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Knock, knock. Who's there? Mike Snifferpippets.

Mike Snifferpippets? Who?

Mike Snifferpippets? Who? How many Mike Snifferpippets do you know? Come on, let me in. It's cold out here. Jeez. TBTL!

Ladies and gentlemen, meatloaf cake with mashed sweet potato icing. With only 433 calories, 52 grams of protein, and only five kyber hydrants.

This is not your mama's podcast. This is too beautiful to live. Are you trying to seduce me? I'm trying to seduce you. You guys are so fun. Just relentlessly fun. I keep thinking, when are they going to stop being fun? And the answer is never.

Hey, look here. Why don't we eat us a few thousand beers and you tell me what's buzzing in the big bad city?

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

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Come on, brain. Think of things. Come on, brain. Be so smart.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is absolutely spectacular right now.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

And this song really does go out to all the coffee lovers of the world because we are recording this a teeny bit later than normal. which has sort of freed up a teeny bit more time than normal for me to just mainline coffee, java, moon juice. And I'm feeling a little amped up here as we arrive at episode 4,130 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Bear with me. We had a situation here at the Madrona Hill studio this weekend when I was trying to give away an old refrigerator. Frig, fritz, your friz, it turns out when you're trying to give away something that's incredibly heavy and awkward to move around, you find yourself in this odd sort of world that I was in and that my dad was in and, well, I'll tell you about that coming up also. We got a bunk journalism alert. I'd like to point out to anybody watching, this is really bunk journalism. And it's interesting because this bunk journalism alert features bunk journalism from both the new york times who wrote a headline that was such a lie well we know you're good at lying i felt like it was actually violence like the new york times chose violence this morning but then also the new york post which we all know is just absolute trash they tried a headline that uh well didn't really work jokes are really difficult i must say but it's so close and i want to i want to get my friend andrew's take on that speaking of my good friend and the longest running cobra of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships um yes okay he has become increasingly isolated in his basement playing darts talking to dartbot and hanging out with uh the cats yes that is happening but still he has not completely relinquished human companionship he has retained enough survival skills to feed himself so he's doing fine he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good

morning my friend good morning luke quick question what actually no um this is going to lead to something slightly longer long question why lie um i do have something i want to talk to you about today and about it relates to my um potentially problematic attachment to objects and okay how how nostalgia plays into that. But my first question for you is, what year was it that you and I hitchhiked from Minnesota to Mississippi? 2017? 2018 at the latest, right?

Probably 2018 would be six years ago. Could it be six years ago we did that?

Yeah, so 2018 would be six years ago. If it was 2017, which it might have been, it was seven years ago. The reason I bring this up is not because of that trip itself, but because of an object that I bought in anticipation of that trip, which was my very, believe it or not, my first reusable water bottle to carry around with me. Like before this, you know, I don't know. I drank water from the tap. I just never, never got on board with the I'm the person who has a water bottle with me all the time. But obviously we were hitchhiking. We were going to be on the road. I needed a water bottle. And so I went to the grocery store, and I bought the least lavish option they had.

Really, if I remember right, it was a very, very humble, like, plastic water bottle. You didn't get into any of this powder coat—excuse me, powder coating or, like—

fanciness that you know the whole water bottle industry is is a thing right now you didn't you didn't do any of that you just got yourself a like a was it like a rubbermaid it literally

was a rubbermaid i was trying to think like can i do that tarjay thing where i make a joke like can i make rubbermaid into something frenchy sounding yeah you try to my rubber my rubber made um wow uh anyway so i bought this thing for like 10 12 bucks or something and i became a water bottle boy i uh carried it around on that trip and i never stopped really carrying it around i've been using this thing um and i wonder if some listeners know where i'm going with this because this is a rubbermaid aka a plastic water bottle as you've mentioned it's not one of those nice steel water bottles with the the you know the brush coating and the nice design or whatever And plastic, I don't know if you know this about plastic, Luke. It's very good for you? It's very good for you, especially when it starts to break down. I filled this thing up with water the other – actually, you know what? What happened was I had to wash it pretty good the other day. Like I let it soak for a little bit with some soap in there. And ever since then, maybe that was a week ago, I cannot get the taste of soap out of this. I've rinsed it a million times. and yesterday it's been like i don't know maybe five days since i did that and i was like wait a second andrew what in the world are you doing when did you you bought this thing when and i start doing that math that we just did counting backwards i'm like this thing is six or seven years old like plastic breaks down this is not good for you the fact that that you cannot wash the soapy taste out of this means that like the plastic is gone my boy like stop it just it's

Some kind of – it's deteriorated to the point where now it's just trapping the soap and then redistributing it into your mouth.

When a water bottle tells you who it is, listens to it the first time. Exactly. I did buy – so maybe, I don't know, a year or two ago, I bought a just slightly, slightly better water bottle. Still plastic. Contigo brand? I've never heard this before.

Time Co., like my vacuum?

Oh, that's right. I needed to know that because I need to do some research on vacuums. I might be getting myself a Time Co. too. but anyway so I kind of have two water bottles now one I mostly keep upstairs one downstairs and you know if I'm going in the car I'll throw either one of them into the into the car with me um but I'm now realizing like oh this one that is you know it used to have a strap so you could carry it by your finger that's long gone and I'm now realizing like kind of the rubber part up in the top on the lid is just beginning to get a little bit of that stickiness when rubber starts to break down I'm like what am I doing why have I not bought like and why don't I buy a nicer one too you know i remember going online on some website and looking at like 35 water bottles i'm like am i a 35 in there um so anyway here's here's where all this leads i'm ready to throw this away i don't want to use this at all anymore i'm holding it it's empty i'm going to throw it away i'll replace it with something but here's what i'm really really getting at here um in the past i i've always been somebody who places a lot of sentiment sentimental value on things um yeah But I have never been like kind of a hoarder. I'm like somebody who also just like get rid of it when it doesn't serve you anymore. Get rid of it. I don't want to be moving that around through apartments or whatever. But I'm now at this age where I will see glimpses of old objects I had in old photos. And I'm like, I just wish I had that thing. It's a weird feeling. I have this purple plastic thick mug, like a travel mug that I got at some local gas station mart. you know like I think I filled it with coffee the first time and then I could refill it with coffee at a discounted price on my way to the fiberglass factory every day when I was in college for like a year or two and like I used that for a long time and then I must have thrown it away at some point when we moved and then I saw some photos recently even like post-college photos of that thing still being in my life as a young professional in New Hampshire I caught a glimpse of it in the background of a photo i'm like oh my god my old my old am pm mug it wasn't am pm but it was something like that i'm like oh man oh i wish i still had that thing and then it's like well why why do you still wish you had that thing i don't want to drink out of it anymore it wasn't just despite how i described it it wasn't especially classy looking um i wouldn't take it to a tea party um so anyway i'm just kind of like i want to throw this thing away this this gross ass old water bottle I don't need anymore but also it is an object that has been by my side for six or seven years like in kind of there's probably not been one day in the past six or seven years that I haven't used this at least once you know and I'm sort of like if I throw this away I will think about it at some point or I will see it in the background of a video or a photo and I'll be like oh my old water bottle why did I throw that away when I know why I need to throw it away but I'm I don't want to become a hoarder, Luke. have a lot of thoughts on this good one you go i am i'm i'm always impressed with you my friend

and this is one of the things about you that i find very impressive is that you you and this is completely the opposite of how i move through the world you needed a water bottle for the practical kind of a reason of we're going on a hitchhiking trip down the mississippi and you're going to get thirsty sometimes and you didn't go and spend like an afternoon researching the the jazziest water bottle you could get you just went and bought something that would work and then you just continued to use it for years and years and years i really admire that kind of practicality in the world in this room that i'm in i can see four water bottles i remember when you were going

