Muse

All right, let's get to work, actors. I got three words for you. Glengarry. Glenn. Ross. Coffees for closers only. You call yourself a salesman? You son of a b***h. Hi, I'm from downtown. I'm from Mitch and Murray. So, you've got, all of you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting with tonight. Okay, we're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody want to see what second prize is? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired, but I've worked out a little... Okay, okay, no, no, no, no, stop. I'm not kidding. You're making me nauseous. TBTL! You know, I think about this, and what about this internet thing? Do you know anything about that? Sure. What the hell is that exactly?

Don't you kind of feel like a sellout?

Can you really call it a sellout when they give you a free Tesla for doing the show?

I think I'm looking forward to cracking up. I hope I can, like, you know, totally crack up. So, uh, I haven't, like, totally cracked up in a long time. Boo!

Are you saying boo or boorns?

Boo!

I was saying blue words.

As my grandpa likes to say, hot diggity dog. As I like to say, hot man!

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

It's cheesy, it's delicious, and kids go nuts for it.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Be me! Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where having kind of an odd weather day, it's been raining and then some blue sky and now it's sort of cloudy again. You know what that means, though, when you get that that rain and sun combination. That's right. We had an incredible double rainbow.

Double rainbow. Oh, my God. It's a double rainbow all the way.

Almost a triple rainbow, which reminded me of that wonderful moment in all of our lives when we were, it's like 20 years ago plus, obsessing over the guy who was so excited seeing the double rainbow, almost the triple rainbow. I revisited that audio this morning and it had me thinking about my life now and how I respond to things. And anyway, maybe we'll get into that here on episode 4,170 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I may have been feeling a little extra emotional this morning because I was up really late last night. Well, late for me, trying to put together some Ikea kitchen cabinet stuff. And it's, I've said this before, it's not intuitive, or at least for somebody like me, it's not very intuitive. This is so confusing, Ron. But I had to get it done because today the guy is coming back to measure the exact dimensions of the countertops that I've ordered to make the template. And it's got to be just right. It's got to be on to money so that the countertops turn out okay. And I've also got, as I often do, some complicated feelings around the interaction I'm about to have with the guy who's here to measure the countertops. So we'll probably delve into that. Oh, and we'll definitely get into this. The Portland Pickles baseball team has opened a sports bar in Portland, and they have deployed a pretty awesome spoof. That's a pretty good spoof. That I want to talk about with my friend Andrew Walsh, fellow baseball aficionado, owner of the Akron Groomsmen, and the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. My beard is like my girlfriend. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now.

good morning my friend i may have made a terrible mistake that i'm just realizing right now i was going to make a very quick comment at the beginning of the show luke that i solved or so i thought i solved a problem i've been having that is completely in my own head and doesn't matter to literally anybody but as we record these podcasts these days you and i can see each other and ourselves it's kind of a zoom-like setup and um in the corner of my screen the way i had my camera set up, I could see this unsightly plug in my wall. There's nothing especially unsightly about it other than it had a bunch of things plugged into it and it just looked ugly. I didn't like seeing it on camera. It was just a distraction to me and I found myself like positioning my body in my camera frame so that I wouldn't have to look at it. That's how much I hate that stuff.

So I've been wanting to get a plant. Yesterday, I went on a little plant adventure, went to a couple of different places, came home with this plant, Luke, that you can maybe see part of in the very corner of my screen. But you don't see much of it on the camera, which is fine. I like that. You don't need to see much of it, but it covers up the unsightly plug. But just now, I was going to tell you about that, so I started looking up what it is called. It's called a ZZ plant, Luke, the letter Z, followed by the letter Z, or a Zanzibar gem.

Every girl's crazy about a sharp-dressed plant.

That's absolutely right. There's a plant store in the Roosevelt neighborhood. I don't know if it's new or not, but I passed it this weekend called

She's Got Leaves, Knows How to Use Them. I'm going to really lean into this ZZ Top business here, if you don't mind. It's called Fancy Plants, which I thought was a good name for a store.

Oh, that's a pretty good spoof. Yeah, Fancy Plants. Anyway, as I was doing a very quick Google on this plant so I could tell you about it at the top of the show, And one of the first things that comes up is that it's toxic to cats. Do you think that's a problem? Do you have any cats in here? Should I have checked this before I bought the ZZ plant?

I haven't heard much about any cats that like to spend time in your studio making all kinds of mischief. Bubbles has a really odd relationship with every manner of sort of foliage and plant, which is that she loves to eat it and then throw up, but then continue eating it. And I said every kind of foliage, but that's actually not true because there are a couple of plants that it's fine if she chews on. But those are the ones she's less interested in than the ones that are either dying. And so it's like Becca and I are like, hey, can you leave that alone, please? Like that plant is in a bad way from you, so we need to let it recover. Or it's a plant that there's a possibility it's not good for her. And those are the things that she really just zeroes in on.

i have this is a real problem for me um because i have a few plants upstairs that are all um they all originate from the same plant i i referred to this in the video you and i did with listener steven who knows all about plants to host the root bound root bound podcast and i mentioned at the end of that that i have something called the bubble gum plant that's what i call it i guess it's officially a tradiscantia i don't know how to say these sciency names man i've been

My doctor prescribed me Tradescantia to get to sleep at night.

If your bubblegum plant keeps getting eaten by your cats, take Tradescencia bubblegum lilac. So it was this beautiful plant that I bought in Seattle at some sort of plant stand kind of randomly a couple of years ago, a while back now. It is pretty.

I'm looking at it.

Oh, yes. A very beautiful plant. And it kind of vines out sort of. You can kind of put it in a hanging planter. but i try to keep mine like kind of trimmed down more so it'll grow a little bit bushier in like a regular pot i'm probably going into too much detail about this this is where i'm going um bingo loves to eat these things so i've taken because i keep mine a little bit kind of i keep it trimmed i take those trimmings and then i propagate new little plants right and so i have like three i think pots like small pots around the house of this well they used to be around the house now they all have to be in one place they're all half eaten and in what i call the plant hospital which is like this little place above our kitchen sink on the windowsill where bingo is less likely to get up there and and just treat them like it's well it's an old country buffet

i mean you plant something called a bubble gum plant no it's and you think the cat isn't going to go in for it you should have planted a liver and onions plant well well i don't want to get

into this but the plant was around before bingo was so if i have to make any tough choices about yeah yeah family members i don't know if we want to bring up you know that the order of order of operation there so anyway i'm a little hierarchy of needs i'm a little worried about this plant behind me because i it says that like a cat might eat it and it might cause them to throw up a little bit which is it looks like that might be a that might be it doesn't say like like if a cat rubs up against this it will die the cat nor the the plant so i think it's probably fine but i should probably do a little bit more research i got this one because it was basically pretty unobtrusive not super expensive i went up luke i know you can get plants at like lowe's and home depot but i'm like i'm gonna go to a nursery like there's a nice one way up on aurora i'm not gonna mention the name of it because my experience there was this uh-oh i've been there a couple of times now and um it's i love it it's got a cafe in there i love a good nursery but my god i went in there just to buy some regular like you know what i consider to be somewhat standard house plants there was nothing under 120 bucks i mean for a for a very for like this kind of now i don't know if they had this exact zz plant or zanzibar gem but things that would be kind of like similar would serve a sort of a similar purpose for me don't need a lot of light

you know maybe a three foot high plant or something like that and rising i mean three exactly and like one of them was 250 bucks and i was like i'm just way out of step here and i'm like but before i buy anything i'll go to home depot and like maybe they're probably i'm sure there are reasons why maybe the plants aren't quite as good or something but a huge difference between a 30 price tag and a 130 price tag at like the lowest that was the starting price at the other place so i sold out and i went to lowe's well i mean there is and you know i this is the

kind of thing i'm about to say is definitely going to probably come back to haunt us because the folks that i'm going to talk about there's a great likelihood that there's an overlap between their world and their social circles and our listeners social circles so i want to be sort of careful uh so we don't i don't have to end up buying many hundreds of dollars of their product so as to make up for it. Like, I just haven't stopped eating manic meatballs now for the last six months, which are delicious, by the way. Yeah. So I think you can see behind me, Andrew, kind of depending on what the framing of our little kind of video chat is, that there's this plant. I think it's – I always get this wrong, but is it called a mostera or a monstera?

