Muse

I didn't fight enough to eat today. Boy, I'll say. Well, that's great. Would you care for some ham or beef? A little of both, I think. All right. Making friendly conversations like this is a big part of greeting and serving guests. By greeting the guests warmly and holding brief conversations as you serve them, you say to our guests, we're glad you're here. Let's take a closer look at greeting guests. You might ask something like this. Is it still hot out there? Or this. Did you catch a game last night? Or this. Have you tried the lasagna? It's my favorite. Don't forget to hold quick conversations with our younger guests, too. Start conversations with children by saying something like this. What grade are you in at school? Or this. Have you decided what dessert you're going to have? Or this. Do you like hot fudge sundaes? Serving the guests. Here are some guidelines for knowing how much meat to serve a guest.

I'd like a half-inch slice of that roast beef, please.

Say something like this. I'd be glad to carve you that. Thinner slices are more tender, though. Would that be all right? How's that for you? That's fine. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter to the knife if it's cutting through a ham or your finger. Do you like hot fudge sundaes?

Yeah.

All right. TBTL.

Are you out of your mind? You're putting your entire future in the hands of the man who put radio on the internet.

The man or beast that I run from ain't been born, and his mama's already dead. That is something everyone cannot like together.

You guys are so fun, just relentlessly fun. I keep thinking, when are they going to stop being fun? And the answer is never.

When they bring that high, hard one in, I stand in and lean back and then just bam, and it sails away out through the universe like a radio wave that goes past Saturn and Jupiter, Pluto, through the black hole and into many other galaxies yet named.

Listen, please, please, please. If anybody doesn't know the difference between a valance and a jabot, I really need you to leave.

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

Guess where? You just got into Cool Guy Zone.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. My name is Luke Burbank. Bring it back home, baby. Bring it back home. Happy to be back home, bringing you episode 4124 in a collector series.

This is a serious message to everybody watching my update right now.

Speaking of me being back home. Let the fun begin. I got home from New York Saturday night, really late. It was actually early Sunday morning. And showed up at my house here adjacent to the Madrona Hill studio. I get emotional even thinking about it. And, well, things were, the scene was chaotic. It was literally a major disaster. But not in the way that I was worried about in a different way that I had totally not even factored in. We'll talk about that. Also, a 12-year-old audio clip has resurfaced on the internet of two NBA TV announcers arguing with each other, and it's...

I mean, I figured he had to be in sport, but he wasn't in sport.

It's pretty awkward audio tape. It's also pretty awkward that multiple media outlets just ran with it, just thought that it happened over the weekend. Me, but a humble podcaster Even I had The journalistic rigor to just Do one quick Google To figure out that this was actually from 12 years ago But anyway, it's kind of sad How many media outlets had to run with it And then retract the fact that this happened 12 years ago But also, the guys involved In the moment A guy named Ian Eagle And a guy named Mike Fratello A.K.A. the Tsar of the Telestrator when I was growing up. They're saying it was a spoof. That's a pretty good spoof. We will listen to the tape and let you decide. That's right. This is the podcast where it's your decision, America. We're going to go to the decision desk and we're going to play 12-year-old audio from the NBA and let you decide. This guy has decided once again to show up and show out as the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's coming to us on this Monday morning, hot off of attending a train show. But that doesn't stop a foamer. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. I know what it means to show up. Sometimes.

I actually do it

What does it mean To show out Show up and show out Is something That has Popped up more And more in the Pop culture My sense is that It has its roots In sort of Black vernacular But I just think It's kind of like Showing up and then Putting on a good show Oh dear That's the spirit In which I intend it

Oh dear That's a lot of pressure You expect me to put on A good show today Luke How about You show up

And that's just the kind of end of the statement Because you've done that much You're here, you've shown up

That's as far as I've planned I'll be honest with you

I want to know about your cosplay as a foamer This weekend I saw on Instagram pictures of Small train stations Because somebody went to a train show

To be clear here There were no photos of me at this Train show And I certainly wasn't dressed up as a foamer Although me and Hauser, we're talking about it. I went to this train show with our buddy Hauser, a.k.a. What do you call him?

J-Dog.

J-Dog. Yeah. That's a good name. And he texted me kind of randomly a few weeks ago and just said, hey, do you want to go to the Great American Train Show? And without even looking up what it was, I just said, yeah, of course I do. And then I got a little bit more details after signing up for it. So first I showed up, and then the details showed up. Yes, exactly.

He's going to show up and take pictures.

It was at the Puyallup Fairgrounds. It was like a, you know, it was like a hobbyist and enthusiast show. They had some, a lot of like model train tracks set up for display purposes. And then they were also selling, you know, a lot of vendors there selling, you know, little train cars and engines and all kinds of trains. Losers, in other words. Oh, geez.

Come on. That was an accident. Yeah. I have thousands of pieces of audio tape

That one just happened to fire right there It was a good time I like meeting people

I don't even stand behind that joke I was just spoofing with you Like Ian Eagle and Mike Fertella But no, it actually looked really fun And I think it might be my advancing age But that's the kind of thing that I would totally go to on the weekend And find it to be very enjoyable

Yeah, you know, when I was a kid, I found myself at very, this was smaller than something that would have been at the Cleveland IX Center or the Exhibition Center. But, like, as a kid, for various reasons, we would go to things like sportsman shows or, like, hunting outdoor shows.

Was that when you were selling the Andy Man Grill?

Yeah, I didn't have a huge hand in that, but, yeah, it was like my dad.

Other than being its namesake.

Exactly. You name it, and then you let it go if you love something. And then it dies, as did the Andy Man Grill eventually. But, yeah, my dad and uncle kind of were selling this grill for a while that they sort of, like, kind of came up with the design for. And so that was part of it. Or, like, a random boat show, I feel like, you know, just various reasons. Somebody would have extra tickets and you would go. And, like, there would be all these tables with, like, free stuff. And you'd be like, oh, my God, a floating keychain. You're just giving this shit away. Yeah. And as a kid, it was so much fun. Now, this was smaller scale than this. This was at, like, the probably exhibition hall of, like, the Puyallup Fairgrounds. What was the ratio?

Was it, like, 1 to 100?

Yeah, right? Well, here, I got one kind of funny story here. So there are various scales, obviously, of HO scale, which is kind of what I played with growing up. And then, I'm sorry, I didn't play with it. Disrespects the hobby in the art form. No, you don't play with it.

You fiddled with it? Yes. I don't know.

