth, that I needed to take you out of the mix on my recording. And it was like an action scene in a NASA movie? Or was it like a NASA scene in an action movie? I'm not sure. One of the two. But either way, man, wow, very deft on my part, I must say.

You know what it was probably like? it's like you're trying to figure out if it's cut the blue cord or the blue wire or the red wire and the timer is counting down on the bomb and right when it hits zeroes you've just basically said screw it and clipped one of them and it turns out it's the right one so nothing happens

exactly in fact I made a reference to that exact trope just yesterday and it's been a while since I trotted that one out but we got a Christmas tree yesterday So we are fully in the holiday spirit here. Well, half in the holiday spirit. It's not decorated yet. But Vives and I went to the tree farm yesterday, got a tree. And they do this thing in modern America that you may have heard of, which is they kind of bag it up for you in one of those nets. Can you picture the Christmas tree net so it's nice and tight when you put it in your car? And that net is made of red and green wiring. And as Genevieve was cutting it off, I said, do not cut the green wire. Do not cut the green wire. She laughed. She's still probably laughing about it on her way to work right now. Probably thinking about how much she loves me and loves living with such a wit.

I forget which movie it is. It might be part of the Die Hard franchise. I feel like there's a lot of Bruce Willis' character, a lot of John McClane needing to try to decide between. No, you know what? I'm actually remembering now the movie that has, I think, the best bomb-diffusing blue wire, red wire situation. And it's one of the Ocean's movies. I think it might be, it's either Ocean's 11 or Ocean's 12, but it's the guy who is assigned to go in, and again, I don't even think it's a bomb. I think it's something related to the heist, okay, but just go with me on this. It's some complicated wiring situation, and the guy who's supposed to do the complicated wiring situation is from Danny Ocean's crew. He has written down in...

pen on his hand what the directions are but then he starts getting nervous he starts flop sweating and he starts wiping his hand and then he wipes all the ink off and i find this so relatable because i feel like if i was if i was part of danny ocean's crew and i was tasked with this i would definitely write it on my hand with a pen as opposed to like you know texting it to myself or printing it out or doing something smart memorizing it i would write it on my hand

in ink and that's not true well the printing out in your in your brother printer okay i probably would although the toner is getting low on that you know what i'm playing sneak the printer into the into the mark you would like paper number one like the caper before the caper is me getting my

printer into the bellagio hotel in las vegas you need a contortionist to bring the printer in the tiny little box. Andy Garcia, owner of the casino, the Steve Wynn-esque figure, sees me walking through the hotel with a giant birthday cake. He has no idea that in the birthday cake is a brother printer that I will be putting in the hotel room so I can print out the directions to how to diffuse or rewire the whatever is being rewired. But there was something very memorable to me about the guy accidentally wiping the ink off. And I believe it's even on his forehead eventually because he's wiping the sweat I just think that was a really good device I really I stand by that that I think I've maybe only seen the first two but that first Ocean's Eleven movie I stand by that being a solid solid heist movie it's been a long time for me but I agree those

are that's my memory of it I believe the first one was was really good for that genre I didn't realize heist was a genre until I met Genevieve and she is a she's the biggest fan I know of the heist genre and so we were watching a lot and I also don't know maybe they were having a bit of a moment in the early 2000s but I feel like I mean you had David Mamet's heist which is aptly named um and the others yes Crab Rangoon and things of that nature etc etc Becca and I were

what were we watching what was that that we were watching oh we were watching a documentary about this town of leavenworth because i'm here doing a tv story about it because it's a very it's a kind of a quirky christmasy town that has an interesting backstory which is that they basically invented it 50 years ago like it was just a regular city a regular small town that was really kind of failing because the lumber mill had moved and they just came up with this thing but so i was watching this documentary kind of uh about the town called like miracle town or something and one of the people being interviewed said i forget what they were referring to but right but what they were saying stimulates the five senses they they said this town stimulates all five senses smell sound etc etc and we started laughing so hard that this person got two Senses into the five senses And then just immediately hit the eject button For et cetera, et cetera

Yeah, because I do wonder how touch and feel Kind of works into there

I mean, that was the thing, too Even that part seemed a little bit of a stretch But it was just It was like, I don't need to bore you all With the last three senses We've hit the big ones, et cetera, et cetera It was the kind of thing What I found, you know what, I'll grab this tape And maybe I'll, because I have this digitized on my computer because our producer Anthony called out to his friend and my friend David in Seattle who's an editor and a producer to go to the King County Library find the DVD of this Leavenworth documentary because it didn't exist anywhere on digital and then digitize it and send it to us so there were meanwhile yesterday we were at the Leavenworth Museum and we were I was I was sort of bragging about the lengths that CBS television went to to get a digital copy of this documentary. And the very nice woman who sort of runs the museum said, oh, we have that on DVD here in the gift shop. It was like 10 DVDs of Miracle Town. But I have it on my computer. I can grab the audio. What's amazing about it was that the guy didn't even pause between the second thing he said and then when he went, et cetera, et cetera. That was what was really unique about it. usually it'd be like it stimulates all of the senses sight smell and then you have that moment where you can't kind of come up with the next few sure and then and then you maybe a second and a half goes by and then you hit the eject button then you cut the blue wire there was no time between as i remember it there was no time between he was like sense it was like taste smell etc etc like it's it almost seemed like the plan was always to just go shift into etc well this is embarrassing that I can't remember which GOP politician it was. But we used tape during our – we did a series of TBTLs, like I don't know if it was Summer Games or something a long time ago, based on the idea of regret. And I had pulled that tape of – who was it during the Republican presidential debate, I'm going to say like eight years ago, who said he wanted to cut several departments and then they asked him to list them on stage?