Oh, I saw some monsteras, yes. Oh, the Swiss cheese one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love those. Those are going to be a little bit more pricey.

They're very in style, very. Those are the Waxahachie of plants right now.

They're tropical. They need a lot of light, though, right?

Yeah, but you go to a certain kind of person's house, and you're going to find a Waxahachie, probably a vinyl Waxahachie record, a wide-brimmed hat, a polished concrete floor, and a Monstera plant. I've got about three out of three going here. Get me a wide-brimmed hat, and I would have exactly described the Madrona Hill studio. All that is to say, Becca found that this Monstera, somebody was tossing it out at her apartment building, and it's a huge one. And speaking of the high cost of plants, if it's fully healthy, it probably retails for a couple hundred bucks. And so she picked it up and brought it up to her place, and there was two problems with that. Bubbles has been mostly staying at her place still, and so Bubbles was chewing on the Monstera like crazy. and then also because she can't open the door to the balcony because we fear that bubbles will go outside and jump off the balcony. There was an issue with it getting kind of light, and I don't know how much it needs fresh air, but it was decided that this Monstera would come live here at the Madrona Hill studio for now to get a lot of light, a lot of water, and a lot of hugs, Andrew. Don't hug it too hard. but um before that i had read about this service in portland a small business which was kind of their sort of i don't know what their actual name is but i'm just going to call them like the plant doctors and it's a couple of women in portland who are plant experts and what they will do is come out and like if you have an ailing plant they'll come out and look at your plant and kind of tell you what to do about it and uh and how you can fix it and it's the kind of thing where i think a lot of us uh well some people have green thumbs instinctively they're great with plants some people don't i'm one of those people that don't and so i thought what i'm going to do is i'm going to order up a house call from these plant experts and they'll come out and they'll tell becca here's how to like revive this monstera that's got you know still some kind of like brown spots on it and kind of some of the i don't know what you'd call it the fronds the leaves are kind of torn up and anyway it just doesn't look like the most healthy plant it's

like my dad and the geeks you want to call the the plant gotta call the geeks yeah exactly and

i'm gonna mention i think this i'm guessing this goes for about a hundo a 150 for a visit and i think the plan is you come they come out and they look at all your plants and they just kind of give you like a you know a sort of like uh here's what you can do to make all of these plants really thrive and i thought okay that's you know that's reasonable for a house call like that for a house call that also is, you know, covers multiple plants and, and then your, uh, you know, your plants will all be doing great after this, hopefully. Well, apparently what happened was it's the, the, the person eventually I was, there's some scheduling that had to be done and eventually they came out. And, um, I think that the advice for how to make the plants better was to subscribe to the monthly plant care situation and have a monthly visit where the plants are all tended to and um and because that was you know also a kind of a financial undertaking that like becca wasn't ready for um she she opted uh out of that plan and then i said so what else did you learn about the plant she said not much geez so you paid 150 bucks for them to come out and say you need to hire us for more i think i spent 150 for a sales pitch I'll be right back.

trees of like it's like paying someone 150 to come try to sign you up for amway that's ridiculous

when i said that was reasonable i didn't obviously i didn't know where the story was ending but if somebody had come out and said oh okay yeah i see what's going on here i'm gonna recommend maybe this kind of um put some nitrates in the soil and here's your you know take two of these and call me in the morning or something and also like hey this might not be the best corner for this thing you know maybe getting too much direct sunlight um yeah like our friend karen listener karen um visited us here and like immediately like when we moved into the house it was kind of like i and i'm sorry i can never remember the names of plants or cars or celebrities but

you have a bubble gum plant a beef jerky plant i definitely have a you have a lemon meringue bush i have a churu plant bingo will not leave alone why does the cat love all of these plants there's

a tuna fish tree it's funny my meow mix plant is just constantly getting shoot up i leave it alone dude i loved meow mix commercials growing up because i think that was the one yeah exactly

that's what you get that's as high as i can go sorry um anyway but like karen came over and said

to genevieve like hey i see that you put that it was some big outdoor pot potted plant that genevieve that just put in one corner of the yard, I think maybe temporarily or because it worked right there. And Karen immediately was like, that is probably not thriving as much as it should be. Like you want to get it. And I think into some more like maybe filtered sunlight or something. I can't remember the details of it. And immediately, Luke, Genevieve, like moved it and it started thriving more. And so that's what you were looking for. Now I just feel like I don't care in one hundred and fifty bucks, honestly. But man, that is a real that's I'm going to use a word here, Luke. That's a real screw.

Well, I mean, that was how it felt to me when I heard, I'm now texting Becca. I said, TBTL question, did that plant person give you any plant advice? Because I don't want to, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to slander anyone. But the sense I got was that there wasn't, like I said, I was expecting there to be like a course of action that was suggested. Yeah. Like, go get this stuff and do this. And like you said, move it to this area and et cetera, et cetera.

Say 10 Hail Marys.

Exactly. and um uh like that there would be like that's what i was paying for and it the sense i got and then maybe that maybe there was a casual conversation about that that wasn't relayed back to me you sure okay so i want to be i wasn't there for this but the sense i got and again i just also was thinking as as it so often does this comes back to something about me which was i thought i'm going to be the hero boyfriend i'm going to go ahead and order up this this this kind of diagnosis that's going to fix the plant and then everything, uh, you know, everything's going to be great. And so to find out that things were just mostly kind of just going along as they were. Um, and that the, the, the main thing had been a sales pitch about a monthly service. I just felt like that should sort of be free to me. Like that should be built into the cost of the business. Now, listen, it's also a couple of folks, like there is the logistics of this, which is if you're talking about maybe a handful of people that work somewhere and a big city that's full of plant lovers that don't know how to take care of their plants like if you were to go out to every single place for free and then say um and then say you know here's what you should do and then they don't sign up for the service and now you're out like you know three hours of your day that may not be a sustainable business model yeah right i'm you know people will tell you like speaking of which the the people that are coming out to measure where the countertops are going to go would tell you if we're just going out to do this day and night and people don't have their cabinets ready that's going to really cut into our bottom line so there's you know i mean i i don't i don't know the exact economics of it i will say that i at the end of it all based on what i heard i am

getting a a response here i said hold on one second here breaking news yeah i mean if only we had a um no i think i took care of it you're in the clear breaking news go ahead uh i asked

again uh did the plant person give you any plant advice the response not really my monstera plant uh were too in too small of a pot they needed more room for their roots and they needed sunshine because they are tropical okay that's the the pot is too small that's that's an action item that's an action item i'll give it sure and the plants like the spider plants are good cheap fillers to put around and for the low low price of sixteen hundred dollars they will make my apartment a

green oasis i gotta say i do love the idea of a green oasis my mom was really good with plants i'm not i'm not particularly good with plants although i've really enjoyed even even the ones i'm so mad at bingo for like every time i get some progress with these plants he finds a way to chew them back down it really is just like a smorgasbord for him and by the way this easy plant thing i've been doing a lot of googling while we talk um it is like kind of toxic for pets but it's not like on the list of highly

highly toxic plants or whatever it seems like it's toxic in a way a lot of toxic or a lot of plants are and so it could potentially cause a little vomiting if they eat it or something but like it's not like do not bring this into your house if you have cats i think this will work

itself out um but uh it's funny how there are these two there are these two kind of important components of like a certain kind of modern life that are in conflict with each other but only because of how we now look at the world and what i mean by all of that is we love cats and we love plants and we are now i think probably more for more now than we did in the 70s tracking if the plants are going to kill the cats i just don't see somebody as they're putting up their macrame plant hanger and placing a fern in it circa 1974 either they didn't have a cat or i just don't see Them driving down To the local animal hospital and going is that Going to be bad for the cat I just don't think Most of us looked at the world that way but we Now love plants and we love cats And we have the internet so these Are in conflict but now we've created a new Strata of this whole thing which Is plants that are not great For cats but won't kill them i.e Non-lilies Because we still want to have If we eliminated every plant that might Cause a cat to become dyspeptic We can have no plants But having no plants is not an option Because we love plants now And having no cats is not an option because we love cats So we've created this acceptable amount Of cat poisoning