Either way, I went blind. but anyway then you have like n scale which is smaller and what is it i can't remember i don't remember all of them but um genevieve i'm gonna give you a little bit of a backstory here genevieve for a while i'm gonna say this is like five ten years ago or something she got into a little hobby kind of a self-created hobby where she was buying these very small square little canvases to paint on i'm gonna say maybe four by four i feel like i've seen a couple of those around your house You probably have. Yeah, we have a few hanging kind of by her desk. And Genevieve doesn't fancy herself some great painter, but she just likes getting into various, you know, hobbies and activities. And for a while there, she was taking these small little square canvases and then painting designs on them and incorporating these tiny little figurines, human little figurines. I mean, tiny. I'm talking like maybe a centimeter tall or something, but with a little bit of detail in there. And they were from, like, I think maybe N-scale train sets. And I remember even, it was fun. Like, we would go, I remember Googling, where's a train store, like, near where we're having lunch right now. We'll go see if we can find you some more people for one of your paintings, right? And so she did that for a while. Then I think she's moved on to some other hobbies. But while I was at this train show, I thought, oh, it would be fun if I bring some of them.

of these little these little characters back for Genevieve maybe she can bring her her hobby out of retirement or something so I'm going around mostly people are kind of selling you know actual train related stuff and it really runs the gamut you could spend you know thousands of dollars on a little engine or you could spend five dollars on a little used you know freight car or something but I did find one stand that had a couple of little cases of these little people maybe the They come, like, maybe six little figurines in a tiny little case. I'll send you a photo later. And so I'm looking at these. I'm looking at my options at this one table where I found these things, and the old man, and they're all old men. Like, literally, they're all old men who are running every single – whether they're vendors or showing off the train sets. They're all old men, and I assume they all have a kind of similar sense of humor. And this old man looks at me through his big thick glasses, and he says, Oh, you like those? I got some X-rated nudie ones back here. And I just thought he was joking. I just thought, like, yeah, I don't want your X-rated nudity. I mean, these are so tiny, these little figurines, you know? And you can picture it might be, like, they represent maybe various historic times or times in history, I should say. Or maybe it's, like, people waiting for a bus. There's various tableaus that you can buy a set of, right? And so I realize that he's kind of not joking. I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll look at your X-rated nudies. And he gets this glint in his eye. And now I'm thinking, okay, he's got some of these little figurines that haven't been painted yet. Maybe it's like calling a Barbie doll an X-rated nudie thing. I thought he was just goofing or something. So then he comes back around. It's not as sexy as sending astronauts to the moon. He turns around. He's got a couple new cases in his hand. And I was wrong. They weren't X-rated. They were not X-rated. Nobody was performing any acts. He said, yeah, yeah, I bought a whole. you know somebody was selling their whole kit and caboodle or whatever and i was going through it and then i found that they had a nudist colony set and so i got so they're playing so they're playing volleyball so it is a bunch of people on the on on a beach and and for as tiny as these are like there is detail in there like there you're wondering are there dongs yes there are dongs like like the one i mean the first one i looked at had like a a naked man and a little child holding hands and like kind of running towards the viewer and that again it was like so it wasn't supposed to be sexual in nature it was like literally a nudist colony right now they like to what do they like to be called naturists or something sure yeah that sounds that sounds right so i didn't get that particular one for genevieve but i did come home with some as he would say x-rated nude uh little figurines for genevieve mostly people sunbathing or sitting on a little tiny raft and what was her response oh she loved it she's like i gotta make a new painting you know

that i believe was her reaction i'm so glad that these were that was where the sort of sexual nature of the figurines or whatever stopped like how much would it have ruined your day if it was just hardcore situations that this otherwise sweet little old man brought out for you let me just put it this way it was a train show yeah right i remember the beginning of i bet you or maybe around the time vives was getting into that i feel like into the kind of paintings and then integrating little characters there was this real moment it feels to me like not in the early days of the internet but in the i don't know first five ten years of buying things on the internet being pretty pretty normal and like i don't know how to describe it other than this kind of recontextualization of pop culture in a way that i feel like was kind of new like a very ironic an ironic connection to pop culture that i don't think existed in the you know previous however many years and by that i mean i once purchased on the internet a tiny scale like with figure you know figurines and it was probably eight inches tall or something a little scene on a street where michael jackson was holding his baby out of the hotel room covered in the blanket oh yeah geez which you know is weird for about 50 reasons now but i remember it being somebody was online probably on some kind of you know very rudimentary web website where they would you could just pay them to or maybe they had i don't think i requested that one especially i believe it was one of the they were making but like they would make these little scenes that would be like a kind of infamous infamous moment in like pop culture history or something that's weird and wouldn't be memorialized usually but here we are memorializing it and i feel like it was a it was a new way to look at pop culture at least for me i guess maybe i don't you know i was in the um the met gallery over the weekend looking at lots of old paintings and some yeah so we both get around

that's right and um and i guess maybe as i'm saying that out loud i mean what were all of these paintings of these moments i mean really what was the crucifixion other than the original lol meme if you think about it there was no end of paintings of moments in history i guess maybe they were commemorating you know they were they were putting this down on you know putting paint to the canvas or something maybe that's not that different than somebody putting together a little scale kind of tableau like you said of Michael Jackson holding the baby out of the window it just felt I don't know to me like this is a funny ironic thing that's that's very new and cool now I don't know where that thing is and obviously I wouldn't bring it out because the whole topic of Michael Jackson is very very fraught yeah you don't want to be that to be the first thing somebody

comments on when they enter your new house hey nice porthole also what's that thing why did you

why is that sitting right behind the porthole why is that Michael Jackson character staring out the

Although it would be cool to put a tiny little tableau inside that porthole. See, that's the thing. That I could do. Yeah, like, I love, like, unironically, Vives and I both love, like, scale. Things of scale. Things of scale, whether it's, like, the super big cowboy boot and hat in Georgetown or the tiny little figurines that we like to buy and then set up into tableaus. Like, there's something about that aspect of play that just kind of never left me, and I think Genevieve, too. So that's but like, yeah, the your your little story, your little story that you just put there about the Michael Jackson tableau reminds me of like when my dad bought the movie Fargo on VHS, my friend. I mean, when Fargo was first released, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to like kind of make sure that I'm getting this right. it wasn't even dvd then it was i'm pretty sure vhs and we got it for him for christmas because he loved that movie but i think it was like the first release or the first christmas when it was released for like you know at home viewing and i'm sure i've told you this before it came with a snow globe of the scene of the wood chipper scene which i don't think we have to worry about spoilers on that movie at this point but somebody gets the wood chipper treatment and it's gory and And, like, you know, Fargo is a very dark comedy, but to make a snow globe of that scene where some of the snowflakes are red, like, there's something, like, so, like, shocking about that. But that goes back to, like, the 90s, the mid-90s, you know? He's still got that thing, by the way. It's on his bookshelf.

Speaking of my little adventures over the weekend, a couple of quick things before I tell you about the scene when I got back here. One is that we did go visit the live, I was going to say the filming of, but I don't know what you call it, the broadcast of All In With Chris Hayes, which was very cool. Might have been the highlight of the trip for Becca, which kind of hurt, but it was still really fun to get to see him and get to see him do the show. And he was nice enough to let us. There was a few guests, a few people visiting, but we were the only ones who were allowed to actually literally sit in the studio. everyone else was out in a kind of a foyer behind the glass and when we came in and then somebody very nicely like escorted us through the glass doors into the room into the inner sanctum where the journalism was being made i was like yeah we are special so that was kind of that was kind of exciting but as we were leaving the building uh i there was just a like a massive line of of of basically early 20s people out it was so cold in new york over the weekend there was a line stretching around the block and down other blocks at 30 rock and i realized these are the people waiting to get tickets for saturday night live because i only realized this when on sunday when i was back home but the guest was a guy named Jacob Elordi. He's in Saltburn, I think, and is, I think, the object of much affection in a certain age group. And then also the musical guest was a singer named Renee Rapp, who's in the new version of Mean Girls and is also very, very, very big in the culture. I think Megan Thee Stallion also was part of one of the songs. So it was basically like the most appealing to like 23-year-old American kids show you could ever put on. But this was the part that i was truly jazzed about as we were leaving we got some dinner there in the building and then we were walking out and it was probably like i don't know 11 o'clock and this is like it's a side street now this is not where the people are lined up this is the other side of the building and it's there's nobody out here we're kind of across from radio city music hall but it's like again it's 11 o'clock at night and people have gone to sleep because famously that's what you do in new york it's the city that has a reasonable bedtime and there's just a car kind of pulls up and a guy gets out of the car. He's talking on a cell phone and kind of walks past us. And we're having like a side entrance of 30 Rock. And I look and I realize, it's Lorne Michaels.