That was Greg Abbott from Texas who then said, oops.

Was it definitely Abbott? That doesn't seem right to me.

No, no, not Abbott. Sorry. Who was the guy before him? No, Abbott's the current guy who sucks. There was a different guy who sucked before him. Sorry. Yes. Well, now I'm putting you on the spot because I'm the one who raised it. It was Rick something, I think. Yes, it was. And he followed an interesting, not an interesting so much, but a – Perry. Rick Perry. Rick Perry. Thank you. He followed this thing that has happened kind of to DeSantis too, I think, which is I feel like you're a popular governor of a red state, and then you kind of get anointed as like maybe uh you know the next kind of republican nominee and but see this was back in the day where being manifestly idiotic on stage was actually considered a um kind of a deficit a deficit i mean that's that's one of the ways things have really changed i believe for that party but like yeah rick perry kind of uh getting confused about some like cabinet sort of you know whatever some kind of thing he was going to eliminate

You wanted to cut the Department of Energy and Education of one other or something? I might be wrong about that. I can't believe I forgot Rick Perry's name.

Well, I can't believe I thought he was Greg Abbott. So what are you going to do? But then him just kind of messing that up and going, oops. It was like that was enough of a kind of a gaffe that that was one of those things sort of like Dukakis on the tank. That was back in a time when you could sort of do one dumb thing. And, you know, Howard Dean yelling about we're going to go to these states and yeah.

Yeah. Which to me, that's more of an audiovisual story. Right. Like an A.V. kid story. Like he was just, you know, he was frazzled. He was at the end of the campaign. This one was close to my heart because it happened in New Hampshire, you know, while I was in New Hampshire. But it really was. I feel like it was the way he was miked and you couldn't hear the crowd. And his scream sounded especially unhinged because of a lot. I mean, he was slightly unhinged, too. Like you are after that that marathon of campaigning to what was it he did he win New Hampshire came in second in New Hampshire, but it gave some rallying speech anyway, but he came off as unhinged and somehow that was his undoing, which just seems like such a weird undoing.

That was back in the day when having a lot of online support was still sort of – the question was if that would translate into real support because Howard Dean had built this huge online kind of fan base and donations and was this darling of a kind of younger, more online group of people. And I remember all of the Brit Humes of the world kind of sitting around and going, but will it translate into – and then everyone was just kind of waiting for it to fall apart. And somehow that moment of him being like, heaven forbid, a person is overly excited about their political campaign. And you're right. I mean, do you think, what do you think the chances are that Howard Dean's political future, and we might say the, essentially the arc politically that this country has been on, do you think that the future, what we now consider the present, but what at that time was the future of America, came down to what someone had a fader on a sure mixer doing?

Yeah, right.

Like, the guy in the room in New Hampshire who didn't have the audience mic'd, he didn't have the audience, he maybe had a mic'd, but it was in the wrong place and he didn't, he forgot to bring that fader up. Could that have changed the course of American political history?

Right. This is why you always want audience mics when we're doing a live show. Just get the sound of the room. Let's get the sound of the room, people, here. Oh, my gosh. The fate of the country of the free world depends on it.

And we're going to need, honestly, later to sort of sweeten it. we're gonna need to add some applause and some laughing and that's a given but at the very little at the very least we need to really make the living tweedle out of this audience please yeah that is something that uh let me take it from like you know kind of i don't know boring av to an even more boring place which is my performative process but like that is something that can really throw me sometimes on stage particularly if i'm doing live wire speaking of live wire my friends tomorrow night revolution hall portland oregon dave hill will be there the band quasi will be performing hari kandabalu also but sometimes when i'm when we're not at the alberta rose theater if they don't have the monitors so those are the things that me and elena are hearing when we're on stage we don't wear like headphones which i don't really know why that is we're making a radio show but somehow we just have these speakers and they don't like the the sound people don't like the speakers to be turned up very loud because that can go into the microphones and

There's something about being on stage. I mean, you and I had an extreme version of this at the Minnesota State Fair that we've talked about endlessly, where, like, there's something about being on stage or being in front of a group of people and not being able to get any sense of if it's working with them. Like, you're talking, you're making a joke, and just nothing is coming back to you. That is wildly disorienting.