The thing is there probably Were more dead cats during that time When people didn't care

And I don't think people cared I mean I'm not saying that to be cruel I just don't think We treasured our little I mean you had kind of like Didn't you have like outdoor kind of barn cats Living on your property that were really you thought of them your family thought of them very differently than certainly

you think of bingo and professor we had fred and ethel um fred um survived ethel you know this i killed ethel with my mind right you know that whole story genevieve reminded me of this recently

like this is a dark day for our cat forward listeners where was i somewhere where genevieve

was like tell him what really happened to ethel and i had sort of forgotten about this was like you killed ethel with your mind and i had sort of forgotten about this story from my youth we got the guy from the movie powder the guy from the movie evening edition wait what is the what is the newspaper based tv show where the guy tells the future that's by is it i think it might be morning edition no that's the radio i almost said morning edition too evening late edition

late edition maybe i know it stars kyle chandler there you go kyle chandler of the tv show home front that's my that's my flex is to cite him as being on home front and not friday night lights

which is what everybody else knows him from let's see here uh tv show newspaper future if that doesn't get it then you're early it is early edition early edition it's early edition yeah that makes sense he gets the early edition then he knows what's going on late edition he's like he's always going to clean up crimes that have already committed damn it if only i had gotten the early edition about how different that show is god missed it again my grandma who by the way Today would have been her birthday. My grandma just passed recently. Happy birthday, grandma.

But she would have been 102 today.

Yeah, exactly. She made it past 100. But I was actually telling. Oh, I didn't tell the story about Ethel. But anyway, my grandma, one of her stories or one of a recent conversation I had with her in the past year or so, when I told her one of my cats was sick, she was just like, don't spend any money on that. Cats are not worth spending money on. Like, again, this woman was born in, you know, 1913 or whatever. Just like all I had to mention was my cat was a little bit sick and she just immediately was like, do not spend money on cats.

Is the cat eating the plants in your victory garden? Because we're never going to beat those Jerry's if we don't pull together.

I keep eating that yellow ribbon that you tied around the old oak tree.

Your grandma was also in the TV show Homefront starring Kyle Chandler.

Fred and Ethel were a couple of cats that we got They were barn cats when I was a kid We named them Fred and Ethel after the secondary characters Or tertiary characters on I Love Lucy For our younger listeners I'm sure everybody knew that What's an I Love Lucy? What's a tube television? What's a splain in a do? What's a splain in a do? That's a good show title Anyway So the way I killed Ethel with my mind was i loved them both very much they were outdoor cats but i had a i gravitated more towards my my uh pet fred i loved fred he was a real cuddle buddy and he purred a lot and he and i had a real bond and i think one time in my brain i just was sort of musing that i guess if i had to give up one of the cats i would give up ethel and then ethel ended up getting hit by a car not long after that and then i was like oh wow i killed I'll see you next time. ethel with my mind which was a belief that i had as a young person which is why i grew up to be so

chill and cool because i i would imagine that is something a lot of listeners can relate to about just you know feeling like if you thought something and it happened then you were responsible or if you didn't think about something enough and it happened i mean this is what's so unfair about this this particular kind of brain chemistry is you also could blame yourself for not thinking about something enough right there's like no right amount of doing it because either you thought of it and that's why something bad happened or you didn't think to think of it and that allowed the

bad thing to happen huge part of my childhood was having almost a game of thrones area-esque list of things I should be worried about because if I'm not worried about them then they will come true that was a true that i mean that is in my dna that like i remember like so because i was a you know i grew up in a catholic house a religious family like we said bedtime prayers every night not together but like that was a part of me going to bed was like my my saying my prayers and i realized that the prayers were really just like sort of a litany of things that i wanted i think at a certain point or or things i didn't want to come true or something like please don't let me get bad grades or get in trouble for this or let my parents find out about that and i think eventually somehow somehow god just left that equation and all that was left over was the worry and so i would just be like okay you're just eliminating the middleman yeah i can do this myself god and so i do look back and i'm like i was a little kid and i thought the way to have a happy life was to worry about things at night god why am i going to pay department store prices

for this anxiety. I could go right to the warehouse, load it onto a pallet, and pass the savings on to the rest of my life.

My manager thinks I'm crazy. It's the Holy Spirit. It's my manager.

The Holy Spirit is out of town this weekend, and we have really got to move a lot of this irrational fear. So I'm ready to make you a screaming deal on it that will leave you screaming internally for the rest of your life but it will help you be a dialogue it will help you be a great podcast host yeah sure give you something to fill hours and hours and hours of content with um speaking of filling hours of content with our own internal weirdness um we should thank a couple of dazzling donors but then i will update you on my um i here's the thing i am at a point that i always arrive at when dealing with the Ikea Corporation of Stockholm, Sweden. And I don't know if this is the one time I'm right, or if this thing is just playing out the way it always plays out. And we've also got a guy coming here in an hour to measure the countertop. So we'll talk about all that. Who might be your enemy?

Who might be your mortal enemy?

It's very possible. I want to talk about all that, but first we've got to thank some Dazzlers.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle-dazzle.

Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors who are keeping this show in business with their dazzling donations of dough. we have been meeting up with the other TBTB employees, which would just be John Sklaroff. And we've been making plans for this year's Thawne and I think it's going to be a good one. I'm genuinely excited

about it. Have you been staying up late at night worrying about all the different aspects of it? I've been leaving that to you. Okay, good. I got that. I've been handling

the not worrying about it part. That's my job is to not worry about things that will then happen because of my not worrying about them your job is to worry about certain things so then they will happen because you worried about them exactly it's perfect we make a good team we sure do uh thanks to the help of aaron nelson who's in seattle washington aaron is our first dazzling donor today and aaron says ahoy hoy friendos i was so happy when you decided to go out on your own and i was in a good place to be a dazzling donor you are the two best imaginary friendos a gal could ask for uh the tbtl community is so amazing and i'm so glad it's here and i'm a part of it and i thank my mom amy who was an original 10 yeah hell yeah amy shout out to amy she got me listening back in the cairo days thanks again luke for making a video with me during the 4000th episode oh i remember that uh hi aaron good to see you again at least here on the printed page um uh she still loves it oddly uh andrew i was too shy to introduce myself to you back then. How does that feel? Was that a flex? Aaron felt very comfortable talking to me, but you were somehow out of reach. That does...