and i don't know why that jazzed me up so much because what was great about it was he's just working like he's going into the building at 11 o'clock on a friday night because he's got to like watch the sketches or see where things are at or i don't i don't really i don't know what his you know friday night responsibilities are but him showing up just to work and there was no security with him he also wasn't in like a giant you know stretch tahoe with black windows it was just i mean it was you know somebody was driving him and it was a nice car but it was actually fairly understated and no security he just got out of the car and was just on his phone want like like you or i would be wandering into cairo maybe on our cell phone not thinking about anything i was like that's the guy that's gonna go in there and make magic with

jacob elordi all i didn't know was jacob elordi at the time that's more interesting than like seeing him in a in a soup shop right a soup yeah exactly that's precisely yeah yeah right exactly

i couldn't figure out why i've you know i've met some pretty well-known people at this point for job stuff etc i don't know why and like if i was at a thing and they were like featuring appearances by lauren michaels they'd be like all right that guy's pretty i mean he's been a very critical piece in something that has been from a comedy standpoint a big part of american life for many years but i wouldn't be like oh my god i can't believe i'm in the same room as lauren michaels there was something about just seeing him without any kind of fanfare walking to work at 11 o'clock at night and thinking inside that building there's a bunch of people that are sleep deprived that are like practicing you know these rehearsing these sketches and cutting things and all the stuff that sort of surrounds the idea of snl and its creation and it just i was genuinely pretty starstruck uh more so than i have been about other people who are arguably bigger stars

i wonder uh what his sleep schedule is like because you just feel like he i feel like he can't have his day totally shift to the nighttime you know every day of the week given that he must be you know yeah he ain't young well he's not young yeah exactly but i mean it's like he's working with a lot of people who have regular day shifts and he must do that because obviously he does more than just snl i mean he's a movie producer he's got the you know one of the biggest

yeah you're right i mean all of those late night shows pretty much he's got a hand in well the ones on nbc fallon and stuff like that so he's got a lot going on yeah exactly yeah that's a good question yeah i was talking to some snl writer uh who must have gone on to do other things i was probably interviewing them for live wire or something gosh i wish i could remember who this was maybe they were a performer but they basically said oh yeah after um like uh after my first year i was like i'm absolutely not doing that thing where you stay up all week and don't get any sleep because i realized it wasn't helping me like i just kept i kept a schedule and i would go in and i would just write the stuff i was supposed to write monday you know monday through friday and then i would go home and take a nap then i'd come back for a little sesh at night but i was never one of those people who was sleeping for two hours in my office because this person i forget how it was i ended up talking to her but it was clearly for a work thing she was like yeah just that just you don't have to do it that way how about you just write the sketch on wednesday instead of you know instead of waiting until three and she was basically saying that schedule which has been very kind of mythologized and people are like that's how you make the comedy gold that that's really just because a lot of people like to procrastinate was the sense i got

from talking to this person i see i don't think i realized that that was sort of part of the lore that the that you're always i mean obviously it's a live show and the deadline pressure of that must be sort of an engine for that show over the course of 30 40 jesus christ how many years now more than 40 82 years um so i guess i kind of knew that like you know working on any kind of live thing you go up to the deadline but i guess i didn't realize that that was sort of a a big exciting part of the snl lore is that they're writing the sketches the night before oh yeah

they're editing them they're like you know people are like losing their minds because of sleep deprivation it's it's a big part of the story i think in the 80s it was probably uh to some degree cocaine fueled that was the other thing i wish i this would be such a better story if i didn't tell it um but also if i could remember who i was talking to but i think that they also said uh that there's as far as they ever observed none of that stuff going on that um you know sort of like the stuff from the 80s of like everybody was just like on various drugs and alcohol and out of their mind like by the time you get into the 90s and 2000s it's like a bunch of people that mostly graduated from harvard and are like taking their comedy careers very seriously although they may be staying up late people are not going nuts the way they did in the early days of the show

yeah and also i mean that is that now we're just like two middle-aged guys talking about the early days of snl for yourself dude i said show out earlier and i'm trying to do that right now with This is your version of showing a story. But, you know. Like anything that starts off as a sort of like ragtag team of people kind of against the, you know, like SNL. I hate to use this phrase, but it had like this sort of startup feel to it of a bunch of of a bunch of, you know, kind of crazy, funny people. But but by the time, you know, by the time I was watching SNL in the 90s, it was already a huge corporate machine owned by GE. And then that's not even saying it's not good or that I didn't enjoy those years. It just became something else. i mean even the early days of public radio you had people just doing cocaine and having sex on the desks and everything exactly but no i mean obviously that's not the case but there was

something about those early days there were rumors oh yeah when i worked i mean i don't think there were any like there weren't any specific names associated but there were there were a few stories circulating about people at npr believe it or not doing drugs in the little edit room and or maybe some kind of canoodling i mean i having met a lot of those people i does nothing i want to picture but um and maybe that was just made up to try to give the place a little edge that it didn't legitimately have but there were rumors anyway you were saying well anyway just that idea of

like these these things that started off as the as the sort of small us against the world ragtag team of people who are just trying to make it work um eventually becomes a huge machine And NPR and SNL are both alike in that way.

Right. Like you said, owned by General Electric, which is, you know, not known for its edginess. I, we had to change our flight. The weirdest thing happened, which was we, our flight home was scheduled for Sunday night. And I can't remember if I mentioned this to you on the air or off the air, but like it was, it was the weirdest thing because I was looking at the flight and there was almost no one on it. this was the sunday night flight home from jfk to pdx and there was very very very few seats that were taken on the flight and so what i like to do when i'm on an airplane um and i'm in coach is i am always what i do is this little trick where i pretend i'm going to book a ticket because when you're booking a ticket it'll show you all the available seats and basically what i'm always doing is monitoring are there any seats left in first class like right now like if i were a rich person and i was gonna uh buy a ticket right now could i even buy one in first class because if there are a lot of seats in first class then it maybe increases the chances of getting upgraded so i was trying to do that and i couldn't find the flight that we were booked on it would not show up as a thing like if i was just decided i needed to fly from new york to portland on sunday that the flight did not exist if that makes any sense like and then i was calling i called the airline and she didn't give me any useful information i she couldn't quite locate it but she also i was like is this flight canceled am i on a ghost flight she goes well it is a max plane which was one of the ones that the you know alaska airlines has been having all kinds of trouble with so it was the strangest thing anyway we moved our flight from sunday to monday or excuse me from sunday to saturday and so by the time we we got home or i got back here it was really late and i had become increasingly worried over the course of saturday that my pipes had frozen because when i left town everything was fine but in the later days of the real cold snap down here near portland uh like it was the time that we were in new york that a lot of people and schools and buildings and just there was a lot of pipe freezing and bursting going on and i started to have this intrusive thought that i had to literally put out of my mind i guess if you can put out of your mind maybe it's not intrusive but i was having this thought like what if my house is filling up with water right now there would be no way to know nobody's out here i don't have any like little alarms you know set up like those little sensors that tell you if there's a water leak like it i and i was like does it just does the pipe just spew water indefinitely is there some kind like what what would happen if i had a pipe burst in my house which was happening all over this part of the northwest and there was nobody here to notice it would it like would i come home and open the front door and there's like a tidal wave of water would you know washed over me so i had to put it out of my mind because there was like nothing i could do about it