to get water about they were going to they were going to change not to pile up but they're going gonna change who you were i remember you were just like i'm gonna be not you you're like i'm gonna be a water bottle person you liked the you bought one and you liked it too i remember we talked about this show you bought three more immediately well yeah those are uh those are

long gone oh those are different ones those didn't make the move well here's actually now in my defense the one that i'm drinking coffee out of right now is a is a kind of a cool fancy one um It's made by M-I-I-R, Mir, and it has that, like we say, powder coating. This was sent to me as a gift from Barsouk Records. So I did not buy this one, but I love it. I use it all the time. So that is actually, I'm literally drinking coffee out of it. But what's across the room is one of those giant ones, like a big, I forget who even makes it, but it's a real, like, it's the thing I saw Jonah Hill carrying around for a while. And I thought, and I was like, maybe this will change my life. maybe i'll be become a water boy and carry around now it's in this room because i'm currently uh we had to rehome one of becca's plants because bubbles who's been staying with becca was just absolutely destroying it yeah this giant i think it's called a most era um anyway so i am i i've i don't have custody of bubbles right now but i have custody of a plant and i take it very seriously so i filled that giant jonah hill water bottle up with water to water the plant not water me water the plant um anyway i admire the fact that you will buy something and you will use it for its intended purpose and you will use it until it's no longer functional for you i actually i really like that sort of way of of moving through the world and i aspire to be a little bit more um like that so that's the uh that's the first thing um and i forget what the second thing is but um oh i can tell you this i think the reason that you miss those objects to some degree is just because you're nostalgic for that time in your life regardless of what was going on it's just i think we're always a little bit nostalgic for previous eras of our lives why when we were younger we were life was you know an adventure in a way that it might become less and less so as we get older and more set in our ways like i you know i know that feeling of looking at a picture and seeing maybe a shirt that i I was wearing or just kind of, you know, for people I was hanging out with at the time or whatever, and just being like, oh man, that was a vibrant time in my life. And then I could see you kind of associating that with an object that's also in the photo. And then thirdly, you're in good company because I just saw this clip of Tina Fey on Seth Meyers' show talking about this Halloween themed pumpkin coffee cup that she's obsessed with. Can I play you? Now, it's easy to imagine. It's just, imagine a coffee mug that just has a couple pumpkins on it, and it says, like, spooky or something.

It's not, like, in the shape of a pumpkin.

It's not in the shape of a pumpkin. It's a kind of oversized coffee cup. It has some pumpkins on it. I'm kind of needle-dropping this here, but let's see where we land.

Some of these things, but I want to show you. Is this the first one you want to show? Yeah, okay. Let me tell you. Let me take you through these. Okay, so this is the first thing. This is simple. This is a very simple mug with pumpkins on it that says scary. Just know that if my house was on fire and I had to choose between my wedding album and this mug, I would 100% take this mug.

Got it.

When I saw this mug in HomeGoods, I felt like it must be what Leonardo DiCaprio feels like when he sees a 19-year-old model. Because I was like, God damn it. I will have her.

Is this a Halloween-only mug?

No. This is, you know why? Because it doesn't actually say anything about Halloween. So it's year-round. It's year-round. And I like it because if I were an object, I would be this mug. Because it says scary, but it's not really scary. Yeah. And it's a little bit wider and heavier than you expect.

Okay. So there you go. Tina Fey.

Looking at the mug, yeah.

Also fetishizing, you know, the things we hold liquid in. So you're in good company.

I pictured it being a little bit cuter. It's like this sort of rough-hewn drawing of three jack-o'-lanterns.

They're kind of a little from, like, Nightmare before Halloween or whatever that Tim Burton movie is.

They're kind of grimace-y, and, yeah, it's kind of, like, sketched out a little bit more scribbly than I expected. But, yeah, I think the thing for me, though, is there used to be an NPR credit for some sponsorship, and they would say, oh, that was Constant Contact. Okay, forget about that.

Because I would always hear the KD Lang song, Constant Craving, when they would talk about Constant Contact.

Oh, that's so funny. I would always hear it as more of a police song or a Sting song because it just always sounded so ominous to me.

Like I was always saying constant contact will always be.

I always found it chilling. I was always like constant contact. Who wants that? Who wants constant contact when it comes to anything to do with like work, especially. But anyway, I think it's the constant companionship. For me, it's like the objects in my life that I stumble on or that I've totally forgotten about. But then I either see a photo of them or when I used to go to the what's the huge thrift store in Pasadena outside the Rose Bowl, the flea market, flea market there. You know, I remember going through there with Genevieve and stumbling on a couple of old toys from my youth that I would or, you know, like the same toy that I had in my youth. And like, oh, my God, I had no recollection of this thing at all. But touching this thing and picking it up and thinking specifically of this this metal train that took two C batteries, I think, or two D batteries and then it could drive on its own. like totally wiped from my memory until i'm holding this thing and it felt like a time machine and so i and i think it was because it was so part of my childhood it was around all the time but i didn't take the time to consider it i was a kid you just like these are the things that are around me and then same with that stupid purple mug i don't particularly like it i don't miss it i don't want to drink out of it maybe it's like yeah i'm a nostalgic and a and a sentimental person for real um but like that it doesn't it's not connected to a specifically good period of my life i literally i can when i think of it i think of the smell of the fiberglass factory you know of dusty and

gluey smell but but but see i would just say again i can't speak for you but for me it's weird because my nostalgia for for stuff like that can be divorced from whatever was feeling good in my life at that time for instance i saw a photo uh of me in my early 20s with my first ex-wife and i'm wearing this sweater and like that marriage did not did not stand the test of time like most marriages I'm involved in there was nothing and we were at some party and I was probably kind of tuned it's weird because it's not even like oh god I wish I could be in that moment but there was also something that I just was like I really wish I still had that sweater and I don't so that's maybe that's just me but I it's weird that it's not even like was I at a good point in my

life yeah yeah I mean it is it's just it's just a connection to the past and this idea of especially with these more banal objects it's almost like a there's just something kind of rooted in that time period like inseparable from that time period but also just like not not celebrated like nothing is less celebrated than this shitty water bottle that i have where there's where the rubber is becoming sticky and i shouldn't drink i should have stopped drinking out of it five if not six years ago i was looking up online like how how long can you keep a reusable plastic bottle it's like one maybe two years i'm like okay um the funny thing is it's not even anywhere near the worst thing i've put in my body in the past five years is water from this water bottle so everybody calm down about that but anyway yeah so i think i i gotta you know i don't want to just i don't want to become somebody who realizes oh i have nostalgic feelings for old objects in my life so i can't part with them anymore i think i need to throw this away but maybe maybe this is what i needed i just needed i i this is my valkyrie what is valkyrie does that have something to do with sending people into the afterlife that's an amy winehouse song okay sure why don't you come on over valkyrie uh anyway what does valkyrie have anything to do with a funeral or a or a remembrance

well uh okay we have flight of the valkyrie which is dun dun dun dun dun why am i singing so much today and so badly the coffee that you're talking about you have flight of the valkyrie uh you have also uh isn't valkyrie the name of a movie uh that tom cruise was in which i was trying very hard to not get that haircut for a while because there was the in-style haircut was like for for guys was like very short on the sides and then like kind of a big tuft of hair on top and i kept i would say can i please not have the valkyrie haircut dude i was not i there was a re i had no

idea what valkyrie was i just had a feeling it had something to do with end of life and In Norse mythology, Valkyrie is one of the is one of a host of female figures who guide souls of the dead to the god.