seem i feel like i'm approachable i feel like i'm approachable maybe i was like maybe i was like sloppily eating a big slice of pizza and i had like sauce all over my face and people were like let's just leave him to his own devices let's not approach like there are there are types of inapproachability that are less flattering than others as maybe well yeah i don't know why it was

that you were so insistent that the food after the show was giant meatball subs i think that was that was where things really went sideways for you and the people who showed up for the event

can I tell you like you want to talk about like an incidental I don't know if you do want to talk about it but you want to talk about incidental one-off comment that a stranger made to me one time that lives in my head that I probably think of at least if not every day a couple of times a week which was when I was buying a new phone I don't even know if it's my current phone it might have been the phone before that one it's an Android phone and I remember I was at the T-Mobile store in wallingford and then wallingford neighborhood of seattle and i'm like asking this uh this young employee about um the phone various features and i asked about the thumbprint unlocking nature of it as opposed to like typing in like a code to unlock my phone just using you know your fingerprint which we all do now but this was long ago enough that i said don't like does that work okay and the kid said to me yeah it's always worked for me unless i have like barbecue sauce on my thumb and it was so specific Luke that that stuck in my head and whenever I'm having trouble logging into my phone I think about that kid saying well unless I have barbecue sauce on my thumb and I'm just like does he eat a lot of barbecue sauce does he a lot of barbecue maybe he had just had barbecue like why why was it barbecue sauce and not ketchup or any other product and it just lives in my head that was years ago do you think you were maybe covered

in barbecue sauce at the end of the 4000th episode that's my point yes I think that was why Aaron didn't want any part of it uh Aaron says shout out to all my amazing friendos I've made a Krista show and Sarah Sarah being a magpie mouse I tried to find magpie mouse by the way recently down there in Pike Place Market I want to try to flex in front of Becca but I didn't actually manage to find it I was at this event that was at KNKX Radio which is right there in the market now on Western and as we were we found ourselves walking through the Pike Place Market That was the direct line from the hotel To KNKX I kept saying like Actually you know what sorry I'm mixing up my stories I've been in Pike Place Market A couple of times in the last like two months The time that I was trying to find Magpie Mouse was with Addy That was really the flex I wanted I wanted to casually walk into Magpie Mouse Studio In Pike Place Market and have Sarah there go like oh my god it's Luke Burbank And then have my daughter who was with me think This guy is really somebody but I was not successful in locating it but anyway shout out

it's really tough to find I actually did I hunted it down and it's tucked away and it's a beautiful little studio but I was with Genevieve and we wanted to say hello to Sarah yes exactly and we happened to show up in like a five minute window that Sarah had to like kind of put a just a moment sign in the window and had to like go fix something in the back or something like that and so I think and so I took a little photo of the sign and I sent it to her and I'm like I think we just missed you So there was a chance that I even maybe saw the top of her head rattling some pots and pans way in the back. It was such a near miss.

Just saw the top of her head jumping into a cover to get a piece of cheese. I assume Sarah is a mouse.

Yes. Or a magpie. I was just getting away from me, yeah.

One of them. Anyway, shout out also to John for all the background TBTL coordination. That is true. I have to say, our buddy and TVTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff, Andrew, is, as you know, so, so, so on it. So great at immediately getting back to us about any sort of query. It's so much better than I am about that kind of stuff. And I sent John a little email yesterday about something, and it was an unusual thing. I don't want to set up the expectation like I expect that the people I work with will respond to me the exact day I email them. I don't think that's realistic. People have lives. People get busy, et cetera. But I have been trained by John's incredible responsiveness to what I remember was sending the email yesterday and then thinking, getting up this morning and going, oh, that's interesting that I didn't hear back from John. He must have been tied up with other stuff, et cetera. And then I went back into the sent messages and I rose. It's because I sent it to his American public media account. Oh, no. And you didn't get a bounce back. I know I guess those things are still hot over there or something I don't know um but no I didn't get a bounce back I went into the sent messages I was like oh because I had this thought I was like I wonder if I did maybe sent it to the wrong place and of course I did and then I forwarded him the message and then it was like within two seconds like oh hey yeah here we'll work that out etc so um did I tell you that I got a text message from someone I don't

know who it was but somebody texting the tbtl listener line to let us know that they just drove by american public media actually they're on the green line i believe luke that's a telling detail favorite line other than the e-line and it goes right past american public media where you can see into the um the big lobby there and apparently they are still touting our podcast on the lobby televisions this person said i would recognize the logo of you two in a boat anywhere i'll take it

Honestly, a little free pub from there at the old mothership. I'm down for that. I got no problem with that. And then finally, from Aaron, a big shout out to my 11. Jared, you make life fun, and I love how much you enjoy TBTL. Love you, my crow. No mountain too tall, and good luck to all. Power out. That's a good pet name. Jared has actually begun to be able to identify Aaron by her face. Which is why she calls him her crow.

And can pass that information down to future generations of crows.

Just don't get near Jared's nest, Aaron, or you may be in for some dive bombing.

And also, this ZZ plant may be poisonous. So be careful there. So be really careful. Yeah, exactly. Before you say maestro, I also just want to throw in here, I just got an email from a listener who we accidentally did not thank during our daily donor segment. Sarah Krasminski, I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly. thank you for also being a supporter of tbtl and sorry that we didn't have you on the daily donor list absolutely thank you sarah appreciate you maestro on your mark on your mark get set

get set now ready ready go everybody rattle we're thanking abby hersey who's in columbus ohio thank you that's the location of the ohio state university correct uh columbus is the ohio

State University yes Athens is Ohio University OU yeah and then where is Miami of Ohio Confusion Town that is in Florida I believe they call it Miami of Ohio isn't that one of those things

where Miami was Miami of Ohio first oh I'm not sure before the University of Miami or something I had it in the back of my brain that that was one of those ones where of course at this point we all think most of us let's just say if you think of Miami you think of like the city of Miami or the University of Miami and then like Miami of Ohio has to constantly be clarifying we're the Miami of Ohio and I had this like little weird thought in the back of my brain that there might have been a story where it was like one of those things where it was like they were named first somehow and yet kind of lost the notoriety game and so now we're having to constantly explain I don't know that for a fact yeah I might know about that I'm not sure I want to say before we read Abby's dazzling donor message that there is kind of some serious content in here too a little trigger warning it talks about somebody taking their own life which is in the service of a larger message about a group that is working really hard to change things but I just want to let people know Abby says I'm so grateful for TBTL it's one of my favorite parts of my day and it has been for a long time I'm going to use my time to share about a cause that is close to my heart and then Abby also puts in a content warning This talks about gun violence and suicide. I'm a volunteer leader for the Ohio chapter of Moms Demand Action. I became involved with Moms Demand Action in 2019 after my daughter's best friend, Ambrin, shot and killed himself. I wanted to help protect young people in crisis from easy access to firearms. Firearms are now the leading cause of death for American children and teens, and these deaths are all preventable. Moms Demand Action is a grassroots movement of Americans. fighting for public safety measures that can protect people from gun violence. We work in our own communities to encourage a culture of responsible gun ownership. We know that gun violence is preventable, and we are committed to doing what it takes to keep families safe. If you would like to learn more, this is all you have to do. Text ACT, like the letter A, the letter C, the letter T, to, here I'm going to give you a number, 644-33. So if you just want to text ACT to 64433, or you can go to their website, momsdemandaction.org to find out more. So thanks, Abby, for sharing that with us, and thanks for what you're doing to try to make some change. I mean, there's not much that we can add to that other than to say this stuff is preventable. We're the only country in the world with our level of wealth, education, you name it, that has the issues that we have. And it can't be a coincidence that we're the only place where this stuff happens the way it happens when you have a lot of other places that are analogous to our country where they don't have it. So that to me says it is preventable. And thanks to groups like Moms Demand Action.

for working on that yeah and sorry that your family had to go through all of that too and i hope your daughter's doing okay and that your daughter's friend's family is doing as okay as possible like you said luke that this just should shouldn't have happened yeah

hello and welcome to top story um i was dealing with uh sort of an ikea situation last night Andrew late into the eve I was up till 1205 maybe which I realized as I was going to bed and I looked at the clock that that's the latest I've been up well that's that's not true I guess I've had a flight or two where it landed late and I got home on the later side but like as far as like being in my house and just kind of puttering around and doing things I didn't realize that I have like really radically shifted my sleep schedule or not radically but I've just I guess i've i've i've sort of um regularly shifted it because i i would looked around and when i saw that the clocks that it was after midnight i thought oh boy this is this is am i even going to be functioning tomorrow well you get up pretty early what time do you get up today i get up at six um uh which um is also i feel like a real trait of getting older for me uh which is uh But I also, I mean, I am very, very commonly in bed at 10.