if it were the case and so i didn't want to ruin the whole trip for me and so i uh came home super late on saturday night and i'm getting to my house and i'm kind of like psyching myself up i'm like Like, what is my response going to be if I get there and I open the door and there's just like, I don't know, a foot of water in the house? Because also, as has been well documented on this show, I have been working a lot and spending a lot of money on trying to remodel this little cottage. And the idea that it would have all been destroyed. I said to Becca, I was like, what if a piper, she goes, the universe wouldn't let that happen. I was like, I wish that was how it worked. I wish that was a thing. But I was like, I do appreciate the positivity. so I was psyching myself up and I pull down the road

road and i get to my driveway and i look at my house and i realize that i don't see any water anywhere so i guess that's a win but what i do see is that the front door has blown open from the wind the wind like clearly i didn't lock the front door i left probably in somewhat of a tizzy as i am want to do back whenever it was i left oh because it was the the ice storm was also afoot when i left so i i must not have shut the door enough i didn't lock it the door i don't know when the door blew open but the door had been completely wide open to my house for some period of days and there are various packages that have now been delivered because there had been enough of a thaw on saturday that some stuff was finally getting delivered so they're just soaking wet totally destroyed packages outside my house where the door is also open i'm wondering what like what was going through the minds of the people delivering stuff and also i do listen i really appreciate i really mean this i really appreciate the hard-working delivery people who don't generally get paid enough and also who were very much dealing with very very very not optimal conditions of late um but also i would say if anybody hears this who's a delivery person you have full permission to shut my door if you show up at my house and there's a storm going on and the front door is wide open and snow and ice and rain are blowing into the house you are totally authorized to pull the door shut i understand why you wouldn't but i just want that to be out there

that you're authorized to do that yeah because you never i mean you don't know where what situation somebody saw it in the moment if it seemed like chaotic or they were just dropping it off and you might have been somebody moving a couch in and out or what have you you know i'd be i'd be pretty um unless it was pretty clear that you're delivering it and this door has been open for a long time and you're delivering near the end of this window of this door being open then you would say oh there's something going on here maybe you would make a phone call or something and say hey you know there's maybe a wellness check here like this that's what i'm wondering

about because this and again this is not on whoever was delivering the various things um like it's not their job to to cover for me being an idiot and not closing my door properly and locking it but like this is what is the scene there's no vehicle here there are other packages that have been delivered that are just like in the soaking like getting soaked in the rain and then there's just like a door open and that with like with like a certain amount of snow like icy snow water that's accumulating in the entryway i guess if i looked at that i would maybe think wellness check like is everybody okay but anyway i get here i see that i'm like oh no i'm a little relieved that i that it doesn't appear there's any pipe burst but when i step through the door i look and in the back corner of my living room is a gigantic feral cat oh my god that is all black i know this cat this cat is one of the many terrifying feral cats in the area the cat has been in my house for i don't know how long and he's just looking at me with wild eyes from the corner and i'm actually like i like step back out of the house i'm like trying to be tough i'm like get out of here oh by the By the way, you know how I've been talking about how bad I feel for all of the animals in my neighborhood during the cold? That sympathy really whiffed right out of my brain, by the way, the second I saw this cat.

I was like... When you say feral, is this a really big cat, too? Very big. Yeah. Like, almost like a small dog. Almost like a small dog. I'm not joking. I haven't seen a lot of feral cats. I hear about, like, Maine Coons. I know that's, like, a big cat and often feral. I don't know if I'm right about that or not. But living in New England, you would hear about this type of thing.

but i don't know thumbs too right isn't that the main thing they've got like is that true a digit

on their paw that's unique as i believe oh okay i do know that yeah and they also have some smaller cats have that too and they call it the hemingway paw because he had a whole bunch of them down in florida or something but um he had a whole bunch of thumbs i mean down in florida um but anyway

for whom the thumbed holes i believe it was one of his great very famous yeah one of his

one of his best records honestly yeah he ditched the east street band and went on his um what i was gonna say was okay yeah so anyway so huge scary long and by the way i this i've seen

this this cat has been has been running around the area they're they're about three really really big i'm talking they're like bigger than any house cat that i've seen um and i say feral because i don't think they belong to anyone and i think they mostly exist on mice or something That's a feral cat, right? Is there any other way to describe a cat like that?

I just, I mean, again, I have more questions than answers, but I think of a feral cat as a wild cat that does live on its own, and you want to give it its space, and it does its own hunting and everything.

That's kind of what I think these cats are. They also, not to get gross, but like sometimes when they've gone to the bathroom around here.

like it looks like a dog went to the bathroom you know what i mean like i feel like a cat you know like when when bubbles who's thankfully safe safely down in salem right now being watched by becca's uh brother and his wife um but like i feel like when bubbles goes to the bathroom in her crazy litter robot it looks like a cat went to the bathroom in here and i see sometimes uh you know leavins in the area and i think like was that a like was there a wild dog in the area and i think it's these cats into that big that's what they leave so also i've noticed this cat in the summertime has relatively short fur and its fur was so long like i think that just has to do with adapting to the cold like it has this crazy long fur in the winter time maybe that was also just me hallucinating but like it was genuinely terrifying to see this and it was in in the corner too like in the far back corner of my living room just like beady red eyes like it could have been a raccoon i mean it would have been a large raccoon it could have been a puma it could have been anything and i was like there's something about it being one in the morning coming home to your house where the door is open and where there's a large living being that you did not invite in in the corner of the house it was freaky this is a dumb question because we're

very far into the story now but i was a little confused um so this is like we're talking about something that happened to you like eight hours ago or or this was Saturday night into Sunday morning okay Saturday night into Sunday morning okay sounds like that's what I thought at first and then I thought you said something that that made me think otherwise but okay so um so what you do well I tried to be brave and yell at the cat and thankfully the cat decided to leave I

tried to be brave and scream and shriek like Ned Flanders and uh and luckily the cat decided to leave i don't know what my plan was if the cat was like i live here now um i would have been i i guess we would have just bubbles would have had a new brother a new weird older brother who smokes cigarettes and listens to iron maiden um but like the cat decided to just run out of the house

thank god without you without you like having to so you sort of got out of its way and it was just it was scared but knew its path well enough just to like go right out right away okay figured out

how to get out there was no problem because um i'd had problems occasionally in bellingham with and this is a sad story but like you know sometimes olive would capture like a small rabbit or something and bring them into the house and then you'd find them and they would be alive still and trying to get them out of the house is so hard because they're freaked out and you both want the same thing you that you want them to be out of the house and they want to be out of the house but communicating that to them is difficult this cat knew exactly where it was going to get out it went running out the front door thank god but then i'm like did it are there other cats in the house right now is this like the is this has this turned into the cat hangout while i've been gone it's also been freezing hell if i was a cat i'd be like yeah you know um hey have you heard there's a warm place down this at the end of the street where apparently there aren't any of those weird pink fleshy people uh we should go hang out in there and also the the door from the living room to the upstairs which is like where my bedroom is and stuff was open because of course when i left the house i didn't think i was battening down the hatches for a cat invasion so it didn't even occur to me that i should have probably had the door closed to the upstairs so i was like are they is is there a brood of kittens under my bed right now like what is and also did the cat spray anywhere that was another thing i was dealing with was i swear it kind of smelled I don't know if this was If this was my mind Just filling in some kind of gap That didn't need to be filled in Or if legitimately it smelled like a feral cat in there For a second But when I first got in the house I was like It smells like a cat in here Like not bubbles but it smells like this weird cat You think you smelled that before you saw the cat I know I think I Was after I had observed the cat Once the cat was gone I was like Does it smell like a cat in here Of course, I was paranoid that it had marked some area of the house, which I don't think it did. I went, you know, to every corner with a flashlight. And then I was, it's like time to go upstairs. And I'm like, oh, I'm, am I like literally afraid to go upstairs in my own house because there could be like maniac cats up there? And the answer was, yes, I was a little nervous, but I did go up there. I did yell, hey, cat, the way you might yell, hey, bear, if you were hiking.