Yeah, definitely. I felt like I was so isolated from the world. Well, in a certain way, I don't, you know, we're a little pressed for time here. So I don't know if I need to just like, I realized I was having dinner with friends last night. Like, even when I say I have nothing more to say on a topic, if people just go silent, I have more to say on that topic. Like, I just throw words at things. So we don't have to go here. But I recently got, I think I told you, my first set of wireless earbuds. And it took me a while to kind of get used to the plugging up of the ears. Like, I've never been comfortable with that kind of earbud. The last like earbud that I used to use were like the really old school, like probably first generation wired, like kind of iPod kind that were like kind of flat, like a little like a tiny dime or something that you would just sort of stick in your ears. But then they got more and more invasive, like they're kind of going down the canal. Some of them have rubber tips and it really can shut out the world. And it's been a bit of a transition for me going back to these earbuds as opposed to, like, my over-the-ear big black headphones I've been wearing instead.

I have those AirPod Maxes now, which is a very deceiving name because they look nothing like an AirPod. They're a giant over-the-ear Apple product that you've probably seen people wearing. But the funny part is they're still called AirPods. AirPods. I think of an AirPod as very much relating to like the thing I'm wearing right now, which is, I mean, I'm wearing an Apple headphone, you know, corded headphones in my ears. And then I've, I guess these, I don't even know what I would call these, but the AirPods are definitely a specific thing to me. The kind of thing that lives in a little chargeable case, you put them in your ears. There's, so calling those big over the ear things, the AirPods is weird to me. Like when I'm trying to find them in the Bluetooth, you know, kind of roster on my phone, I'm like, oh yeah those are called airpods but they're just maxed but i'm just now finally really getting used to those because those have a an intense noise canceling function and they've also got something that i was using in the airport at lax at like six in the morning on sunday andrew which was they have this other setting that turns them into what we used to call miracle ears or the whisper 2000 oh really do you remember the ads for the whisper 2000 yeah absolutely yes So these things have a like whisper, they don't call it that, but they have like a whisper 2000 setting. They call it the whisper max. They have a setting that, if I understand this right, so there's sound canceling, which it kind of makes my head feel, it makes me feel a little, a slight bit like vertigo. And like, it's almost too much. It feels like my head is slightly in a vice grip. I can't quite explain it. Or it feels like I'm dunking my head underwater. it's like it's it's an oppressive amount of noise cancellation that i don't really love the sensation of i'm trying to get more used to it but then there's like you can just turn them to like nothing is happening like they're not doing any noise canceling but they're not doing any sound enhancing and then there's one i think though the third setting which is you can hear better than normal and i was using it walking around lax before my flight early early on sunday morning and it was i'm not trying to say this i'm not trying to be glib for people that have really dealt with this but andrew what it felt to me was what it must be like to be having a sort of a mental health crisis because i could hear everyone i could hear people having subtle conversations in the like chevy's express that i was walking by while they were getting a breakfast burrito like everyone that was i was just i was it was it was like i could just i was plugged into

everything i had tapped into you felt like professor x in the x-men movies when he goes into that special little room where he can hear everybody in the world i think i got that right

i'm gonna trust you on that um because i have not seen that film but yes that's what i felt like i was like i can all of a sudden i can hear everyone in the vicinity and it was it was kind of like it was weirdly thrilling and also kind of unsettling it was like i could hear everyone's thoughts and that's when i started to think i'm slipping here like maybe this is not maybe this is not a good setting for me but here's the crazy part i don't even fascinating though i know that we've said

this before on the show but it really gives me hope as as i get older and my hearing gets worse like the for not for the better certainly for the worse you know uh uh hearing aids were always sort of stigmatized when we were growing up which is why you came up with whisper 2000s and things that seemed less medical or whatever but like now we're our generation and everybody younger is walking around

constantly with doohickeys in our ears why not have them also be hearing aids of sorts now the

other thing andrew that i'm trying to figure out on the fly is if that is even a setting how crazy would it be if this is something that i imagined and that the power of suggestion i think that i read it somewhere but i'm trying to actually confirm this i also typed with one hand because i'm holding my telephone close to my mouth with my other hand with one hand i typed airpod max extra hearing setting which as of right now is not uh is not giving me super let's see there's something called live listen um with your airpods in your ears and connected to your phone or ipad open control center on your iphone tap the hearing button tap the live listen button i don't know if that's i i still need to get confirmation on this if this is even a thing because let me tell you what oh transparency mode okay that's what i need to figure out What is transparency mode exactly, and how do we bring more of it to the U.S. government, Andrew?

You know what that might be? Because these are some settings on my – because of safety concerns, like you have noise cancellation on my earbuds. You have noise cancellation, but then you have some setting, which mine are not Apple, so it's called something else. But it's basically like a noise cancellation that lets some sound through so that you don't feel unsafe crossing the road in busy traffic or somebody coming up behind you if you're walking late at night. Like it's a it's like a selective noise cancellation, maybe that lets some things through and maybe what it was letting through for you was somehow feeling enhanced.

Maybe so. Yeah. Transparency mode lets outside sound in so you can hear what's going on around you. But I don't know if that means it's actually enhanced sound or just the sound, which means I'm so suggestible that I thought that I was slipping into an X-Men slash mental health crisis just from being able to hear normal amounts of sound, apparently. So that might indicate something that I'm working through.