And you don't nap as, you used to be a big napper. I don't nap. I think you're not as a napper.

I have, I've really, really, I've really laid off the napping. I think, you know, I've definitely been less hungover. And I think that, I think that being hungover a lot is tied in to napping a lot for me. And I think, I think you, you kind of have one thing happening less and then you have another thing happening less. So, um, but, um, I, I was up late because I was working on, on this Ikea thing because I, I wanted, well, basically I think everything is set up. So the guy's coming out to like measure the countertops to make the template. And I think Walt is not here, but he, he left everything kind of where it needed to be. If you remember from a couple of weeks ago, this guy came out to measure the cabinets and, uh, or the countertop rather. and we were like an hour or two away from really having everything kind of locked down and it turns out that because we didn't have everything ready to go it was a missed template charge from this company which was like 200 bucks or something that I had to pay to get back on their schedule. But this, I said before the Dazzling Donors that I'm at this moment that I'm always at with every Ikea procedure which is I'm almost certain that Ikea sent me the wrong stuff but every time i think that it just turns out i'm doing something wrong like this kitchen so this is all obviously in the little kitchen area of the of the cabin and like it's very computerized what they do you go to the like kitchen design center at ikea and somebody who's very actually smart about this stuff i'll give them credit like everyone i dealt with at that thing really knew their stuff like it wasn't just like a person had wandered over from you know the like dining room table section of the store and was like well let me see what i can find it was like

these are people that knew their stuff yeah they're designers they're designers and they do

this all day and so um i was very confident there was a lot of paperwork involved and a lot of lists and a lot of you know like the computer the software making sure that like if you order this it's also going to automatically order you that because it knows that you need for this hinge you need this backing you know what i mean it's all integrated in a way that gave me a high degree of confidence but i i have been through all of the without getting into the details because it's just too boring it involves too many words i can't pronounce i think that they i i changed this one thing about the layout i basically realized i had a little more room than i thought so instead of a certain cabinet being 18 inches that's a lower like a base cabinet and then the thing above it being the upper being 18 inches I expanded it to 36 inches because once I got into the house into the kitchen and I got some of it set up I realized oh there's a little more room to work with here and I think what happened was when I went back and I like ordered the different cabinet setup I think somewhere in the communication they not everything got communicated exactly right because I think I have some of the stuff I needed for the the initial footprint but not everything I need for the new footprint but also i'm so bad at this stuff that i don't know if i'm just like if i'm just not figuring out how to do this and this is also by the way the last mile problem my dad did 99 of this i'm left with one percent of it and it's still bedeviling me so i don't exactly know how to proceed because i also don't want to take i don't want to keep taking stuff out of the box because i guess i can return it the guy told me if it's out of the box you still have x amount of time to return it but if it's in the box you have like a year so i'm very like wanting to leave everything in the box because then i feel like i didn't like buy that like i'm not gonna have to like live with some wrong part that i pulled out but

so that's kind of i'm a little confused and that that's probably on me but if you don't mind in case there are other in case we have anybody else with a thick skull your family ever say that to you my mom used to say a thick skull if i was being somewhat dim-witted about something because I assume the thicker your skull, the smaller your brain. You ever get that?

And the higher the hair, the closer to God.

I did not get that one. I only got negative.

I always took thick skull. Hey, by the way, Andrew, can I just tell you, as we're recording this, it is, as you and I are talking, it's 1142. I just got a message on my phone at 1132 a.m. Your precision countertop technician will be there in 30 minutes. You know what time that would put this person here?

prior to the window i assume 58 minutes before the window oh charge him 200 bucks i mean get joe on the line honestly like you should make him wait in the driveway until he gives you 200 bucks to come in or wait for the window like okay okay yeah so okay i was gonna ask you a quick question this gets us into it but i was a little bit maybe we don't have to worry about it i was a little confused about how much of this ikea you have to have built before this guy shows up here today sounds like you're messing around with some stuff that isn't contingent it's not contingent

what it is what it what it is is i just would like to have it all put together it would make me feel nice sure you know what i mean i'd like to do some quality staring yeah absolutely like it's mostly on a hook maybe it's putting yeah exactly it's putting some shelves which is very simple putting some shelves into the cabinets then putting the doors on the cabinets and also I had to put together this very elaborate Lazy Susan that cantilevers Out from I want a Lazy Susan so bad But it's not, actually Lazy Susan is the wrong Way to describe it, what it is is it's two Shelves that go In the back corner of a cabinet That's basically dead space You can't get to it because it's next to the stove And what these allow you to do is put stuff on there And then pull them out to where you can get to them But I had to assemble all of that last night Again, I don't I don't know if, I don't know if I'm doing it wrong or if Ikea sent me the wrong stuff. I kind of don't want to like, it's also complicated because like, I'm just so bad at this stuff. If I drive all these random parts back and I say, these aren't the parts I need. And they give me other ones and I come back and it doesn't work. It's just going to be a whole headache. But this, we've now, Andrew, can you make your breaking news sound again? Breaking news. Thank you. I mean, we've now got a whole new situation on our hands here.

This is amazing. Yes, we've got to stop talking about everything else except for this right now.

This has moved to the top of the – sorry, Portland Pickles. Sorry, Amazing Rainbow I saw today that I wanted to talk about. This is now the only topic that matters on the program. These fine folks who charged me –

I knew it started with an F. I didn't know how it ended. We're trying to make this show more family-friendly, Andrew. These mightily fine folks.

Like, I mean, this is, I'm going to just read you, I'm going to read you some information here. A text that I received at 8.30 a.m. this morning. Precision countertops hyphen. Hello, the estimated arrival time for your template appointment at your address is between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. We'll let you know when we are on the way. That's what it says, Andrew. In the text I got at 8.30 a.m. Cut to 11.32 a.m. hello your precision countertops technician will be there in 30 minutes let's do the math together that would be exactly i believe 1202 p.m which i believe is 58 minutes before the window starts the same people that charged me 200 because last time we did not have our stuff ready to go at the exact moment that this person arrived which i should actually go back and double check because i assumed i was in the wrong on the last one i might not have even been in the wrong on the last

one i don't know well in this case it's i mean oh no i was in the wrong on the last one i was

gonna say i can see the whole text message chain the last one that they sent me i'm sorry last time when i got dinged for the money the arrival time was between 12 and 4 and i do believe that The person showed up at Let's see, no, Andrew

Andrew

Wednesday Can you do the breaking news sound? Breaking news Wednesday, March 13th 12.23pm Oh wait, okay Can you undo the breaking news sound? Thank you Pretty good Put your thing down Flip in reverse Thank you.