You know, I was picturing Becca here the whole time, but you're by yourself.

I'm by myself. I'm on the phone with Becca for moral support.

Yeah, okay, yeah, that is a big difference.

But, like, I'm by myself And I got a flashlight Which is weird because there are lights upstairs But I'm just, like, in flashlight mode And I turn the lights on to the upstairs And I kind of go, hey there, hey cats Because I want, if they're up there I want them to know I'm coming I don't want to surprise them

And you want them to know you're cool Like, hey, Hepcats

Hey, what's up, man? It's just Luke I'm just showing out

Yeah

Just showing up and showing out One in the morning on a Sunday And And...

Immersively, there were no other cats upstairs, or at least I haven't found them yet. And also, it doesn't seem like that cat had—I don't know how long he'd been in there. I don't know if it's a male or female, but I don't know how long the cat had been in the house. I'm really glad we cut our trip short, by the way, because otherwise it would have been Sunday night that I would have been finding this cat living in my house.

Oh, that's where my confusion was, right. Okay, yeah, the flight change thing was—

Yeah, the flight change turned out to be very, I think, lucky because what I, this is my theory. I think I got there kind of right in time. Like, I think that the cat had not really made itself at home yet fully. Like, I don't think it had gone upstairs. It hadn't marked anywhere. It hadn't decided to use my couch, my new couch from Crate and Barrel as a toilet. Like, it seemed like it had had a fairly, it had tread fairly lightly in the house, which I don't know if that would have been the case. sunday night or monday morning at 1 a.m which would have been when i got home i was really

really glad that i got there when i got there so maybe your door wasn't open that long you know i

don't know i don't know you have security cameras right it doesn't it doesn't like it's facing out from the front of the house so that was the problem i was actually really hoping there would be like some dope footage of a cat running out of my house but alas that doesn't exist either but But, yeah, all of which is to say I was very, very relieved that we ended up coming home early because I don't know what the—I mean, it probably would have been like goddamn Aristocats in there by Sunday night. They have a jazz club going. They have flappers. They've created an entire eco and social system of different kinds of cats. I mean, it would have been a scene in my house.

And to be clear, you're glad that didn't happen.

Well, that's a great point, as I say it out loud. I mean, would it be cool to observe a sort of Aristocats type of deal going on in real life? I mean, yes, admittedly, that would be cool.

I didn't know cats could smoke, but I certainly didn't know that they used cigarette holders.

Why is it that when I say that, you and I both know that cat is using a cigarette holder? There's no ifs, ands, or buts. Hey, let's thank some donors who are making today's episode of the program possible. Boy, if we would have had an Aristocats kind of deal, and I could have, like, I don't know, set up some sort of live streaming cam, we could probably make some money off of that. Maybe we wouldn't need donors, but absent that, we definitely need folks like Joan Wheeler in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Thank you, Joan. Baraboo, Wisconsin. That sounds like a place that gets a lot of snow and also has a lot of moose. Are there moose in Wisconsin?

I'm looking at it right now. I don't know about that. It looks like, let's see, it's a city in the Midwest, and it's the county seat of, uh-oh, wait, am I going to, is it Sauk County? There's one of these, I think it's in Minnesota, is it Sault Ste. Marie? That doesn't look like how you say it. I don't know, I'm getting nervous. The more that I'm trying to read in on Baraboo, the more I'm worried that I'm messing something up.

You know how when somebody is drowning, you're not supposed to necessarily save them because they might pull you under? No, that's right. You need to stay safely on the shore, my friend. That's what I'm doing over here. You stay right there on the shore.

You know what? Honestly, I respect that. I also respect Tanying Dong of Pittsburgh, PA, for checking in and donating. Thank you, Tanying. I believe we have talked to Tanying before. At some point

Yes, and you always bring this up And we're thanking Tan Ying Was she the one that has the

Camera that had somebody putting dog poop In a garbage can That was not theirs to put it in I feel like it's my memory of things Anyway, thanks Tan Ying Appreciate you Also, we've got Justice Grunau Checking in from Thunder Bay, Ontario

Thunder Bay

Yeah What a, already, what a lineup. Baraboo, Pittsburgh, and Thunder Bay. Love it. Thank you, Justice. What if we had a Glen Ellyn, Illinois, Andrew, where Matthew McClure is?

That sounds, I don't know, like in a, not pastoral, but it sounds very, it sounds like a very gentle place to live, Glen Ellyn.

Or also sounds like a very expensive scotch.

Or a very expensive, you need an extra N on Glen, though, maybe.

And four to five extraneous Ys. Yes. Thank you, Matthew. Thanks also to Patty Hollingsworth, who's in Auburn, Washington. Thank you, Patty. You weren't far from Auburn, Washington when you were in Puyallup, my friend. You were near there.

I was going to say, I don't know that I've darkened the door of Auburn. You've been very close.

You've been very close. this weekend okay to Patty Hollingsworth in fact who knows Patty may have been at the train show Patty were you at the train show and you didn't tell me not the thing you were at with J-Dog but then actually the band train was coming through town and playing their hit song drops of Jupiter they're they're Christian or they're not train they're not well I don't know they're religious

right I mean on a music like person-to-person basis but I don't think

it's not overtly religion wouldn't that be funny if I didn't care about what

Their music was like, I just want to know the religion of every musical artist I listen to.

You're like, where's Pat Monaghan come down on things, lead singer of Train? Would you say he's kind of agnostic? Is he meaning?

And I'm not judgy. I just need to know in order to enjoy the music.

Right, exactly. Thank you, Patty. Thanks also to Sharon Sprout, who's in Chilliwack, British Columbia.

That's a fun one, too, isn't it?

Canada. Yeah. It says Canada. I want to make sure everyone knew that it's not the British Columbia that's down in SoCal. It's the British Columbia that's up in Canada.

In this part of the world, who knows? We have a Des Moines or Des Moines. I can't remember. Washington, right?

Washington is the, unfortunately, and we've got listeners down there and we love them very much. But unfortunately, Washington is the place where I believe we do, we go with Des Moines.

And isn't there a, what is the, is there a Victoria Washington?

There's a Victorville Film Society that Greg Turkington is a big part of in the On Cinema universe.

I don't know about that turn yet.

You don't know about that yet?

No. I'm trying because I'm getting all these updates about where they are in their evolution now. But now it's like some sort of like Fox News style. I don't know if you've seen any of the latest stuff.

I've seen a lot of it, and it's truly wild.