Odin's Hall Valhalla so I do so I mean I don't think I nailed it there but I at least was somewhere in the neighborhood of like I needed this moment to say to to celebrate um this this object in my life to mark the end of our relationship to give it its due but I believe that uh this is where the ceremony ends and it's a Valhalla and then um well tonight when I take out the garbage I'll put it in

the recycle bin oh no no no it deserves better Andrew do I bury it that's not no you you know you put it in green lake and you shoot it with flaming arrows until it goes down in a true viking funeral or or until i go down by the spd or or and this is a great transition to something i wanted to tell you about or you list it for free on old craigslist and see see who comes see who wants to come by for a gently used rubbermaid uh water bottle because that is a world that i found myself in this past weekend it actually started before i went to las vegas for that tv story which was i got some new appliances delivered which meant that the old refrigerator that i had i'm sorry the refrigerator free free free giator refrigerator fridge fridge your refrigerator uh i did not need it anymore it was here when i bought the house and it's actually you know it's a frigidaire it's a completely frigidaire i mean literally andrew when i was writing the ad on craigslist the free ad i was typing frigidaire and my brain was saying frigid or free free frigidator but um it was in fine working condition it's a little a little kind of beat up on the sides it had been on the front porch when i bought the house just to kind of give you a sense for uh kind of how the folks live in here were i mean that's not actually fair it was like their house was perfectly fine for somebody who's not me but they did have a refrigerator on the front porch so anyway um i finally got a new refrigerator plugged it in it's very exciting and i uh i moved everything over boy isn't that because you and veeves recently got a new free free g free gator and it just feels like new fridge new you like i mean we're lucky enough to have two new fridges

now one smaller one in the basement but yeah so that the and first of all having the second freezer refrigerator really makes the process of getting the new one upstairs so much easier because we're able to load the I mean that talk about privilege like just having two refrigerators where I could like dump everything from the one that's being replaced downstairs while we waited for the new

one was great I was trying to time this all out I ended up having two free geators in the kitchen what will be the kitchen someday so I was able to make a peaceful transition of tomato sauce Which is really the thing this country is built on And when we lose that, we've lost everything, Andrew But I was able to take everything out And then also get rid of some stuff So that's why I'm saying New Fridge, New You Because it was like, these Kalamata olives that were in the back I mean, honestly, probably those things have an almost unlimited shelf life But have I ever eaten that? Like, you know, I opened it once, I had two olives Am I going to go back for these? No So I was able to just, like, get down to just the stuff that i actually would probably you know consume and it's also you know this new fridge had a new slightly new layout so that's also a way to like i'm just going to be the kind of person who has this rack in the door is going to be where all of the butter goes you know and like where the like it's just you get to really start your entire life over so i was doing that but so now i've got this this fridge that i'm trying to give away i mean i could have tried to get a hundred bucks for it but i did a little i did a little sleuthing on and i'm not on facebook so i'm sure there's like what is the facebook marketplace or something like the free i think i might have even been slightly in the wrong place for giving stuff away i think a lot of that maybe happens more on facebook now but um i well one thing that made me feel very young i could not figure out when i made this craigslist ad how to orient the photo of the refrigerator so i took took one picture of it kind of just, you know, as it was. And then I opened the doors and I took another picture. So people could get a sense of this thing. I could not for the life of me figure out in the like, you know, Craigslist tool, how to rotate. Basically the fridge was on its side in both photos. And you know what I decided after about 20 minutes of trying to figure this out, it's free. People are gonna have to just tilt their head to the side when they look at this ad. Like they're going to have to just kind of imagine what this refrigerator is like when it's standing up upright. This is this was because, again, if I were trying to sell it, totally different story. But something in my mind just kind of broke when I decided I was giving this away. Like I just thought like somebody should be so grateful that they're getting a working.

Frigier tour that is like perfectly fine. Just not something I want in my you know, you new kitchen anymore um, and so I listed it and then I Waited an entire day and no one inquired about it. Like I thought it was gonna be like post and then like At that moment my inbox wouldn't start blowing up with people trying to come get the fridge did not happen at all and then I went to Vegas and I did some work and then I came home and then I had like 20 emails about it. So I don't know if people were just not hitting refresh a lot, but What ended up happening was Somebody reached out and I felt a little bad Like I just started responding to people being like it's still available If you want to come get it, let me know but I was responding to kind of a lot of people I was kind of playing the field Because and you said Genevieve has some thoughts on this Andrew What I realized pretty quickly was I'm not gonna wait for one person who might be coming out to where I live to get this free thing because sure enough a number of the people who emailed me who i then responded to and said on saturday i was like i still have this um or maybe it was sunday i guess it was sunday actually i was like i still have this thing a bunch of them didn't get back to me like did they get a different free refrigerator since they emailed me or are they just flakes so one of the folks who said it was actually very not flaky was like okay i'm in this part of you know town i will be out there uh and i said okay but you're gonna need some kind of a dolly for this like you know like a hand truck i go and you're gonna need a couple of strong folks and what i was trying to say to this person was i am not carrying this fridge out of my house or up the very steep stairs up to where the driveway and cars are in on my little property like i don't want any part of that um and so the person said sure yeah i'm going to borrow a truck and i'm going to borrow you know a like a dolly etc okay i'll be out there so now me and walt are here at the house and i realize we want to get the fridge out of what i don't want to do is like leave the moving of this refrigerator to somebody who is not as worried about like let's say the hardwood floors that i just put in or the i have these sliding glass doors which would be very you could very easily knock into those trying to wheel this refrigerator out onto the deck and around the house like i i realized that i don't trust anyone to just come into my house and then remove this fridge without maybe kind of messing something up so it's decided that me and my dad are going to get the fridge out of the house but only onto the deck that's as far as we're going to move this thing so we do that i also have a dolly but i didn't want the person coming to know that i had a dolly because i did not want to get roped into the moving of the fridge once they got here i felt like it was their sacred duty to deal with the fridge once they got here because they were

getting it for free so we get it out of the house me and my dad we wheel it around to the kind of edge of the deck right at the top of these stairs that go down to the the pavement and now i'm looking at that and i say to my dad i'm worried about them taking this fridge down these steps they're they're wood that's like this brazilian hardwood it's kind of a whole thing i would really like them to not just like jack the stairs up while moving it so now we realize that we're gonna have to try to get this thing down those stairs because we don't i don't trust the person who's coming to get them down the stairs but this refrigerator is flipping heavy like i did not realize how this you know it's got an ice maker it's got like it's just it's pretty enormous it turns out so me and walt with just like a great amount of trepidation and kind of psyching ourselves up and like using this dolly and then we also like did all this crazy shit where we like we used these like straps and we ratcheted them down but then we used the ratchets as a handhold on the side and like we managed to get it down the steps with not really damaging the steps so now the fridge is sitting on a kind of a patio area and it's at the foot of these very steep like 12 steps that you have to go up to get to where a truck would be to take this out of the way and I say to my dad we got to get out of here man like we can't because I've been emailing the guy saying okay it's gonna be outside it's gonna be on the deck then I email him again it's actually gonna be on the patio here's a photo just come grab it And me and my dad are like, okay, we got to get out. We can't be here when the people show up because then we're going to end up having to help them. And we don't want to help them. They're getting it for free. So I'm like, okay. So we're like doing a couple of things. We're grabbing a couple, like we're making a list for Home Depot. We're checking it twice. And I'm doing something or other. And then my dad just comes around the corner and goes, refrigerator guy's here. Now, tell me about how your dad said refrigerator. guys are here because it was not joyous it was not okay so he's on board because your dad's a really good guy i could see this is a really good guy i could see this being one of those things where you're like dad we got to get out of here this is not a time to help and your dad being like no no we should help these folks but that is not the case he doesn't want to he did not want