No, sorry. Swim, yam, bink. Paul is dead. No, I was getting messed up on my windows of time. I was in the wrong for round one. But I find it kind of interesting that here for round two, a guy is going to roll up before the window starts, and I guess expected. I mean, here's the thing. Probably if I weren't here, he would just sit in his car and kind of, like, cool his heels until, like, the crack of 1 p.m.? Maybe. I mean, we don't know. Should we do an experiment?

They say estimated time on there. I'll bet you that's how they get you. I bet you there's just no way. I'll be honest with you. The first time you told me that story, and I think you set it up very much. You assumed it was my fault, and that is a safe assumption. Well, it was your fault. Well, that's why you assumed it. Yeah, exactly. Because it was. You were very clear about that. And you even did all this setup to say, like, I know technically I'm in the wrong here. But then you went into this long story about how you went to Home Depot. Like, nobody would cut you a break. on getting rid of this $200 charge. And we had various reactions from the listenership and myself as well. I think generally everybody sort of felt like, well, Luke did do this to himself, but 200 bucks is also a big chunk of change to sort of force on somebody. And the idea is like you had no wiggle room here. Like they totally had you over a barrel.

The guy could have gone, he could have gone J-Lo and got a ham and cheese and orange drink and a bag of chips. That's all. Like he could have done that and then come back an hour later and would have had things together, which by the way, brings me to the next part of this whole thing, which is the question being, is it going to be the same guy who showed up the first time? Because truth be told, I really liked the guy. He was really pleasant. And he, you know, when he rolled up, I went out and I met him at the car and I was like, Hey, I, I, we're not quite ready. I did my best Steve Brule voice. I'm not, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. And, um, he came in, he chatted with my dad a little bit. And then he said, well, yeah, you just want to call and get back on the list and he left now what i realized later is that he didn't step in i thought you said

he came into the house he never did he did come into the house oh okay yeah he stepped into the

house very briefly we're talking under five minutes he looked around he and my dad chatted a little bit and then he just said to me very well he said two things to me he said i said i'm so sorry to waste your time he goes you know what i was on my way home i was heading right past here it was absolutely no hassle for me which was a mistake on his part because it made me extra resentful when they charged me $200 because I knew that this was one of those things where it isn't he didn't come all the way out here for this he was doing other appointments because I said to him can you go get a sandwich he goes well this is my last appointment of the day so what I know is he was out doing appointments he was in the neighborhood okay fine but then the other thing he said was oh I just just call them and get back on the schedule and he said that in a real casual way like this was just going to be rescheduling but of course he knows well and good that I'm he knows I'm already dead and I don't know it. He knows I'm going to have to pay $200. He is, as I said to you in the pre-show chat, he tripped some kind of silent alarm. You know what I mean? Like he was like going, hold on, I'll get the manager. And he's like under the table, just like jamming the silent alarm that's going, hey, I showed up at this guy's house and they weren't ready to go. Like he knew that he had set something in motion that was going, or he was about to. Whereas I feel like there's a universe in which he could have just walked away. He could have just got back in the car, he could have just continued on his way home, and he could have pretended like it never happened. I believe, and I'm not saying he owed me this, because he was here within the window of time that I had agreed they could be here. So this still is on me. But if I was his brother-in-law, and he showed up to do this template, because I had hired the company he works for, and I wasn't ready, I have a feeling it could have gone differently. i have a feeling there was a way to enter this in the system so that i don't get charged the 200 again does he owe me that am i his brother-in-law no but now if i get the same guy truth of the matter is i'll still be probably pretty nice to him because he seemed like a nice enough dude but some part of me will be a little bit butthurt that he was so kind of like casual Like he, what he did not say to me was, yeah, we're just not at the stage yet where I can really met and you want to get a good measurement because there's no changing it. So unfortunately I'm not able to measure this right now. And just so you know, they're going to charge you a re, a re templating fee. Cause if I can't, if I'm not able to do this, then, you know, they do charge for that. I'm really sorry, but there's just no way around it. That would have been a pretty gutsy thing of him to do. I understand why he didn't feel like telling me that to my face. um you know because like that's not a fun conversation to have and if you can just make joe do it at precision countertops why wouldn't you but it still felt i thought we were vibing me and this guy ed was that his name i forget his name joe i thought there was an e in there

was it peter or something like that or pete i will be able to recognize him i'll tell you that and he said he also said to me because i was like oh can you just i think again before i knew there was so much like formality around it i said like oh can you just maybe are you going to be in the area tomorrow and he goes well i'm all booked up but we have like a lot of you know people that do this so i may not get the same guy and also maybe that was part of it too he was like i'm there's a good likelihood i will never see this dude again why am i going to be the one who tells him he's out two hundred dollars why am i going to

be dealing with that especially because you had to pay you end up having to pay it through home depot no opposite oh yes yes sorry yeah you called him and i believe from your car to say fine you you have this two hundred dollars i'll pay you he's like no you got to march back into the home depot where you just stamped out of yes exactly um and so no it's really really galling then if they can come outside of the window without any and i'll bet you a million bucks if you weren't there like that's the thing like you don't want to mess around with this like it's just they have all the power and it is what it is but it's so tempted to hide frustrating but like if you were not home if let's just say like you have a morning job or you're taking kids to daycare or whatever it is and you're not home an hour or let's say 58 minutes before the window i wonder if they try to ding you again on that i wonder if they say well that's an estimated time because you read that and it specifically said estimated i wonder if they try to charge you again for that it's like No, like we have to be home to cover like an hour padding on either side of the right you gave us. But if we're an hour off, then we pay two hundred dollars as the consumer. Like now my blood is up.

Thank you, Andrew. I feel very validated and loved by you.

So how do we handle this now?

We thank our lucky stars because honestly, I'd rather he gets here earlier. Just get on with my day. Don't be petulant. Yeah, that's but see, that's and of course. This is the bigger life lesson, I guess, which is it's better for me if he gets here earlier because then I don't have as much of it, as you like to say, donut in my day.

Yeah, right. Yeah, donut hole, yeah.

Once it's been measured and this guy's on his way, it frees. Right now, I have until 5 p.m. blocked out. Yeah, you're right. I have to be here. It's actually better for me, but I'm still.

You're going to say something, though. I know you well enough.

I don't think, you know, I don't know.

If it's the same guy, if it's the same guy, can you not even joke around and say, well, you're outside the window, so I'm going to have to charge you 200 bucks? I think I might say that. If it's the same guy, you've got to say that. You know what? You've got to.

You've just put your evil inside me.

Sorry, man.

Because I think I wasn't planning on doing that, but you're right. If it's the same dude, I think I am tempted to get a little razzing. Not with a real angry edge to it, like resentful. Because, again, you said it correctly. they still have all the power they're still the ones that have to like take the measurements and do their very best like if there's any degree if there's any degree of like i don't know how exactly it works measuring countertops even though i've had this happen three other times in my life you think i would know but like if there's an amount of like i'm going to give you the cadillac service of this or i'm going to give you the yugo service of this for our older listeners the yugo service of this um why would i want to annoy this guy and get the you go service like why wouldn't i want this guy to just like sweat every detail do everything to the best of his abilities same goes for the people cutting it same goes for joe i'd like need everybody invested in this i need everybody like being like you know what i was gonna knock off early today but i'm gonna stay late because that's how much i like this guy this podcaster guy i'm gonna give it you know that's really what i need to be doing here i need to be like everyone's best friend so there's no upside

to me being snarky no that's a good point yeah it has to be razzy uh well definitely though it does answer the question of whether or not you tip in this situation that's the good news hey i'm taking a huge huge turn in the conversation here luke a huge turn has nothing to do with anything you

I don't want to talk about Undermount Sinks.