I'm trying to – now we're just talking about On Cinema, At The Cinema. I bought a subscription so I could go back to the beginning which I've seen before I watched the earliest ones I think this thing started eight or ten years ago but the evolution from it being like a parody of a very low budget two guys sitting in an old movie theater kind of bickering and talking about movies to like this Tim Heidecker slash decorization of conservative politics and the send up of Fox News but somehow this has been a slow turning the heat up on the frog evolution of these characters and the show and so like i i'm watching some of the new stuff but i'm more interested in seeing how this evolves yeah it's for people that don't know it's

this web series and it's tim heidecker from tim and eric awesome show and then greg turkington who um you may know as neil hamburger the stand-up comedian and one-time guest on this show in the person of Neil Hamburger um and like actually yeah I think a couple of time guests on the show

because I remember I was with you the second time he was on was that at Cairo was that when we had Brody on um no I I didn't I didn't meet Brody until I was in LA uh but um the this was at your place I believe this was at the the studios that you had set up in your Mount Baker place and here here's what I knew about it at the time that he did this character uh named Neil Hamburger And it was the only time you felt and I had not heard it, but on the radio days, it was the only time that you really felt like your audience was angry at you for having this guy on the show. He plays this cantankerous, like old, like drunk, like terrible kind of like borderline vaudevillian sort of take my wife, please kind of comic. Right. Horrible take. And I did. I had not heard that. But you told me, like, we're having them back on. He's going to do the character again. And this is the only time that the listeners like almost actively revolted. So here we go. And then but I didn't have context for that. And it's so funny to think that I met Greg Turkington and now I'm like such a fan of so much stuff that he's done or mostly this. But like I remember him coming over to your house and being in the little studio and him just being a really normal guy. And I'm like, I don't understand what the controversy here is. He just seems like a normal sweet guy. And then he's like, OK, and then the music starts and then he comes in his meal hamburger. I was like oh wow you just yeah you can just switch between the two of course you can it's just a performance but like there was something I didn't know what I was in for that day the thing

that's so crazy about on cinema at the cinema is that the official name yeah is is that like you said it started as just kind of like a almost borderline public access style you know movie review show and and and it's evolved but it's also like i don't understand why i'm so obsessed with it i don't understand why i find it so funny because it's so subtle and it's it's like there's never anything that's even a specific joke per se like it's it's just this like 10 year a 10 year long kind of weird improvised thing that i just find endlessly fascinating but i can't even tell you why we've played some do you mind if i just

So please, I'm doing such a good job describing it, though. Why would you ruin that with the actual actual material? We've played several of these kind of recently. Let me go back and play one that maybe we haven't heard in a while. This is from way back in the day when it was still like in a season one or season two. This might even be from the very first episode. So it's very scaled back. And like you say, it's just two guys sitting in a movie theater. I mean, I literally worked on shows like this when I was in New Hampshire.

Greg Turkington has brought in a VHS tape from his vast collection, and Greg, what have you brought in to recommend this week?

Today on my segment, we're looking at Multiplicity, starring Andy McDowell and Michael Keaton. Now, this film is interesting in that they have cloned Michael Keaton, and for anyone who's ever seen Michael Keaton and knows what a national treasure he is, you would have to agree that having a hundred Michael Keatons is not just a great idea for a movie, but it would be a great idea for Hollywood, because then we could have him in a lot of movies at once, and that would be a treat.

Right. Well, I wish they had cloned 100 Andy McDowell's.

Well, I think 50 would be plenty for her. She hasn't had quite the career that Michael Keaton has. But the film's great, and I'd like to clone 100 copies of this and give one to everyone I know so that they could have a nice summer weekend at home.

So Greg fancies himself like a real movie expert, but he just likes every movie no matter how bad it is. That's right. And there's always the simmering tension between him and Tim who sees him. Tim is the only one who sees himself or Tim thinks he's the only real host of the show and that Greg is his guest every week. That's like sort of the original sin of the show, the original the original tension. But like Greg keeps showing up. He's the only guest. And so after a while, like he starts referring to himself in like subtle ways as the host and Tim will correct him. And Tim always stumbles all over himself. Like it's just like so like you say, so much subtlety and so much just like simmering resentment between the two of them.

It's like TBTL, but entertaining.

Yeah, right.

Subtlety and simmering resentment, which is exactly what our donors have been supporting. So thank you very much for making TBTL possible. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Did you happen to see or hear this clip that's been going around, Andrew, of these two basketball announcers kind of getting into it a little bit?

No, not until you threw it on the show sheet today. And I'll be honest, I have not clicked through. So I am buckled up and ready for the ride, Luke.

it's pretty it's pretty brief but it's it's uh the basketball announcers it's ian eagle and it's mike fratello who when uh mike fratello used to be the color commentator when marv albert did a lot of the like kind of prime era bulls games and i believe marvell used to always call mike fratello the czar of the telestrator which i just love for some reason um so this clip popped up on tick The other day and has like millions and millions maybe not millions but lots and lots of views Let me see if I can actually click on this This link that I sent myself with the the actual article in it anyway This clip hit the internet the other day and it was basically saying like oh man These two basketball announcers are really getting into it and I watched it and I was like oh wow This is kind of awkward wonder what and I know but I mean I know of both of these Broadcasters, let me just play it for you first

Threes coming from all over the place and then everything that could go wrong, you know foul ball goes in and one stops the clock Turnover turnover missed free throws when you got fouled of it. It was crazy. Could I make one point?

Sure, okay. I Just want to say that earlier You had a very patronizing tone towards me. I fully understand what a slip screen is I've been doing the NBA for 18 years but the way you presented it initially was gobbledygook so like the audience I wanted you to come back and explain yourself and you then just took a firing line on me and it was uncalled for I

don't think so that's exactly what happened you are overly sensitive I am not did you have a bad day today it's second game of a back-to-back the ride

back from Philly did it like disturb you last night that was two hours with you which is probably the reason why i've had enough tonight time out i love that the the arena is

starting to crank up one more time in the background more time um so the first time i watched it i was like oh something about the end of it made me feel even more uncomfortable because it sounded like two people trying to kind like it sounded like ian eagle had a real moment of frustration with Mike Fratello and that then he was trying to kind of

soft pedal it a little bit like what what what hit your ears as you listen to that for the first

time yeah and just to reiterate like my only context for this is everything that you've said so far and the tape I just heard so my initial reaction is that sounds very real to me because it sounds like a moment of real frustration between two people who work together a lot and have to continue working together at least in this very moment I don't know if they said where they are in that game but like these are two people who still have to talk to each other in microphones for the rest of this game and so yeah it seemed like a little bit of true frustration came out and and the verisimilitude seems to kick in when they then kind of try to smooth it over and just say well this is where we are and they're trying to like kind of kid a little bit but it sort of sounds like kidding on the square yeah i want to play it one more time because it's not

super long because what's come out now in sports illustrated by the way r.i.p sports illustrated in what's left of Sports Illustrated is basically taking a couple of, I think, tweets from Ian Eagle kind of where he's trying to claim that it was sort of a joke. But I'm not actually sure. And there's some evidence on both. There's evidence on both sides. But I just want to play this for you one more time. Just one more time.

One stops the clock. Three's coming from all over the place. And then everything that could go wrong, you know, foul ball goes in and one stops the clock. Turn over, turn over, missed free throws when you got fouled of it. It was crazy.

Could I make one point? Sure can. I just want to say that earlier, you had a very patronizing tone towards me. I fully understand what a slip screen is. I've been doing the NBA for 18 years. But the way you presented it initially was gobbledygook. So, like the audience, I wanted you to come back and explain yourself. and you then just took a firing line on me, and it was uncalled for. I don't think so at all. That's exactly what happened.

You are overly sensitive today. I am not. Did you have a bad day today?

It's the second game of a back-to-back. The ride back from Philly, did it disturb you last night? That was two hours with you, which is probably the reason why I've had enough tonight. Time out.