any part of it because it was a bitch getting it just down i'm counting one two three four five six seven getting it down seven stairs andrew so think about how gravity works that was really really hard also sometimes when my dad are lifting heavy stuff he goes to a very dark place because i think he doesn't want to drop we put the windows in here to the madrona hill studio he said swear words that i think he was inventing like he he really he does not like lifting and moving heavy fright frightening things which like nobody does but it is it goes to a very primal place for him so he literally is like the refrigerator guys here so i'm like all right all right all right so then he's just oh you know what we were doing we were unloading his truck because my dad when he comes out here to help me he's got his truck and it's full of tools full of tools and we have to unload all the tools and take him into the basement so then we can use the truck for like dump runs and buying wood and stuff and then when it's time for him to leave we reload all the tools into the truck it's his whole ritual so we had been loading the unloading the tools and he goes i'm just gonna he literally says to me i'm just gonna unload the tools i don't want to be tied up in this refrigerator thing at all it's like all right i got you so the guy and his partner who get out of the truck are actually very very likable very sweet um totally showed up when they said they would we're excited we're very complimentary about like the project that i'm doing here everything was great on the downside they were not physically imposing young men they were not even wearing the right shoes one of them had flip-flops on one of them was wearing some of those like all birds i was like they're like in kind of athleisure i'm like i'm like this is weird you are they have a they have a little hand truck that they clearly just borrowed from somebody you might use this to like move a couple of like boxes of you know vinyl records or something i'm like oh man they are not ready for this like they are they this is and then i and so i'm trying to kind of like i'm trying to gas them up i'm like yeah you could just probably take those stairs i go you could maybe try the yard there is a way to get around the grass but the problem is it's so muddy that it'd be like this thing is going to get trapped in the mud before you can get it kind of around and up this other hill like there was like no good option for them and i'm now like kind of torn because i don't want to be a part of moving this thing up these stairs i know it's going to be heinous but i don't want this at my house anymore and i know these two these two folks are not between the two of them going to be able to actually probably pull this off so i put on the gloves and then they like wheel it over to the stairs and then i'm like yeah let me give you a hand and then as i'm grabbing the bottom of the refrigerator and they're

kind of like up holding their little hand truck trying to hoist it up who who do i what do i feel a shoulder brushing up against me won't be and sure enough it's me and walt holding the bottom of the fridge and these two guys holding the top of the hand truck and the four of us when i tell you andrew that that was like one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life like it was so hard and i felt like i had to keep i was like had to keep these guys from giving up because i could just hear one of them going oh like making a noise of how heavy it was worth it like is this worth it physically can i do even do one quarter of this and i was like okay 10 more steps and then we're like we'd go three two one everyone would like strain to move this refrigerator up like six inches and into the next step i'd be like okay nine and it's like i am like the biggest cheerleader for this project i've gone from being like i don't want to be anywhere near this i want to be down at the home depot when this happens to being like i am i am the hype man for this project because i will be god damned i will be god damned if this thing is going to stay at my house there's a point where one of the guys starts to really lose his strength and the thing's almost tilting back on me and my dad and i'm like is this how i die like the other thing is i could have just paid home depot 75 to clear this for me andrew but that seemed like i was like i'm gonna pay them like when you're signing up to have the appliances delivered they offer appliance removal and i was like i am gonna like pay someone 75 to take away a perfectly working refrigerator like that's insanity to me and i was really regretting that decision in this moment um so we finally get it up to the top of the steps now it still needs to get in the truck which it's like they've borrowed some big burly like dually you know like a truck that's got four wheels in the back so it's the bed is pretty high and i'm just like at this point i have so much adrenaline i could have probably pushed it in the truck by myself they like want to take a break okay and i'm like all right let's just get it let's lean it against the truck let's do it i'm like this has to be in this truck asap because i don't want i don't want there to be any way that these guys decide they're not taking this fridge it's also the fridge is very dusty because like it's just been in a construction zone for a year and a half the guy one of the guys is covered in dust from sort of bear hugging the back side of the refrigerator i'm just like and we we just like muscle it into the back of the truck it's like just like laying on its back they close the the gate and as they pull away a sense of calm a serene sense washes over me that i haven't felt maybe in years of that refrigerator being out of my life i always thought a dually meant it had

two uh exhaust pipes but i'm absolutely is that what it means no no a dually means it's the type of truck that you just described that has the the two sets of two wheels in the back so i'm i'm

learning stuff today there's so much about truck tober you can learn from me no it is true well

Well, I mean, you know, you have often told stories on the show about how you feel like less macho than a lot of the people who come to your house to work on this or do that. I felt more macho than these folks. You got to be the Macho Macho Duck as that old record I had. Do you know Macho Macho Duck? It was, I think, Donald Duck singing Macho Macho Man off of the Sesame Street. Wait, he wasn't on Sesame Street. No, no. What was Macho Macho Duck? Was that Donald Duck?

uh this is the first i'm hearing of it well that seems strange i don't yeah there was no duck in there was no duck in the sesame street expanded universe that i'm aware of right so probably would have been donald duck would have been the disney let's see here i'm tempted to sing macho

macho duck but i've done enough good evening mr duck this is off of something called mickey mouse disco which i must have had as a kid we also had this the sesame street fever record It's funny I don't have that anymore. Is this Disco Duck?

Oh, how interesting. I assumed it was a take on Macho Man, the Village People song.

That's not the same song. My memory was it was macho, macho duck. Do we just not know the beginning? That sounds a little more like it. It's just off. It's just bad.

And I think it's because they didn't, I think it's maybe they didn't want to have to pay the village people.

I think you're right that it's not quite a parody.

It's a kind of a sound-alike, they would call it, where it's like in the, it's in the vibe of Macho Macho Man, But, like, it's just different enough that they're not going to get sued by the estate of the police officer from the village people, maybe.

Well, anyway, my point is you got to be the Macho Macho Doc.

I did, and it felt kind of cool, I guess. It felt really good to just be rid of it. But I guess the lesson that I learned was if you have some big, heavy thing and it's only going to be $75 to just have it no longer be part of your life, might be worth just doing that part. i spent much more than 75 of my personal time worrying about this dealing with it i ended up having to move it myself anyway like i i have it's weird because i'm somebody who's both not as good with money as i wish i was like i'm not a andrew walsh with his rubbermaid but so there are times when i'm i wish i was smarter with how i spend money but then there are these things that i'm like i would i i would rather you know there's no way i'm gonna spend 75 dollars to avoid having to hoist this heavy ass refrigerator out of my house and almost ruin all of the hard work we've put in like there's no way i'm going to spend 75 on that that seems crazy to me it's like ordering room service at a hotel like if you told me room service if it was a thousand dollars for a cheeseburger i'd be like that's probably what it costs like there's just these things that i got a huge hang up on yeah it's when we um

We got new washers and dryers, or one new washer and one new dryer, to be clear. I think the dryer that we were replacing was, well, it was so broken, we couldn't even do laundry in it anymore.

It was actually like making things wetter.

Honestly, I think it was. It was steaming them up. It was terrible. But then the washing machine was still new and in good condition.