It could have been weird, though. It could have been like that thing where it was canceled. You've talked about this a lot before, and I'm saying this to myself, not you. We'll probably move on. But I'll bet you there's some noise cancellation that's working there where it's sort of like killing like kind of steady sounds, but it's still allowing and specifically technologically on purpose, letting certain sounds in for safety purposes or whatever. And I'll bet you it seems like those are it just might not sound natural. It might just sound maybe so.

And maybe because it was because it was kind of filtering out some of the sound. It was making the things that did get through sound very crisp and, like, enhanced in a way that wasn't actually enhancing. By the way, they should do that. If they're not doing that, why are they not doing that? Like, why are we not turning all of these devices into something that is also an aid to people's hearing? Like, does that seem like a no-brainer?

It sort of does, although it could have to do with privacy issues. Can you imagine if Apple had a big announcement like, hey, the new earbuds allow you to increase your hearing, and then people are like, oh, great, so I'm in a restaurant now, and that guy who's sitting alone is like magnetoing me, which is another X-Men term that I'm using incorrectly.

I'm reading a website called MarkEllisReviews.com. AirPods Macs take transparency mode to the next level, whether it's because of an abundance of the mics or the higher fidelity of audio, I have no idea, but the feature absolutely sings on these cans. Nice use of cans. That's the non-gross way to use the term cans, Andrew. This man loves cans, and we mean headphones. It's important to note at this juncture that transparency mode doesn't simply turn off noise canceling and open some sort of valve to enable outside sound to filter in. It uses a mic to amplify the sound around you. As a result, it sounds slightly synthesized. It's hard to describe unless you try it, but with transparency mode turned on, it's a bit like you're listening to a high-fidelity recording of your own life. I love it.

Oh, interesting. So it is mic'd a bit.

According to MarkEllisReviews.com, I'm not that suggestible. I did not like completely invent this with my brain. This was a real technological thing that was happening as I wandered around the airport early Sunday morning.

Well, I'm on a website called ReviewsOfMarkEllisReviews.com. Dot biz. Reviews all of his reviews. So I'll get back with you tomorrow. Okay, good.

Yeah, you know what? Why don't we thank some donors? You can just kind of check out and read up on Mark Ellis, and then we'll revisit it in a moment. thank you baby hey let's thank some donors these are the wonderful generous folks who are supporting tbtl with a donation they are folks like james hayes of south orange new jersey

I'm thinking of New Jersey today, Andrew, because the wonderful actor Andre Brower has passed away at age 61, and he was a tried-and-true resident of New Jersey. It was mentioned in his New York Times obituary this morning that despite the fact that he was a pretty big Hollywood star and filmed a lot in Los Angeles, he refused to move out of New Jersey, which I love that about Andre Brower.

That's a real sad one. Yeah, absolutely. He was a very, I mean, his character on Brooklyn Nine-Nine was like no other character on television. That one really hurts.

And that is, of course, why we started with a little audio from Andre Brower this morning. So, yeah, rest in peace. I mean, it wasn't until I went back and was sort of revisiting his career that I realized that the thing that was so interesting, the kind of really interesting, I don't know if you'd call it symmetry of his career or bookends of his career, was that he first came to the awareness of a lot of people, myself included, in Homicide, Life on the Street, which he was incredible in. That was kind of like the first David Simon, you know, real tough Baltimore-based police show that made it onto TV, and he was just so good in it. And then he was also so good in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and he was, again, playing a police person, but just from such a different kind of approach. And he just nailed both of those characters. And David Simon, I think, said online yesterday that he said, I've worked with a lot of fine actors. And if you think of all the stuff that David Simon has created and all the amazing actors and all of those things, and he just said, none were better than Andre Brower. I mean, that's an incredible – that's not Michael Bay saying I've worked with a lot of fine actors, but no one's been able to run from an animatronic transformer like Andre Brower. That's like that's a that's a high compliment to say that of all that whole kind of oeuvre of the of those of those very serious, you know, police based shows that Andrea Brower was the best. That's really something. So, yeah, rest in peace, man. Mackenzie Sargent is out there in Seattle, Washington.

Nice. Thank you, Mackenzie. I say this every year, but it's worth saying again, I would not have had lodging for the Thing Festival out there in Port Townsend. Had it not been for Mackenzie and her family handing over their reservations that they were no longer using.

You're really hitting the listeners up for a lot of stuff that I wonder, you know, kind of like, is it payola? Is it plugola? When does it cross the line for you?

Is this where I have to admit to you and the audience that a very kind listener named Ryan gave me a shop vac this weekend? Do I have to report that on my taxes?

Not just to me, but on your taxes, both federal and state, my friend.

Thank you, Ryan. Good luck with your move. He had heard about the flooding here, and he said, I'm literally taking this to the resale shop right now just to donate it unless you want it. And I was like, I do want it. So thank you, Ryan.

You are just... I'm breaking it in. It's something that I think about every time I submit my CBS travel expenses. Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered. Just remember that. Just think about that, okay?