So, Sports Illustrated then writes a piece a couple of days ago saying, Ian Eagle, on the 12-year-old clip of him, quote, berating an analyst, resurfacing, quote, it's funny, but also sad. So, this is Jimmy Trena writing in Sports Illustrated. Ian Eagle is the best. In addition to being an outstanding play-by-play man, Eagle is also one of the funniest people in all of sports media, thanks to an incredibly sharp and dry sense of humor. However, there's a downside to being very dry. Not everyone always gets the joke. In the case I'm about to tell you about, people didn't get the joke from 12 years ago. This clip was tweeted on Tuesday from an account with 32,000 followers. It's now had more than 5 million views. And Deadspin even wrote an article about it, which they had to delete with the headline, I, an eagle, let's Mike Fratello have it, and I am here for it.

and this is one of the headlines that um didn't acknowledge it being from 12 years ago too

yes exactly that was deadspin had to delete the post because they didn't realize that this was uh you know and which again not that i'm exactly woodward or bernstein but like it took me under 30 seconds to and i would because you and i both know this andrew about the internet like stuff is always resurfacing and it's often really old and so before you're gonna play anything like this you just gotta double check hey did this happen this weekend or did this happen 10 years ago uh i guess i guess they're not doing that dead spin currently actually speaking of let me

just say and i don't want to derail us so i just want to say this not derail it i don't even know if that tape at the top of the show that i played i don't have a hundred i'm not 100 sure that that is really tape from an instructional video that the um uh what was it old country buffet supposedly that's from an old country no old country for a training video from the 80s or 90s and that thing has been kicking around the internet for a long time too i'm not 100 sure that's definitely real

tape or not okay duly noted yeah here's the thing about this claim by ian eagle that it was all a joke he doesn't i feel like he kind of says that but also doesn't fully say that like i wonder if was a little kernel of actual annoyance when he kind of went off on mike fratello that way uh this is what uh ian eagle told sports illustrated on wednesday i'm amazed at the shelf life of this bit so he calls it a bit which that does make it seem like it was a joke i woke up in portland to 40 texts and thought something serious had happened a clip of me using

using the term gobbledygook with Fratella 13 years ago, going viral again is not what I had on my 2024 bingo card. It's funny, but also sad. So as far as what he said to Sports Illustrated, he calls it a bit, which makes it sound like a joke, but that sounds to me like it isn't him just saying, this was totally 100% a joke. I cannot believe that people thought that I was serious. It sounds like it's not quite a full of, He's fully trying to say it was a joke.

Yeah, I'm with you. I still think that this was a real moment that was a brief moment and a small moment of frustration. And then, like I say, they were professionals. And so they they sort of like kind of laughed it out a little bit, probably went to a break, came back and then just did their jobs. Like when he says bit there, I'm wondering if he even means comedy bit or just this bit of tape, you know. Right. Here's one thing. And it's funny that he even quotes himself again in that statement you just read, because one thing that stood out to me, which I think stood out to most people is, is he saying gobbledygook? Because I'm pretty sure it's gobbledygook, right? Like there's a gobbledy. It's gobbledy, not gobbledygook. Oh. How does he spell it? Hey, where's the gobbledygook? In the tape, he says gobbly, and I'm like gobbledygook. I grew up with gobbledygook. Really? Maybe I'm the one. I grew up with gobbledygook. I'll bet you. Maybe I'm off base.

Listen, this is not where I want to stake my reputation because I've been wrong about a lot of things. I'm just saying where I grew up. I also thought it was Yubi instead of Yui, so I get a lot of bad intel from my mom. Where I grew up, I feel like we were saying gobbledygook, but I've also heard gobbledygook.

Yeah. I don't know. Like, honestly. Oh, I found something.

Okay.

The secondary spelling gobbledygook appears about once every three instances. You have gobbledygook. I'm seeing in British English, especially rare American English.

Which we know you speak.

Yeah. No, I'm seeing all gobbledygook. I'm not seeing gobbledygook. I'm not seeing gobbledygook.

Huh. I wonder if it's also possible that people were saying gobbledygook to me, and all I was hearing was gobbledygook.

Yeah, everything. And I typed in, like I tried to type in phonetically. It's spelled both ways. This could be some sort of bias on my part, but I'm getting gobbledygook.

No, and also it's written gobbledygook in the Sports Illustrated piece

Oh, okay

But when the person transcribes it for Sports Illustrated, they're writing it as gobbledygook So I'm saying that's just another indication that you're probably right That's the official way that word is supposed to be written and said

But in the tape, I think he says gobbly So that's interesting

Very possible, because I think he was losing his shit

Yeah, absolutely

I think he legitimately got annoyed that he took in Mike Fratello's tone that Mike Fratello thought that he didn't know what a slip screen was. And it kind of made him annoyed because he's been calling basketball games forever and he does know the difference. Now, here's the main piece of evidence that's being presented to the fact that maybe it was all some big joke, which is some other clip of Ian Eagle and Mike Fratello where Ian Eagle asks Mike Fratello how his summer vacation was or how his vacation was and then intentionally cuts him off.

Same guy. Same two guys. Same game? Same two guys.

I don't know if it's the same game. I don't think it's the same game Okay, what somebody wrote this is in the comment section of like, you know, whatever Twitter X thing Somebody wrote somebody named Joe Weil wrote those late-era New Jersey Nets teams were so bland But the broadcast still had me cracking up and then there was this broadcast moment after the Pierce KG trade So I'm assuming this would be Paul Pierce for Kevin Garnett, which is an all-timer So this is the same two guys who just had that whatever that moment was I believe it starts with Ian Eagle. He was the guy who started it, saying he knows what a slip screen is. And then Mike Fratello, and this was their little thing.

Anticipated season in franchise history and coming off a very busy offseason, Mike. How was your summer? I had a great summer. I had the opportunity to go over to Europe. I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cut you off here. We've got to get to the business at hand because the Nets made some big changes during the offseason. Jason.

So did you catch that, basically? And then the camera zooms in on Fratello looking like put off, but it's obviously a bit. This one is very obviously a bit. And Mike Fratello is doing like a kind of a take, like it's straight out of the office, kind of like, you know. So that one is a bit. That was the planned thing. And so people are, someone at least is putting that up as an example that these two guys used to do bits on the air and that maybe the other one was a bit. I don't think the other one was fully a bit. I think Ian Eagle was legitimately a little annoyed.

Yeah. I could tell when you were playing that one I'm like oh yeah that was planned at least on the part of one of them I didn't even know about the camera angle here's what I want to know and maybe it's a simple answer everything wasn't digitized back in the day and somebody just grabbed this one clip but why don't we have tape of him patronizing

or condescendingly describing this was a slip screen like that's what I want to hear I want

to hear the right fence right that's see you're absolutely right that would be that would be the indicator of what was really happening there like if as far as like was I an eagle really ticked off we need to hear the source material of the moment that precipitated all of this yeah and we mean that may be lost to history which in a weird way I also kind of like Andrew I would like to know but I also like thinking about the fact that there might be at least a few things that we don't have access to that really are lost to time. Something as unimportant as that may be lost to time, and I'm okay with that.

Although I would like to see the video of your door swinging open so we could know.

Me too. That one I wish wasn't lost to time. I was hoping there was audio of me yelling at the cat. Like, believe me, I went right to the history on my, like, before I went to bed Saturday night, I was going into the history on the camera to see what it picked up, and it did not pick up any of that stuff, unfortunately.

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.

I don't know how many emails and V-mails you have ready to go, Andrew, but I actually have one, if that's all right, if I could share with the class. um this came in last week and uh it's sort of relevant to um animals posting up in my house um maybe to get out of the cold by the way i've seen another huge there's this huge orange cat that's also in the neighborhood and just walked through the area of my yard like it owned the place i don't know if the orange cat and the black cat are friends or enemies or lovers i don't know anything about their relationship, but they're both in the area, and I'm terrified of both of them.