And I told Genevieve, I'm like, just pay the, I don't know, I don't remember what it was. But for the people who were delivering, I think, from Lowe's, our new units, we had them take away the old broken one. I'm like, just have them take away the working one, too. Let them resell it. Like, I don't care. It's worth, I think, maybe it was 50 bucks. And, again, I'm not a spendthrift. I just, like, it's just worth it. It's such a convenience fee just to have that thing walk out of our house. We don't have to think about it. And Genevieve's like, no, I can do better. I can do better. And she did do better. Like she sold it, I think. And I was always nervous. I'm like, I don't want I don't want to have one day without a washing machine. Like I'm I'm a weirdo. Like the idea of like just not having a washing machine in case I had a washing machine emergency.

I didn't like the feeling of you sold the sold the washing machine before the new one showed up.

So Genevieve, yeah. And she knew that I'm a big baby about that stuff. So she like made she's like, don't worry, the guy's coming like the day before he's going to buy it. He's going to, you know, and I think we ended up, you know, getting 50 bucks for it instead of paying 50 bucks to have it shipped away. And so she was definitely right on that one. But for me, it's never worth the hassle. Genevieve, I mean, I don't know if this is fair to say that she loves it, but she definitely has an interest in posting things online, whether it's a free cycle thing or what she's learned, as mentioned this to you off air the other day, is that, like, honestly, it's better to try to sell it for a low dollar value than just give something away. because just by like perceived value exactly it's that economic theory and it seems to it seems to bear out that like if you just put something and say hey it's free just come take it away you might get less interest than if you say this thing is 25 and somebody will be like oh my god i'm getting this for a steal you know if it's free you assume that there's something wrong with it but i will say yeah she ended up selling our washing machine the person came took it away we were maybe 12 hours without a washing machine i had no washing machine emergencies during that period i think i slept i drank and slept through most of that period i don't really remember much um and then our new uh equipment came the next and once again you were a washoe washoe man

i was a washoe washoe man exactly i think for me it's the scheduling component of it that i don't like in other words um i'm looking right now at uh the uh old storm door that used to be literally the only door on my house uh which is the kind of thing that you put over your normal door so that you can uh so that the cold air like if you're in the midwest doesn't penetrate your regular door that was for a long time the only door on this house that's sitting out kind of leaning up against the house some windows did a better job than the door you

installed though because that one hung open ironically for a week but like uh yeah right

but like there's and there's some uh big windows that we took out that are leaned up against side of the house there's all this stuff and i i could list it for free i could list it for five bucks it all has some small amount of value but i'm taking it down to habitat for humanity i think down there in town because though the saddest habitat for humanity i'm glad jimmy carter's not alive to see this actually he is but i don't think it's on his radar um but i'm going to take it down there because i just don't want to be waiting or here's the part that when if i have a work meeting like i have today actually fairly soon andrew i have something on my calendar that's been on my calendar for two months it is an afternoon recording session for a large software concern on the east side of seattle oh expedia again nice i have had a minor pit in my stomach for three months about something that i knew was going to have to happen at one o'clock on a tuesday like i hate having things on my calendar and having to kind of be like back and forthing with someone who's going to come maybe take this storm door off my hands just knowing that i have to be kind of on their schedule to some degree that's what i think that's the part that i'm not liking so i think i'm gonna just a start paying the nominal fee to have stuff hauled away if if that's what's happening or just consider it like a cost of doing business when you remodel a house Just me and Walt, throw it in the back of the truck, take it down to Habitat for Humanity, and have it out of my life. As opposed to, for me anyway, trying to extract an extra $50 of value from it. But I'm impressed that Veeves pulled it off. Veeves is quite skilled in this arena.

She really is, yeah. I just want to update one thing before we thank the donors. I told you a while back I was sort of fantasizing about a more expensive water bottle. I put it in the $35 range. no I was wrong it was actually in the $50 range it's by Corksicle I believe and I'm looking at it and this whole time you're telling that story I'm like going back it's actually a Star Wars inspired design I'm not interested in the Star Wars-iness of it I just like the design of this one because it just sort of nods toward the color scheme of I think one of the Fetts or one of the Bobas or what a Boba Fett clearly I'm not a Star Trek-y but anyway don't play that game But anyway, I'm looking at this thing here and I'm like, it's 50. dollars but also you saw how long i used the plastic one maybe i can justify this but then

drew that's your washing machine money you've got a free 50 in the family bank account i don't know

why i'm talking like this she's the one who earned that but anyway um 50 seems it still seems excessive to me for a water bottle but the thing is i'm looking at the the video and then i realize oh my god i'm so glad i watched a little how-to video it has a straw it's got like the type that you would you would like flip it open and suck the water down as opposed to just like you know drinking I need I just need I do not like the straws and water bottles I am so glad I did not go further with this do you like the straw type of thing do you like the thing that flips up

and then you can like kind of pull on it uh well our Christmas bonus one year from APM was a Brita water bottle like that that has a built-in filter and has a straw and I actually enjoy that very

much that one was really hard to pull through i thought because of the filter mechanism but like the the one from oh the radio station when you're i'm sorry the record label one that's a hot coffee

thing right yeah you just like unscrew the top it's open but i do hear you and this is not i'm this is not me trying to like low-key drag you but i do hear you drinking out of that water bottle and i feel like i hear ice jangling oh yeah it sounds like a goddamn it sounds like a hamster

drinking from its noisy little water thing but no it's the noisiest it's before we start the show

usually but what i mean is you're like i i can tell that like this is you you have your ritual you enjoy it you have your system it's working for you so like yeah you definitely need to make sure that whatever else you acquire you can still do your system because i can tell that like again

it's kind of part of your morning yeah i definitely i need to fill it mostly with ice cubes that sort of melt throughout the hours and i drink it and it has to be very very cold but i need to be able to tip it back no straws for this guy sorry corksicle look we put out a lot of tbtl every

week five episodes and yet we hear from some folks saying but what else can i listen to and i've got the answer for you it's text me back the new weekly podcast from lindy west and megan hatcher mays and our friends over at kuow lindy and megan are actual high school friends they We went to Garfield High in Seattle together, and they've stayed friends all of these years. They've both done incredible stuff professionally and personally in the world, and now they're getting together every week to talk about pop culture and politics and their lives. It is such a hoot, and it is really one of my very favorite things happening out there in the podcast world, so please go check it out. Again, it's brought to you by KUOW and the NPR Network. They get new episodes out there every Thursday. So go get it wherever you get that kind of stuff. We've got to thank some donors, Andrew. These are the wonderful, generous people who are giving their own hard-earned money to this program so that we can do it five days a week. And as will unfortunately probably happen today We'll have to push the top stories Because I do really want to talk about this bunk journalism But we're getting a little short on time And this is on a day, Andrew, where I just saw a headline Cross my screen A monkey is on the run in the Scottish Highlands We don't even have that on the show sheet

Oh, jeez Louise, that's breaking news That's breaking TVGL news Do we trust that headline, though? Or is that another bunk journalism roundup?

Well played, well played, my friend I know that we trust We trust, that is donor today, Lisa Pettick of Renton, Washington. Hey! We trust Lisa to keep the show going. Thank you, Lisa.

And keep an eye on them Seahawks when they're

practicing. Oh, boy. Don't, Andrew, don't. Don't. Just don't.

How about you don't? Okay, cool. I don't have anything to say about that, so...

Well, we have coaches, we have potential coaches taking themselves out of the conversation. Oh, yeah, yeah, I heard about that. Never great. No. Never great. And, like, hi, I'm a coordinator somewhere, and I would actually like to not be the head coach of a football team. I'd like to stay where I am more than I would like to be the head coach of your football team, sir.

The Seattle Freeze. It's not about the football team. They're just like, I don't know if I can make friends in Seattle.