You mentioned something. There was something about the rhythm in which you said a phrase. You said you were going to set something off. I'm not sure what it was you said exactly a moment ago. But it reminded me of, you like rap, right? I'm the president of rap music. And I need to listen to you right now. So you know the performer Jizza, right, of the Wu-Tang Clan, right? Sure. Probably, I mean, I don't know for sure. They rock the world. That's what I hear from my friend Cher. I don't know if this is true or not, but certainly one of my favorite hip-hop records would be Liquid Swords, which is like the first solo record by JZA. And anyway, there's this one song. I think it's called Gold. I know it is because I looked it up. But there's a lyric in there that always makes me think of you, and it's not because I think you necessarily even know the song. You might. I don't know. But it's just the type of thing that somehow it's like it's sort of. that just feels like it would check your box for specificity and cleverness in a lyric, and I looked it up so I wouldn't mess it up. Now, imagine Jizza rapping this and not me saying it. There's a small gap there. There's what they call a small credibility gap here, and me reading this off of genius lyrics here. So, of course, they're New York City-based. I guess the Medina that they're referring to here is up in upstate New York. There's also a Medina in L.A., right? But I don't think that that is what they're referring to here.

Medina also, isn't that related to the Hodge? What is the Hodge? That's like a pilgrimage that all Muslims have to try to go on in their life. And isn't Medina a place where the Hodge, it's related to the Hodge, I thought?

If that, I wonder, is that? Okay, well, here's the lyric. I'm deep down in the back streets in the heart of Medina, about to set something off more deep than a misdemeanor. and I love now and again it comes out of my mouth not the way it comes out of Jiz's mouth but it just seems like the type of line that you would really like and it just is in the clear in the song in this way that really really sparkles and I always thought

that you would like that line. Can you say it one

more time? Yeah you were looking something up

I'm deep down. I was trying to figure out if I if I was I mean Mecca is of course the place you have to go for the Hajj but I think Medina maybe there's like a road or something. I'm looking at various websites the Hajj from Medina to

Mecca. I think this is about This is about street crime So I just don't think that it says I'm deep down in the back streets

You haven't been hodging right

I'm deep down in the back streets in the heart of Medina About to set something off more deep than a misdemeanor And I just love that line so much It's so, let's see here Under the subway waiting for the train to make noise Yeah, so I don't think this has to do with hodge I don't think it does either It is a really good line I will send you the song later on a cassette tape

I, I know that I talk about MF doom like way too much on the show now, particularly considering he's an artist who put out, I mean, he's since passed and he also, most of his stuff is from now years and years ago. So it's just like nothing better than somebody getting turned on to something after it's already kind of hit the consciousness of a lot of other people. In fact, I was emailing with listener Steven about this. He was turning me on to some, some folks that were kind of doing music that was an homage to MF doom. but like he has these lines that just bounce around in my head well first of all because it's now become kind of my um i have indoor jogging music and outdoor jogging music and my indoor jogging music is the daily so i guess it's not music it's talk so if i'm on the little treadmill that's here in the studio i listen to the daily this morning i listened to uh the doj

versus apple conversation oh oh i should check that out yeah i mean i i keep sorry i keep turning

in my head because any moment dr countertop is going to show up but um there was a there was a something in that in that conversation about apple that i thought was very interesting andrew and it relates to our life together but um but uh anyway uh and when i'm outside uh for some reason i listen to mf doom so like when i was in la last week i just listened to food it's just it's like what i put on my little headphones when i go on my outside jog when i'm inside on a treadmill it's of the daily i don't know why that's the way my brain does it that's just what happens and you

probably cycle through different records like right now it's the mf doom other times it's other

things totally like it'll be mf doom for six months but because it's so i'm just like hitting my ears with it almost every day it's just and you know uh that that it's lyrically so clever to me the stuff that he says is just i mean it's it's amazing not all of it is you know family friendly but um but it's it's really great so i know which i i identify with what you're talking about of that of that jizzle line of just being kind of like oh uh this is you know a great way to phrase that and it just kind of like bounces around um in your head um so okay a couple of things on tomorrow do we can we dare bring back the pickles for tomorrow or have we just have i ruined it by promoting it two times and not getting to it i mean there's not a lot to say

on it right it's just sort of clever so maybe we just dispense of it let me dispense of it that's a terrible way of setting up a story we just do it we just get it over i think the term you're thinking of is get it over exactly just just think of england i love the portland pickles baseball

team uh a lot they are um it's i don't think minor league even describes it because they don't feed up to a major league team what they are is a college summer league team and you have these I think the Cape Cod League is like this in the Northeast. There's lots of these around. Whereas if you have somebody who's playing college baseball in the summer when they're not playing college baseball, they'll come play in these leagues. And it's so fun. These games are, you know, it's kind of that thing that we're...

I, by the way, ran into listeners, Zach and Lauren, the Josts at a pickles game back in the day. And by the day, I mean last summer. They will sell you a baseball bat that you can put beer in. And if you bring it back, it's like a cheaper thing to refill it. It's just an amazing, amazing thing. I love it so much. But anyway, they just do all these fun promotions and have people chugging, you know, pint glasses of pickle juice during the seventh inning stretch. They just do a bunch of that kind of minor league stuff. Well, I guess they have a sports bar now And a bunch of people sent this The first one I noticed was from listener Bobby Who sent it, I think, to us on Instagram And I guess If you go up the stairs In this Portland Pickles Sports bar They have put some writing Some text On the stairs, on the kind of Front part of each step So as you are walking Up the stairs, you see the words I made a comment earlier

tonight that i guess the annos to leave things off jim day is going to be taking us the rest of the way through this game as holland takes over on the mound um i made a comment earlier

tonight that i guess went over the air that let's see here if i can do this i guess uh went out over the air that i am deeply ashamed of that's step number three step number four If I've hurt anyone out there, if I have hurt anyone out there, I can't tell you how much I say. This is step number five.

I can't tell you how much I say from the bottom of my heart. Step six. I'm so very, very sorry.

What does he consider himself? Well, Andrew, he prides himself and he thinks of step number eight, myself as a man of faith.

I pride myself and think of myself as a man of faith.

and then this is when it gets great steps number 10 11 and 12

as there's a drive in a deep left field by Castellanos it will be a home run and so that'll make it a 4-0 ball game

and that is the top step

that is amazing

as you go from one floor of the Portland Pickles Sports Bar in Portland up to the next floor you will get to read those words I love that so much i i just think it's it was whoever thought of that no notes that that's an incredibly great

bit of trolling it's especially interesting to know that the pickles are a feeder team for the cincinnati reds that no that is not true that would be amazing but here's what i here's what i especially like about this the fact that that piece of tape still loves lives on in this manner and is now like enshrined in these stairs because the thing is what tom brennan or brenneman what tom brenneman said on the broadcast what he's apologizing for was hate speech he he got caught in a hot mic moment he thought they were in commercial break and he was he talking about going out to san francisco or some west coast city i think and he used you know epithets he used um he used hate speech about gay people and like in a certain way i hear this tape and it always reminds me of the ugliness of what he says but the fact that like this will never go away that he didn't get to make a quick apology and then get to do i don't think he's doing broadcasting anywhere else now he's not fact that like he is like just like famously shameful yeah shame shame shame is the only thing that kind of like turns that whole that whole ordeal around and i'm so glad that he has to wear this and he'll never go to a pickles game he'll never enjoy beer from a

he'll never go to the sports bar by the way between the sports bra yeah in portland which is a sports Bar that plays women's sports On the televisions and now the Portland Pickles sports bar that's Trolling Tom Brenneman I feel like Portland is Making a real play to be the best sports Bar town in America yeah Also on the Tom Brenneman topic I think it's really interesting That Are they here yet well Some of the neighborhood Cats are scurrying in a way that makes me think Somebody's rumbling down the road

You can hear the neighborhood cats scurrying from i can see them because they're freaking huge oh and they're passing by the windows there's a

tabby no what happened was i saw some motion behind the back window and i thought it was maybe a countertop tony and then i realized no it's just this tabby that's like enormous that just like runs around in the neighborhood in my neighborhood but the breman thing is really interesting you're you're right because i wonder if he would have done if he would have done a better if he would if here's what i'm trying to say if castellanos would not have hit that home run yeah do we think tom brenneman still is the play-by-play announcer for the tv announcer for the reds i think that there's actually an argument to be made that he is or at least another

organization

Maybe, maybe a lesser job, maybe not major league, but he would still be a broadcaster.