Is this an email that you want to read? This is an email. Is this about geese? It is.

Yeah, I like this. It's from listener Laura in Madison, Wisconsin, the gateway to Baraboo, I believe people often say. I was last week talking, because it was so, so cold here, and I know it's still very cold in parts of the country. Hope folks are doing okay. Check those pipes. Make sure the door is locked would be my big piece of advice during this cold weather if you're gonna leave the house but um uh i was talking about how from here where i am perched high above the mighty columbia i can see there's a little inlet in the river or whatever you want to call it a little area where the water is a little bit calmer and a lot of geese hang out there and it was so so so cold last week and just looking at them sitting in the water without even a jacket to wear made me feel really stressed out it made me think about all the animals in the world really who are very cold and and i know i should be worrying about the people who are cold but uh that's also a concern but i'm i get worried about the animals and that's where listener laura decided to write in and said a quick note to tell you all about the neat way that geese keep themselves warm as one of my mentors used to say everything in nature makes sense so andrew you were right to think that there are systems in place for geese and other birds too uh one geese are covered with down, the stuff we covet for our own warmth. The downy feathers are covered by body feathers that form a waterproof shell and keep heat from escaping. The down and body feathers also make the geese buoyant. Two, their feet are not super fleshy like ours. Yes, they have skin, but other than that, they're mostly ligaments and keratin, so they don't need all that much blood to flow to them like our naked feet would. Then the really cool thing is that the incoming cold blood and the outgoing warm blood meet in a net of veins and arteries inside the body just above the legs and equalize temperature. The exiting warm blood is cooled a little and the entering cold blood is warmed. This reduces overall heat loss into the cold water three when you're on land they can balance on one leg and pull the other up into their belly feathers to conserve heat and the bill like another spot where heat could escape can also be tucked under feathers too so don't worry about those geese luke they're built for it and laura is if i can say this a copy editor at birder so laura knows from from what uh and also I think has a couple of things going on. One called Laura Goes Birding. So I appreciate you reaching out, Laura, and I will try to remember those things when I'm staring out the window and feeling bad for the geese that are there in the water. I'm not sure I appreciate Laura saying that my feet are super fleshy. Oh, my feet are barely okay today, Andrew. That was another thing I was going to mention. I got, of the things that were outside my house getting rained on, one of them

was a piece of furniture this kind of like cabinet slash table thing that I ordered that's kind of a knockoff of a cool sort of mid-century

style uh i don't know whatever cabinet thing and the deal was the reason that it's relatively affordable is because you got to put it together first of all it's not made by the real company that made this back in the day and and secondly i guess it's a credenza technically um it comes in this box that it's like you it took me on sunday i started at probably nine in the morning And I finished it probably two in the afternoon took me five hours of solid work to put this thing together But it has metal a lot of it is metal So you put this framework together with all these elaborate screws and stuff and then you start to pop on The shelving and the back of it has kind of a cabinet on top and then open shelving on the bottom and those cabinet pieces The the back of the cabinet and the doors they're metal and they're pretty heavy like it's thin metal but it's still not light and what you have to do you don't like place it against the cabinet and then screw it on you pop it in place so it's it's designed in this certain way where like if you put the whole framework together perfectly which i was actually very stressed about too because like i'm not good at this kind of stuff and like i was like you're putting a lot of pressure on me to assemble everything correctly Because the only way that these panels will pop into place is if the frame, the metal piping they're supposed to go into is perfectly square and the right distance, you know, like otherwise they're not going to go in.

Here's another thing that I could be wrong about this, but when you're putting something together like that and things have to pop into place, not only does everything have to be perfect, but does that also mean that you can't really deconstruct it again? like if i was assembling something that had a bunch of like kind of bolts and screws like let's say the lockers in my um in my bathroom um that was a pain in the ass to put together but i think i could take it apart again if i were to move or something like that but then some things you assemble it's like everything pops into place but that means you can't deassemble it if you had to move not that you want to move but still you're locked in you could take some of this apart

you could take the paneling off that would actually it pops out too i don't know if you're supposed to but you could it's okay it's not permanent you know what i mean it's it's being held in by by uh in some cases gravity and in some cases just sort of like like tension but you could reverse that process taking apart the i'll just send you a picture of this thing so you can see what i'm talking about too taking apart the actual metal piping that i had to put together that would be near to impossible because it's this whole network of like this little chrome ball that has like multiple areas that you screw these other things into and then those things go inside the metal piping and then you have this extremely long allen wrench that's on a pipe that you reach through the piping into the thing and then turn i mean it is it's amazing i got this thing together but really what happened that was endangering the entire process was i was putting one of the trying to put one of the back panels on and again i can't i can't emphasize this enough but like it's the kind of thing where once it pops in it's great but as you're trying to pop it in there's a million ways that you can push it too hard and it goes through and falls down there's nowhere to grab it there's no handle on this thing it's just a slippery white kind of heavy sheet of metal that you're trying to pop into something but if you have any problems whatsoever it just is going to fall like and that's exactly what happened it just as i was trying to do this it fell on not one but both of my feet and smashed both of my big toes which were in socks i was not wearing my steel-toed boots to put this together and when i tell you that i was nauseated from the pain like it was the kind of pain where i was like i might throw up from how much this hurts my toes it was so bad and like i really thought by the way this morning my toes are

jacked up looking i was gonna say are you gonna lose your toenails i don't want to talk about

i don't think and you know how i go on and on about how i think i have pretty decent feet i'm always trying to get you to look at foot pics of me because i was once told that i had ungrossed feet which i've really carried around as a as a real kind of like point of pride um so uh my feet are very gross right now today like my my on my right foot the big toe is deeply bruised uh right underneath my toenail i think i missed my toenail by like a half an inch thank god so i'm not gonna lose my toenails but there's a huge bruise right on the knuckle of my right big toe and on somehow on the inside of my left big toe but both toes are black and blue and i really had a thought yesterday did i just in the same moment literally break both of my big toes oh my god which would have been really lousy for a lot of reasons um it was inconvenient it would hurt

You know, I do try to get out there and do the jogging and my experience of having like a hairline fracture in one of my toes once is what they say to you when you go into the doctor is, yeah, just wait for that to heal. That's pretty much the fix for a broken toe is, yeah, you're going to hope that heals up.

Yeah, I was going to say, I wasn't sure, but when you mentioned that, I'm like, yeah, and if you break a toe like that, I think you just got to like, maybe you can tape a couple of toes together to stabilize it a little bit, but not a lot you can do there.

Yeah, and you don't want me to send you a picture of the actual feet.

No, thank you. In fact, I'm not even going to check my phone the rest of the day. Just to be safe. All right. Just to be safe. Am I allowed to? I feel like I should take a photo of these little nudie dolls I got.

Oh, you don't want to see my feet, but you're trying to peddle your smut out there. Is that you smutty, do you think?

No, I don't think it is.

No, they're naturists. They're naturalists or whatever.

They're just enjoying their bodies. They are.

They're just as God made them. Exactly.

Exactly, or some guy in his basement. They're just as Rick made them. They're just as Ned made them, exactly.

All right, that's going to do it for today's program. Thank you very much for listening. We are going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you all, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Watch your toesies, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

I'm a model train enthusiast.

Oh, that's great.

Yes, I've got a whole layout in my basement. It's very much a big passion for me.

Yeah, thank God for model trains.

Oh, absolutely.

You know, if they didn't have the model train, they wouldn't have gotten the idea for the big trains. Power out!