Well, maybe they could be friends with Brandon Lucian, who's in Milton, Washington. That's not super-duper far from Seattle.

No. Isn't it? Actually, I don't even know that for sure. I don't know where Milton is.

It's down by Puyallup, I believe. I think Milton and Puralip, down just a little southeast.

Oh, yeah, the model train district of the state? Exactly.

That's exactly right, which is miles away from Athens, Georgia, which is where Ian Webster is. Ah, Athens.

I've never been to Athens, but, man, it sounds like such a cool town. You got your B-52. You got your B's 52.

You got your R's EM. Yep, all of them, all from Athens. I told you, by the way, that...

Fred Schneider was the Not My Job guest, right?

Yeah, remember you had, you wanted me to guess. I think I had three or five guesses when I got there and you were very excited about that.

He was really interesting. Did I, I don't know if I gave you a, like on the Monday afterwards, if I gave you a post-mort. He was interesting because he was totally fascinating and totally humorless.

Huh, interesting.

Which is funny for someone who seems like their general vibe when making music is just all about sort of like, um not you know camp and not taking oneself seriously he was and some of it probably had to do with because you know he was on zoom or something so there was probably a little bit of a communication delay my takeaway from from just being kind of in the room for 15 20 minutes with and fred schneider interview was god i would love to get dinner with this guy like he just seemed like so he seemed like such a fun interesting person who'd sort of had all these experiences but who was not even in the slightest way intentionally wacky.

Well, you know what's interesting, now that I think about it, you look at some of the earliest videos of the B-52s, and there are some really cool ones. I think the one, I think Four Rock Lobster is the one I'm picturing. Or no, maybe I'm picturing Planet Claire. It doesn't matter. You guys aren't into the B-52s that much. Sorry, I just heard it.

Fred Schneider would be cloudy on some of these details.

But one of the fascinating things is he is stone-faced serious. while singing a lot of these songs and like and you know and like the whole band is playing and this is when they were still a five piece and like you know they're dressed very colorfully and like you said almost campy and kind of disco or whatever but he he has a cowbell in his hand and he has a little mustache and he is singing into that but he does not smile my friend he is serious about it I love it it's a really cool vibe well that's the thing it's not that he was

being unfun or that he was what he didn't seem to have was the need the hunger the what do we keep calling it the undeniable urge oh yeah uh to like be quote unquote on for us or to be to get a laugh from us or be funny like he took every every question and uh that was posed to him even the joke questions he took them seriously like he considered them and gave a real answer and then sometimes his real answers were weirdly funny but it's like he wasn't being like i'm fred schneider he was just kind of like listening and if he got a question that made no sense he'd be like well that's that makes absolutely no sense to me and it would be like really it'd be funny but in a way like he was not trying to be funny but he was somehow funny but he wasn't he wasn't he wasn't being quote unquote on for us if that makes sense yeah yeah and it sounds like he was being

thoughtful that's one of my favorite things totally I remember hearing Steve Martin in a Terry Gross interview and I'm talking this is probably late 90s I think it was like when I was still like kind of very excited about the idea of public radio sort of a new thing to me and I was sort of like exploring it and working in that field and everything and um just being blown over by a small moment in a in a Terry Gross interview with Steve Martin where she asked him a question and he just paused for a really long time and then just I can't even remember what the question was so the story is kind of lame but it just like I was so impressed with just like the thoughtfulness of a man who's done a million interviews and speaks in various ways for a living and writes but just like kind of like ah you know what let me let me think about that let me not just give you the let me not just start talking and then figure out what I'm saying

like I do on the show all the time well both of us for what it's worth yeah I you know I was um looking i was looking at art in the met uh in new york recently and i found out that what the lapine agile was was like i think like a bar in paris where picasso would hang out and all these people because steve martin had like a special like a one person show called like live from the lapine agile and i never knew what that was a reference to and i was looking at like a painting by picasso and it had been it was depicting i think it was picasso um it was depicting him and some of these other friends of his at the lapine agile that's not me trying to flex that's just me finally understanding a reference steve martin was making post the jerk because that was when i started to kind of like around la story was when i started to realize steve martin is way too heady for me

i'm starting to wonder if i should go back and re-watch la story i you know what i would let's

do that together yeah i'm wondering how well i love you didn't invite me you didn't invite me to to watch it with you oh i bet you were coming at that for different reasons because i think i should re-watch it because i saw it in a theater i saw it with peter williams and his parents oddly and i didn't get any of it i was like oh steve martin the guy from the jerk oh i was figuring maybe you got it because you were kind of a brainier no no i was a kid like i don't think

i saw it in the theater i do believe i saw it pretty early somehow heartbreak feels better there and there's a vhs i preferred my heartbreak on vhs um and so

So I think I saw it when it was relatively new or like of the moment. But like I was a child living in a rural Ohio. You think I got much of that? You think I got many of the jokes about I mean, I just remember like seeing that what I remember about that movie is mostly the stuff that was in the commercial so much like the the the the driving in L.A. And I think he's getting shot at like it's it's it's an exaggerated, extreme Los Angeles. Right. Isn't there literally a gunfight to illustrate how bad maybe I just remember.

That was the first time I think I'd seen Sarah Jessica Parker And, you know, I was fairly taken with her As a young boy of 14 or whatever But, like, I didn't get any of the humor Because I was like, this is Naven R. Johnson This is the guy who made the Opti-Grab This is, you know, like, that's I think that's probably why a lot of people went to see that movie And I think a lot of people probably left going like What the hell was that?

Uh-huh, right, yeah And so you were expecting a goofier thing Anyway, yeah, we should both I also just wonder how cultural movies like that, like, hold up as far as values and stuff are concerned anyway. I would hope okay.

I wonder what Carissa Carpenter of Denver, Colorado makes of the movie L.A. Story. Yeah, we do a watch alone. And why did Carissa not put that in the donor form here? That's one of the many—there's a lot of questions. And some people, they think it's enough to just donate to TBTL, so they don't fill out all of the different questions. But one of them is, what's your take on the Steve Martin movie L.A. Story?

Yeah, it's like name, right, and then name, location, where you're from, and then what do you make? Do you think it holds up? Do you think L.A. Story holds up?

Uh-huh, exactly. Andrea Carter of Kalispell, Montana also failed to fill out that piece of information, so we'll have to wonder for one year what her take on L.A. Story is.

Your silence is deafening, Andrea.

But your financial donation is loud and clear.

Yeah, actually, let that do the talking.

So thank you. Thank you to all of our donors today for making TVTL possible.

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

All right, as referenced, we are going to, we'll have to push our top stories to tomorrow. But I do think that they're kind of interesting. And like you said, Andrew, when we were kind of taking a quick break, like they're sort of connected. So let's just we'll hold off on our bunk journalism stories until tomorrow, because it also sounds like you have a whale of a voicemail to play like this is in the fours of minutes.