That's the most threatening thing you've ever said to me. It's from The Wire, written by David Simon. Hey, really quick, not to hold this up, but I should go back and watch Homicide Life on the streets, huh? Like, in my head, I always combined it with just, like, all those, like, you know, all of the procedurals that are, you know, that popped up in the 90s and early 2000s, and I just kind of put them all in the same bucket. But I forgot that that's a David Simon thing that I should actually watch.

yeah it was it's it seems like the it kind of was the sort of reverse of how that stuff usually tends to go which is david simon was a was a homicide reporter for the baltimore sun for many years and then wrote a book i believe called like homicide and then it was developed into a network tv show and then that network tv show i guess did well enough that he had the cred to then go to was it showtime was the wire on showtime maybe i feel like the wire was hbo okay i wouldn't but he had the cred he had the cred to then go to one of those premium television networks and then make the wire which was you know i guess you might say um you needed to really concentrate when you were watching the wire like it was you know it was sort of like something that you get to make i guess when you when you've proven that you can make this kind of show and now we trust you and now we're gonna let you do your thing because i'm sure that there were a lot of notes at first like you know people may not know who these characters are there's not enough explanation there's you know the patois is very specific to baltimore to a certain part of baltimore etc but um yeah homicide life on the streets that had some classic belser some richard belser in it it was just a very my memory of it watching it years and years ago was like it felt to me like oh this is much closer to how folks in these jobs really operate than And say, you know, even something like NYPD Blue, which I loved NYPD Blue when I was younger because I thought that was a very true to how policing worked. Now that I – Because everybody had butts. Everybody had Dennis Franz's butt is why I thought it was true too. And that is exactly why Chandra Benjamin used to – would never miss an episode of NYPD Blue. That's true. Chandra is in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thank you, Chandra. Caitlin Neely. Caitlin Neely is in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Is this Research Triangle territory? I believe it is.

Yes, nice. I've been told it is, the Research Triangle. That would be, what, Chapel Hill, Winston-Salem, and Rick Perry. You did it. You got there. Thank you, Caitlin. Thanks to Daniel G. Crawford of New York, New York. That is not part of the Research Triangle. Why did they name it twice? So nice, Andrew. So nice. And also because Winston-Salem was taken. Right. Sure. Thank you, Daniel. And then Laura O'Neill Dunn. Andrew, I think Durham might be the third part of the research triangle. And that is where Laura O'Neill Dunn is. Durham, North Carolina. Is it Durham, Chapel Hill, and Winston-Salem? Is that the research triangle? I'm willing to sign off on that. Hold on. Let me put on my AirPod Macs. Let me put them in transparency mode so I can magneto into this topic. Anyway, thank you so much to all of our donors today for keeping TBTL happening.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

All right. The Top Story today, at least the one that I really need to get to because it was referenced on yesterday's show, was just a little thing that went around the Internet, little to most people, but big to me, Andrew. It involves our show Instagram feed. And what I really need to do is reach out to John Sklaroff, TBTL employee numero uno and senior VP of finance and operations to find out if he understands who joked whom. Here's what happened. Some time ago, I was texting with our friend Nora McInerney of the terrible thanks for asking Media Empire, the TTFA Media Empire.

Should people listen to that show?

I don't know. Are we officially doing a promo swap right now, Andrew? Because I don't get out of bed for less than a back-scratching, a.k.a. a promo swap. I will only discuss this program when we are formally within the brackets of a promo swap.

Nora said she'll give you a shop vac if you promote TTFA today.

Well, by any means necessary. Yes, of course, we love Nora. We love the TTFA universe. but uh Nora and I were texting at some point I don't I feel like this was a couple of months ago and the thing that is funny about uh our friend Nora is that she very she often texts in like all caps Nora kind of texts the way that she talks with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and energy she's not a low-key person and she's not a low-key text uh friend but the other thing is that she will have her notifications on like silent or quiet mode so you'll be texting with her she will text me all caps something which you know i love nora and i'm i'm here for this but it does feel like sort of like yelling or talking in a loud voice nora will text me in all caps thing i will respond to her in not all caps and then the immediate response will be nora is in silent mode right now and i'm like are you you're in yelling mode you just yelled at me but then when i respond to you i get your auto thing telling me hey um nora's at a silent retreat right now so if you could just take a moment and really consider if you need to send her this message so i sent her a text that said something to the effect of do you know how unhinged it is to send someone an all caps text and then have it in silent mode for some reason a few days ago our friend nora decided to post this on instagram and at me but here's the thing i think the internet thinks that this was nora telling me that it was unhinged what i did because it is not clear from the from the photo you know that she took who is telling this to whom and then our our tbtl instagram feed reposted this and just said like hashtag team nora i found yeah i i here's the deal

you had said on the on the show as you sort of teased this topic yesterday you'd mentioned that there was something going on and in fact we had a miscommunication at the end of the show yesterday i think it was yesterday um where you specifically said instagram feed but i didn't hear you say the word instagram i thought you just said feed so i