It's in the fours of minutes. Yes. Just it's foreign change. And so I want to play this for you. This is from listener Jared. You know, I don't know exactly. I mean, I think Jared says at the beginning of the voicemail that it was basically our talk of like flights and your telling of the time you almost missed the cruise line and just travel and also sort of like luxury travel. Anyway, it all just sort of spurred this memory from Jared. And so it's a longer voicemail. I wanted to give it room to breathe. So take a listen to this.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. Ahoy, ahoy. This is Jared from San Diego. long-time 10 and singer from Threadwood, the band. I have a story. You guys were talking about being late to a cruise ship and the pleasures and curses of flying first class. And I have a story that kind of combines both of those. So I had this opportunity a few years back to go on a free Africa trip. It was like a – it was an experience that was remarkable, but it was weird because I was invited to go for free, but not like I didn't have a job or anything to do. I was just kind of a tag along. But it meant that I got exposed to this kind of whole world of luxury travel that was pretty bananas. Like at one point we jumped out of a helicopter into the ocean. But that's a separate story. What I discovered on that trip was that at LAX, there's this thing called PS, which I think maybe stands for private suite Because what it is, is it's a private terminal across from the runway, across from the busy terminal, that's just a private suite for, like, celebrities and the uber wealthy. And I was told to meet my party there, like, the people I was flying with, but I had no idea where I was going. When I got there, I was blown away to see, like, you know, a man in a suit, like, open my door and be like, follow me this way Mr. Reyes and take me to a private suite where we had like a TV and a view of the runway and like a full bar and a ton of snacks just like out and I was the first one there and I wasn't sure what to do so I like asked the person who was kind of like waiting on us I was like hey can I just like make a cocktail and he was like yes sir everything here is yours and I I was like, is there a charge? He's like, no, no, no, everything's taken care of. I was like, okay. And so I go to make a drink, and I think I was making, like, an old-fashioned or something.

but I needed simple syrup, and they didn't have any simple syrup, so I dialed the number. I was like, excuse me, can I get some syrup? This is just to show you how ridiculous this place is. I called them to ask if they had simple syrup, and they're like, well, we don't, but our chef will make you some if we can't find it somewhere. And so would you like it infused with anything? I was like, sure, infuse it with rosemary. So now I'm the guy who, like, didn't even know I was going to a private suite who's now asking for rosemary-infused simple syrup.

I know exactly the sort of phenomenon that Jared is describing to go from being like intimidated by the kind of luxury of something to embracing it to being almost like, okay, I guess you don't have any rosemary simple syrup ready to go. like that is the light speed at which i can go from just being like what they have like a pancake maker in here like if you're in the alaska lounge to just being like oh and blueberry pancake they don't have exactly like not that not that jared was being ungrateful but just like how you go from just being like bowled over by something that feels so luxurious to like all we're we are a weird weird species that we can go from from being kind of totally excited about something too it feels like you really deserve this within a matter of about two minutes

it's funny you won't be surprised to hear that i i find that less relatable i guess like i'm just like you know if i'm in this situation mr seven year water bottle over there like excuse me do you not have a rubbermaid cocktail shaker i can use please um but uh no like i would just be like oh okay well i'll just take this gin and this tonic and this lot you know i mean i would just like take whatever is there but this idea of being like oh i can have anything okay well yeah okay well where's the simple syrup can i call this number and get simple syrup but again i am not i'm not a man of of high taste asking for rosemary infused simple syrup for my

free cocktail that i'm very excited about and then everyone shows up and we're all hanging out and then someone comes and gets us like two hours later and it's like okay it's time for you now to go through customs and i was like oh weird okay and we walk outside the door and instead of going through customs a individual just like looks at each one of our passports and says okay enjoy your flight um i'm dead serious like we're an international flight where we're flying from from lax to amsterdam i believe and and involved no bad scanning or anything it was it was wild And then someone pulls up in a black SUV and says, okay, time to get on the plane. And they proceed to drive across the runway up to the two-story 747 that will be flying us to Amsterdam. And they proceed to lead us to his stairs. And it only occurs to me as I'm literally stepping into the cockpit that not only are we the schmucks who are boarding the 747 from the runway side of things, like from the open-door runway, but we are also boarding last like well last like everyone who looked at us as we were boarding was glaring at us and we had to walk by all these angry people and go up the stairs to like the first class area it was my first time flying first class certainly my first time doing any sort of like private suite thing i'm i'm sure i'll never be able to do that again and we were the last people to board the plane for all these people even sitting on the tarmac waiting for the first class schmucks to show up. That's my horribly embarrassing story. There's so many more details, but the voicemail cut me off when I was telling the long version. Thank you all for curing global loneliness.

Love the show. Ciao. Oh, ciao. That's how you can tell that Jared is international. Ciao. It's changed you, Jared. I miss the old Jared. The private suite has changed you, bro. I just sort of found that that's a story that I just sort of I was kind of hanging on all of the details of that, of that story. But yeah, I don't know if that, if that ruins travel for Jared going forward.

I have this, I have this kind of weird thing that my brain does. You were talking about getting kind of nostalgic for like objects in your life or whatever. When I find myself in, I've never been in that exact moment that Jared is describing. That sounds like amazing, but I can tell you what would happen if I was in that moment. I'm, I, it's like I want to figure out some way to save up all of the luxury and then kind of dispense it to myself in small doses over time. Does this make any sense at all? I think so, actually. It's kind of like, it's kind of like, oh my God, all this free alcohol and food and people taking care of me and being in first class and getting on the, all of this pampering that's going on. I can't.

take it all in at once it's not it's too much what i want to do is average this out over the next 10 times i travel like i don't need it to be at this level but i would like it to be 60 of this every time i travel for the next two years like if that makes any sense like there are times where you you're like i can't there's only so many snacks i can consume in this in this amazing private suite there's only so many drinks uh that i can have or should have anyway and then like same thing in that first class i'm imagining it sounds like jared was flying literally to

africa yeah i guess i mean i did sound yeah i'm unclear like kind of if he was with people who were working with the fancy people it sounded like as he mentioned he didn't have a specific

job involved but saying that like like that first class flight sounds ridiculous because you're going to be in the air for like lax to somewhere in africa you're talking a lot of time in the air and like international first class and they're just like catering to you and they're just like bringing you it's like it's this level of luxury that's like not attainable for most of us and if the normies like us attain it for a minute my thought is always like i i want to be like a squirrel and i want to just like stuff my cheeks with all of this luxury and then go put it in a tree somewhere and then the next time i'm at a red roof in somewhere outside of wherever i i want to be able to like apply or next time i'm on a spirit airlines flight going somewhere i want to apply some of this luxury to my life like i almost get sad about something being too nice because i know that it's a limited time offer and i feel like i'm not soaking it up enough is it like when the

mariners are middling can you imagine like just imagine this i don't know if this is asking too much like the mariners are just sort of like having a sort of middling season where they'll show some flashes but then they'll kind of be in the in the doldrums for a while and sort of lose a bunch of close games and then all of a sudden they just break open some random Tuesday evening they just rack up like 12 runs right exactly that and the other team has like three runs it's like but they keep on getting runs and you're just like guys save it save it save it save it save it don't you don't we don't we don't need any more right now I don't need any more luxury right now I'm going to need this later when i'm in indiana um for a business conference would andrew but here's

my question would a middling team add roster depth in trade for speedy royals utility player

oh is that something that just happened yes but you're not talking about you're not talking about

the no i'm talking about somebody named samad taylor oh who you know i'm sure samad taylor is a fine baseball player and we'll be uh you know maybe have some moments for the mariners but it's like i'm just gonna do this because it's kind of the end of the show and whatever but like and we can't all live in the lap of luxury like jared so some of us have to just try to make life livable on life's terms but like we have there are teams that are signing juan soto and shohei otani and the mariners are adding roster depth in a trade for a speedy royals utility player they've lowered

the bar for me so much though that i was still kind of vibing off the polanco thing yesterday

i'm like that's pretty good i actually thought that we had an indication like a temperature gauge on our sports group of course there are some people that are still blocked on my on sports group so maybe i didn't see all the commentary but like our good friend the stew bot oh yeah buddy who is a twins fan jumped into the text chain to kind of say hey you know you guys got jorge polanco and like he's when he's healthy he's pretty good now maybe people were responding and i wasn't seeing it because of how i have my thing set up but i was like i didn't respond because it's like it's like getting former all-star jorge polanco who i'm sure he'll be a good player but it's like i'm just so like the the number of like one-time all-stars that the mariners have picked up when they're kind of past their expiration date um who have been like okay ish while the mariners continue to not get over the hump for the postseason like it's just a lot it's such a it's such a long long long list of of just like what a middling team that doesn't spend enough money in a place with a marine layer does and it's just like i'm so can you hear the sadness in my voice it's like we're we're not making we're just rearranging deck chairs on the it's not even the titanic that's the thing we're rearranging deck chairs on whatever this boat is that the mariners are the uss mariner we literally used to have a boat as kind of like part of our mascot and I couldn't think of a boat name like we're just it just feels like okay cool we got like and maybe Polanco have a breakout a re-breakout season but it's like okay we got a we got we added depth with a speedy utility player from isn't that what Sam Haggerty is isn't he a speedy utility player like I don't know I just I'm just I'm Andrew I'm in a dark place with this baseball

rightfully so I mean I'm more in the wrong here because what happens and this always happens around this time of year where it's like January but we're already having like spring And then...

days like yesterday was so warm here and so then i started thinking oh spring training's around the corner and like we have and we don't have time to get into it but like we have real reason to be furious at mariner's ownership right now from what they what they've stated just like publicly about them cutting back payroll and making the team essentially worse just so that doesn't hurt the bottom line of the billionaires who were running the team not so they can avoid running a deficit but just so that they can still make the billions of dollars that they're making without taking any kind of a hit in their profits and they're basically just saying that what the most important thing for the mariners is for us to make more money not for the fan experience and certainly not to win a world series or even go to the world series like we have so many reasons to be so angry i don't know if we've talked about this on the show but like i'm really trying this year i mean i one of my happiest places is going to the ballpark and i think i'm going to try to do that less this year because it is super expensive and i just don't want that going to John Stanton so I mean it's just it's so I'm so mad at the team but I love baseball and I love this time of year and as spring training gets closer and so I'm like I'm reading you know like what the stew bot is talking about Jorge Polanco and like yeah you might get the last two good years out of him and it sounds like such a mariner's move he will probably get injured within the first couple of months of play and then like miss a bunch of time and then maybe come back when we're teased with a possible playoff run at the end of the season like I know how this all plays out but what happens is i'm happier if at this time of year i let myself imagine the best case scenario for everything that's an interesting strategy i mean that stupid it'll i'm sure like a few more years and it'll be totally beaten out of me but right now it's just like it's more fun to say yeah but what if what if everything does work but you're right they're they're totally screwing us over and it's not it's not jerry so much as john and the ownership

group i feel like i actually think though that i might adopt your perspective because what does it cost me i mean i guess it means i'm i'm slightly more unhinged in say like june when they're on a 10 game losing streak or whatever like or maybe at the trade deadline when they don't add someone like there will be a point where if i if i sort of let myself get excited now it will hurt more later but on the other hand it's fun being excited and i'm not i'm being i'm i'm being a real a real downer lately like i'm not even i'm not even responding to the stew bod about us picking up jorge polanco that must have been interesting by the way because he was

responding to a question from somebody who might be blocked on your phone i gotta i gotta unblock

i gotta unblock you on this that's my bad not me not me no i know um but wouldn't it be funny if i i talked to you for like two hours a day but i also have you blocked on a text it would be a

bizarre dynamic it would be also hard to do our jobs honestly if you're not getting my text messages

but like but like um i think it's better i i actually think it's better to to to have loved and and to lose than to sort of never have loved at all because this is a time of year and i have talked so much about the kind of daylight implications and uh you know uh this is i was just thinking this driving around the other day that like this is just like when the super bowl is over and if you live in the pacific northwest it's a it can be kind of a rough time like we don't have a basketball team in seattle an nba team that is we do have a great wnba team but they don't play exactly at the same time we it's like all of the um trees are ugly like the leaves are down everywhere so everything's i'm looking at these trees on my on my property and they're just all covered in like lichen and moss because they've dropped all their leaves and it's just like i know that they'll be back in the springtime and that things will be but it's like you need something kind of in like february through like say april to kind of grab onto and the promise of of major league baseball has often been that thing for me i think i need it even if i'm even if i'm delulu as they will say sometimes on tick tock i think i need to to be delusional here with this team more than I need to protect my heart yeah for me like

spiritually I love the idea of a scrappy team that's really smart and put something together that isn't just like signing the biggest name talent and so I sort of have been like into Jerry's whole thing for a while there but seeing how this is really just a really really crass way of saving billionaires money it drives me more crazy than it has in past years and also it doesn't usually work out that way i for what it's worth you and i have never talked about this we really got to go but like i was not one and i i'm just wrong about this i'm clearly wrong i'm the only person in america who was not bummed that their team didn't get shohei otani because i was like we don't know like he could literally get any player and i'm not trying to jinx anybody but any player could get injured and lose tons of time starting with the first pitch of the season

And by the way, that person...

But did Otani did struggle with some durability issues. I mean, when he played, he was unreal, literally maybe the best player in the history of Major League Baseball. But that would be a concern.

It won't be. I think won't be pitching this season. Even I think he's just I could be wrong about that. I don't know what he's going to do for the Dodgers. But I had a feeling that he's he might not even pitch this season. He might just be a bat. Hell of a bat, but just a bat. But like, I'm not somebody who's like, oh, yeah, but I feel like the Mariners could do what? The Browns did with Deshaun Watson putting aside all of the ugliness and the sexual assault allegations, obviously. Sorry, Shohei, didn't mean to put you in that camp. But, like, they made a historic deal so they could pay all of his legal bills and everything, all this guaranteed money for a guy who played, like, maybe half the season this year, like, after his suspensions last year. So it's kind of like you just never know. So to put all of your money into one star basket doesn't make sense to me. I agree with you on that. But if we could see a scrappy team actually put it together, that would be my favorite way of winning, but I'm also delusional, or what did you say, delulu, that this will be the team to do it. I'm sure I will be just so furious in September.

See, the problem, Andrew, is I'm looking at my dead-ass yard, and that isn't my way of saying I'm not lying to you. Dead-ass, I have a yard.

Dead-ass, you're looking at your dead-ass yard?

Dead-ass, I am literally looking at my dead-ass yard right now. And what I imagine is spring coming, the grass growing, the smell of the fresh cut grass, the warmth in the air, the listening to of the baseball. it's all part of a thing in my life that i look so forward to and like it's it's like i don't know i i have no choice but to embrace this terrible underachieving profit scent profit source for a billionaires i have no choice to but to embrace it and hope the best for it because I need it to be part of the lawn mowing experience.

Yeah, right. Exactly. It's such a part of summertime for me.

Yeah. So, all right. Well, that was a, by the way, I have unblocked the stew bot. So now I will be getting all of the texts on the fun-loving criminals going forward until I, in a fit, in a peak of rage, decide to start blocking people again. All right. Thanks for listening, everyone. And thank you for indulging us on sports talk there for the end of the program.

We skipped top stories so we can go 15 minutes longer talking about baseball. Sorry.

Sometimes we've got to do something for us.

Yeah, sometimes.

Every once in a while we have to be self-indulgent on this program. All right. Thanks for listening, folks. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Meantime, have a great Tuesday. Go Mariners. did you hear they recently signed one-time all-star jorge polanco oh yeah buddy uh and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all i should not have brought up baseball i understand my mistake my mistake you got to know your crowd power out