thought it was an issue you had with me like posting shows into the podcast feed I just felt the need to clean that up because I went back and I listened to it I'm like oh I didn't realize we're talking about Instagram here after all of that and I had no idea what you were talking about I'm just like kind of you know clicking through Instagram stories and before I saw Nora's post I saw the tbtl one and I don't which was just like a repost of her thing with maybe another comment added on top of it and I definitely don't want to throw John under the bus here John has taken a non-existent Instagram feed for TBTL and I believe moribund yes was the term that was being used around the internet to describe our yeah exactly I mean I'm terrible at updating social media for the various projects I work on and so John has totally transformed that and made it a very fun place on the internet to get some TBTL and I'm not just saying that because I'm sure he's listening to this but I love what he's done but I will say that maybe it's my age but sometimes people like re-gramming and then re-gramming on top and re-gramming on top it gets a little confusing as to who's saying what and when it's a screen cap of a private text conversation and it's kind of been run through this instagram mill i'm looking at the tbtl account i'm like what is what is this who's saying what to whom and why yes and i was very and why is it why is our feed

why am i suffering through this internecine fighting with the tbtl instagram feed that is going hashtag team nora when what they are really should be saying is hashtag team luke because i don't think our instagram feed aka john understood that i was the one who was saying it is unhinged and then honestly i feel like this is some degree of stolen valor stolen valor on the part of uh of nora mcinerney because i don't she is she no dummy god didn't god didn't make no dummy she she's posting this in such a way that i think it's intentionally opaque who said what to whom it is

true although when you have the when when you know what luke i'm going to use the i word here influencer when you're an influencer with as much influence as please don't i'm just going to say it um you know that uh just her just just her tagging you in that and just knowing there's some engagement there that can't be bad for us i know but but it's like am i is my self-esteem

that low i know what you mean any engagement from someone with a absolute fire hose of an account like nora has just a just she's just putting it out there on the blower she's got hundreds of thousands of instagram followers yes her adding me and by extension adding the tbtl extended universe that's good for us but am i just gonna let her just let her am i gonna let her let her large group of followers think that i was all capsing her on silent and then she had to set me straight

am i that much of a beta cuck that way yeah oh wow i'm gonna just accept that kind of treatment

yes yeah the ultimate beta cuck move yeah um okay the other thing i want to talk to you about is uh grand theft auto 6 and so the way that i got into this story was i actually saw a headline that said that, like, downloads or streams of the Tom Petty song, Love is a Long Road, which I love, by the way, because I did, buy is the wrong word, but I did acquire the Tom Petty CD Full Moon Fever through the Columbia House CD of the Month Club. I say didn't buy because, you know, I had paid one twelfth of a penny for it at that time. But because that was the days that when you got a compact disc you just listened to it incessantly front to back and memorized every song it was like at all 12 of the i don't think there was one of those 12 cds that i received that i didn't know from absolute front to back from first song to last song i think full moon fever is a really good album but i actually i don't know if i would say it's even tom petty's best album it was the one i had which is why i know the lyrics of the song dancing at the zombie

Zoo. Dancing at the Zombie Zoo. Yeah, not the peak of Tom Petty's catalog. Paint it in a corner

and all you want to do is dance there at the Zombie Zoo. You look like Boris Karloff and you don't even care. Dancing at the Zombie Zoo. I just know it because it was on the CD and I knew everything on the CD. By the

way, I had that on cassette and I'm pretty sure that that is the album where Tom Petty has a special message to cassette listeners.

Hello, CD listeners.

Hello, CD listeners. But why was he putting it on the CD? I thought it was for the cassette. Was he just saying, take a pause here while everybody else flips their cassette?

I think it was some kind of meta joke. I know that it's hello, CD listeners, because I have it loaded in. I used to play it for some bizarre reason. And I think it was some kind of inside joke. about the fact that you don't have to turn the cd over or whatever like you know that the technology is sort of different but like that was on there i believe you know i i mean i i do love that i love that album but again mostly because it was the thing i had and so love is a long road i um i knew that song pretty well and they are using it in the kind of trailer for grand theft auto 6 vice city and i want to start this by saying i don't understand any of the nuance of what is vice city what is is is there a grand theft auto that is independent from the grand theft auto vice city world are those two different worlds or is that just what we call grand theft

auto now there are um this are like i think you just said this this is the sixth iteration of the game and some of them take place in different cities vice city is basically a fake name for miami so i so it's always in miami no it's not because there was ones that take place in a fake New York called Liberty City I believe that was like so they take place and I don't know if I don't know enough about it to know if it's taken place in any other cities but I know that a classic version of the game took place in Miami and it was called Vice City a different earlier iteration did take place in Liberty City I don't know if they always bounce back and forth or whatever but these are kind of open world games where you can decide aside from all the violence that people who haven't played these games have probably heard about it's also like kind of you know it was a big game changer as far as like just having a video game where you don't have to just like follow a certain path but you can just sort of wander around a city and listen to a radio and and switch the stations and walk into various bars and do stuff like that that's really

interesting i think i was uh confused by liberty city because liberty city is a neighborhood in miami florida that's that's definitely a neighborhood that sees a fair amount of crime and and you know illegal behavior and so when i saw that there was a vice i knew there was a vice city that was set in south florida and then there was a vice city that was called liberty city i assume that they had just moved over to liberty city but that one is in new york now i'm nervous

but i'm pretty sure that liberty city was a stand-in for new york city okay that would make

sense with the statute of liberty and everything so this i gotta be honest with you i so i saw like oh love is a long road is popular again because they put it in the gta uh you know trailer and then i went and watched the gta trailer and like i was i what the here's what my brain told me like when i watched it i was like oh i get it why people like this like not even that i will probably get the console and get the game and start playing it and to be honest with you there's a lot of it that gets into like, you know, you know, sort of like adult dancers backing it up and all kinds of stuff that's, you know, it's sort of, it's exactly what people think about Grand Theft Auto. It's a lot of people doing illegal behaviors. It's a lot of drug reference, a lot of violence. It's a lot of sexual content. I probably wouldn't personally, for me at my age, with me being the person I am, I don't know if I would want to inhabit the world of going around and doing the things the characters do. But what I got, maybe it was a Tom Petty song because I just liked that song a lot. but I just got this sense of like oh this is why people dig this like this is an immersive world and this is a place where you're basically just like you're getting to act out and live out this kind of scarface type fantasy of just complete and total you know aberrant behavior if you choose to in a consequence-free environment because it's not real life I mean this is the sims with so much more sex like i just was like this stuff has never spoken to me video games have just the modern version of video games has never been appealing to me but i watched this and i was like oh yeah yeah yeah i could see myself getting lost in this world if i had the whole setup

and the funny thing is for for me it's despite the imagery and what the missions are and the violence and the griminess of the game now I actually did play Grand Theft Auto a little bit in Los Angeles but I was playing Grand Theft Auto 4 I think I bought it on a whim because they had already released number five or something like that and it was really cheap and I was like I've never played these games before why not and I played it on my PC this was when I was living in Los Angeles and this was also around the time that I think I discovered Minecraft which is a very, very different kind of vibe, but also a completely open.

How do you build a stripper pole in Minecraft?

Use fence posts. It sounds like something you've given a certain amount of thought to and maybe have done. No, but I'm very proud of me for figuring that little engineering task out immediately. But anyway, for me, I was amazed by the open-worldness of it. And again, I know that this article that talks about the Tom Petty song's popularity based on this trailer, even many.

mentions that like oh some Tom Petty songs were available on various radio stations like you could play this game for hours and just flip through the radio they had talk radio too that would even give you like updates on what was going on around Liberty City now it was on a loop it wasn't all like new AI generated content but they had big these radio stations had huge playlists and you could just like drive around at night and forget about the mission of trying to like you know knock off some drug dealer somewhere and just sort of like wander around and apparently this new version which keep in mind like this is a trailer this is a this tom betty song is so popular now because of a trailer for a video game that's not even going to come out in the next year no way for real 2025 right now 2025 this video game is coming out um and the technology has come so far that it's all it's not quite but it's almost photorealistic or video realistic to watch this trailer um and and and thus the video game itself but apparently the verisimilitude of the city of miami is ridiculous i know this because of course you know i'm obsessed with the dan lebitard show and they're in miami beach but like lebitard watching this video watching this trailer just like they're just like they're going into bars that i know it's not just like i recognize this street corner or that mailbox like you can wander around and walk into establishments that i spent my 20s in or 30s or whatever it was that would be a trip what about yeah gta 7

roosevelt city and you go into teddy yeah what about gta 8 port townsend hey if you need me uh i'll be down at oh my gosh how quickly do these things whiff out of our brain Andrew there was a I can't believe I can't think of what the the the uh there's a particular bar that everybody goes to in Port Towns and you got to go up a bunch of stairs um and man there's like four bars in Port Towns and I couldn't name one of them right now oh I think I had yeah I think

I've been there a couple of times with you before yeah and they turned into a karaoke place and I think we did some karaoke with some tens um yeah and I can't before thing yeah we we need to get

on to emails and v-mails but have you you probably haven't because I don't think you play in the tiktok space as much as i do but there's this thing going around where a woman will like say to her male partner name a woman and the guy can't do it like literally the question is name a woman and i kind of attribute that more to just like people tend to freeze up when put on the spot i will tell you this i have i do have a woman name ready to go if becca hits me with that it's joan baez but like i think it's important to prepare for these things i think what happens is somebody turns to their like boyfriend or husband and just says like name a woman and they just lock up but i just basically locked up on name a bar in port townsend when most of what i did when i lived in port townsend was haunt the local bars i can't believe i can't believe i fumbled that bag so hard

if beck ever asked you to name a woman just say rick perry it'll only be funny to me later but

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female oh man It's not from a female.

All right. Emails or emails that are striking your fancy.

Yes, Luke. Do you remember when you told a story about the NBA All-Star game from 1987? No, I don't. That doesn't sound like anything to me. Well, we were looking it up on Wikipedia to kind of get all the details of the events of that All-Star weekend. And Megan called in with this story.

Hi, guys.

This is Megan.

Oops, I kind of made a mistake there. Let's try this again. Here's Megan with this story.

Hi, guys. This is Megan in Seattle in Wallingford. And I went to the 1987 All-Star Weekend. I would have sworn that we were just at the Coliseum. I don't remember moving to the kingdom, but if Wikipedia says it's so, it must be so. But the reason I'm calling is that our dear friend Mike Frizzell somehow finagled a job driving Charles Barkley, his favorite player, around All-Star Weekend. And that is why the FBI interviewed Charles Barkley when Mike was a fugitive in San Diego. Barkley was, I believe, extremely perplexed. Okay, power out.

Okay, so let's unpack there if you're unfamiliar with... The history of TVTL and our relationship with Drew McFrizz, Mike Frizzell. But, yeah, of course, convicted bank robber. We've told his tale many times, and he's told his tale many times on the show. But also, really getting into some Bill Braski territory here, if you're familiar with the SNL skit of Bill Braski. I feel like the legend of Drew McFrizz grows every time I hear.

another story about him yet all of these stories end up checking out so during the nba um i almost said playoffs all-star weekend in 1987 somehow he finagled his way to driving around charles

barkley i mean this is the first that i remember hearing of this it's possible that you know this had come up in a previous conversation maybe on the show or even just in you know off the air but you know i don't remember that like this is this feels like new information to me and if it is it's so wild that this wasn't this story didn't even make the cut for when we had him we had him on our show for i think a week telling the story and this is of course our friend mike frizell who passed away uh rest in peace mike we love you um but uh if this didn't come up in those And maybe it did, and I just forgot. That was a long time ago, yeah. It just speaks to what a wild life this person had. And also, I can tell you this. It didn't come up at Mike's memorial in Austin that Phyllis and I and Bobby and a number of other folks from the TBTL world all went to. And again, you're being memorialized. And in fact, one of the L.A. radio hosts who had the show that – maybe he was a San Diego radio host, but one of the guys that hosted one of the shows that Mike was actually guest hosting and calling in on when he was one of the most wanted bank robbers in America, that guy was talking about Mike. And he didn't bring up the Charles Barkley thing, and that would have been a perfect opening. You're a sports radio guy. You think he would know the Charles Barkley angle, but like that just speaks to Mike's really, really interesting and unusual life that he lived. The thing I would say to Megan is maybe it was in the arena. It seems weird to me or key arena or whatever we called it in those days because Wikipedia is saying it was in the kingdom and it was also in the arena. But if they were going to do it in the kingdom, why didn't they do the fan fest in the kingdom? Why would they have it in two different places? And by the way, those are far apart. Like, you know, it's not a convenient, they're not next to each other, where the kingdom used to be and where the arena was, the Coliseum, I guess we called it in those days where the Sonics played. So I wonder if Megan's not correct. Megan might be correct that, like, it was all happening in the same place and Wikipedia just has it wrong. Maybe, you know what I could do is if I can find some footage, maybe this is what I'll do tonight when I get back home because I like this kind of stuff. This is like you, I'm trying to think of what, this is like you and DartBot hanging out. Me and the 1987 All-Star game hanging out via YouTube would be really fun for me to kind of look around and see if I can make out what, because I can tell the difference between the Kingdom and the Coliseum. I know because I saw the Sonics and the Bulls play an exhibition game in the Kingdome when I was a kid, and I went over to where the tunnel was, and I reached out. I cantilevered myself out over the tunnel, and I patted Michael Jordan on the top of his head, and my memory was the top of his head was so soft, like a baby's bottom.

Were other people touching him? I don't think so. I think that was just a 14-year-old Luke Burbank move. I mean, you know, people try to pat their shoulder. I don't feel like I was violating the bodily autonomy of Michael Jordan at that point, personally. But I went to that game in the kingdom, so I know kind of what the – I think I can spot the difference between the kingdom and the Coliseum in terms of basketball games happening there. So maybe I'll try to figure that out because, Megan, my hunch is you're right. My hunch is it all happened in the same building. But the fact that Charles Barkley was interviewed – you know, by the way, that those people just want to talk to Charles Barkley. yeah right there's no way they didn't need to know that mike drove charles barkley on a golf cart that was not important that was a couple of fbi it was a couple of g-men who were like oh we could talk to we could we could rope charles barkley into this whole thing why not that would be fun

did you know that michael jordan appeals to all five senses including which ones touch uh-huh

etc etc etc that's right uh you know this show this episode of tbtl has appealed to all five senses smell certainly touch stinky etc etc etc all right that's we're gonna wrap things up today thank you so much everybody for listening uh i will be uh back at the madrona hill studio tomorrow lord willin and we're able to get out of the uh the area that is leavenworth along the snowy highways and byways so we'll see you then with more imaginary radio in the meantime take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all Hello, CD listeners. We've come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette or records will have to stand up or sit down and turn over the record or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we'll now take a few seconds before we begin side two. Thank you. Here's side two.

Power out.