Right. Because what immortalized this the way it did was when he comes back to do a very, very un-serious and un-apologetic apology, and then he prioritizes the Castellanos home run as part of the apology, it shows us all how much he doesn't really feel bad about what he said. And if Castellanos doesn't hit that home run, it doesn't become this funny meme-ified thing that points out his true nature. And I wonder, I mean, that's a really kind of interesting thing to consider, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's just, whatever. We don't have to just talk about why the apology is so galling. I mean, it's funny because of the home run, but it's also just galling. Like, what is it? You're a man of faith. Well, first of all, yeah, a lot of institutionalized religions are the people who have come down very hard. I don't know what you're talking about.

There's absolutely no history of faith institutions getting down on the LGBTQ community.

You're more like proving a point there, and it's just so meaningless because he's not really – he doesn't feel bad. He's upset that he got caught saying that. He probably still uses that language. Maybe maybe he makes sure that there are no microphones on in the room, but I don't think he's a changed person at all about this. I'm sure he's just even more resentful. One little more, I guess, slightly fun thing to remember about the story is do you remember when Castellanos's wife made the news because she was like trying to like using her Instagram and stuff to try to get people to stop making the jokes like she didn't like the fact that her husband was sort of tied up in that. Yeah. And so and it's like nothing. I mean, nothing will put out a fire on the Internet more than somebody saying, hey, will you please stop saying that?

Yeah, I think she was like, you don't realize like he's now dragged into this. And I was thinking about that.

And then as there's a drive in a deep left field by Castellanos, it will be a home run. And so that'll make it a four nothing ballgame.

It was all these people sending apologies to her and then devolve into that. You know what? We have been thinking about this and you're right. It is unfair to loop him into that. and then it just devolves into the home run call.

Well, Andrew, that cat scurrying away was a cat nary in a coal mine because, in fact, the countertop guy is here, and he's driving a giant rig. It is not. The other guy showed up in a Subaru, so I don't think it's guy number one. But there is a person here, and I'm tempted to just keep podcasting with you for 51 more minutes just to prove a point.

I don't want to necessarily prove a point, but what do we want to do for the show? Because now you want to get the listeners mad. Are we going to cut the show short for this company that charged you $200 because you missed your window, and now they're going to be impacting our listeners' TBTL experience?

Well, I mean, we are at about 75 minutes, so I feel like the show—

I'm just getting started, baby.

I'm just getting warmed up. That's kind of true. Let me throw one more bit of content your way, if I can, Andrew, as we are wrapping things up today.

Well, did you want to? I did have a voicemail that is really sort of related to what we're talking about today. So I wasn't sure if you have time for that as well.

I've got 50 minutes.

Okay.

Do you want me to play the sound effect? I mean, should we do this? If we're going to do this, should we do this for real? I mean, we do have music for this.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man. It's not from a female.

All right.

Now, did I cut you off, though, before I play this voicemail? Did you say you had one other small thing you wanted to throw in here? Well, I'll throw it in after the voicemail. Okay.

It's relevant to the end of the show, but I foreproved it yesterday, so I need to talk.

Okay, I do want to hear about that. Well, we got this voicemail. So just going back to the story of you technically being outside of the window, you know, when this person came and they charged you $200 and all of that, We got this voicemail from a listener who also was hoping that a sort of a big organization would cut him slack on something.

and they built me for two whole days, and I was really hoping that I could get this. Oh, come on. You guys don't keep close track of this, do you? Well, no luck. It should have been $90. It was like $200. Oof. And I just know Luke is an Avis wizard, and so I gave up. But maybe, Luke, do you know any ways to get around this one? Thanks so much. This is Tim in California.

Oh, there was a name at the end. I saw you move.

making your you moved your hands i was doing my wizard my wizard um the thing that it's the

greeting that we use for each other when we see other wizards yes um that's a tough one to crack um because that one is very much about the the computerized system right um what i do think you can now get away with on most cars and i'm not recommending this i'm just saying i think you can probably crash a car now and bring it back and they don't really notice it what they've totally relaxed on with rental cars is that whole we're going to walk around it we're going to look at everything every single scuff i no one has ever done that to a rental car that i've had in the last like three years well could that be wizard status though i don't think so because i wasn't always a wizard andrew i was once just a normal boy like you even in the three in the past three years i'm i mean i i can only report to you my experience um uh which is even before i was a wizard i know because because i can't imagine that their theory is well this guy's at the highest level of the renting so we're not going to check the car i also think it has to do with avis maybe versus other rental companies i don't use a lot of other rental companies what i've noticed is that my you know mid you can't even rent a car till you're in your mid 20s but my mid 20s through my late 30s it was this whole thing of like really carefully like documenting every little possible scuff to make sure that they know that that was like that when

you got it they got mirrors on poles checking the underside of the car exactly and i just feel like

much like most of the fast food companies putting the soda on the outside i think there was a moment where they were just like this is too much of a hassle it's too hard to prove unless like the bumper is falling off if the car is basically fine we're gonna send it out what i can say is I've here's here's what I can say I've never brought a car back now and had any had Avis ever say did you do that and I've definitely had cars I got in a car uh not that long ago where there was a knife like someone had knifed the passenger seat like there was a rip in it that was too clean to have been like from someone sitting on it was like someone cut it and I got in the car and I didn't even realize it because I put my like bag down on it till I was already too far away and I looked at it and i was like should i report that and then i was just like and no no one ever said

anything about it oh that's interesting i'd be you know me i'd be so tempted to get ahead of that just like as i'm returning it just like say i just want to make it very clear that was that was in the seat before i set my bag of knives down on that's on top of it that's why i cannot officially

i don't want to encourage anyone to be lax about this because watch then someone's going to get dinged but what i have i have the and i have rented cars from other places than avis when it's a airport that doesn't have avis or it's just some extenuating circumstance i my feeling my experience in the world is that it is less of a thing than it used to be and my guess is that's because of some economic it's basically sabermetrics of the rental car game like these rental car companies have figured out that like investing a certain amount of employee hours and hassle into checking every scuff and then figuring out did the person bringing the car back do the scuff is actually more time consuming and expensive than just buffing it out so and again i'm sure there are like levels of damaging the car that can get you in trouble but i just feel like it's also a chain of custody thing like the way you return a rental car now i think is a little bit different you drive it into like a cattle yard there's some person that's like kind of paying attention to you as you sort of park it in one of like eight slots and they may or may not get to the car right away I mean somebody could have like tapped the back of your car where you parked there it's like it's just the whole chain of custody thing is off now to where I think it's hard for them to prove what happened when and I think they've decided that that's fine they're gonna make their money but it's not gonna be on making sure figuring out who exactly did every

little thing to the car yeah no that makes sense now I'm getting a little bit anxious what is the deal with the truck in your driveway is it still there just sitting there no one's come out to my

i i honestly think maybe the guy's having a ham and cheese and an orange drink if you know you

know i don't know what he's doing it there do you think there are any chips involved

i'm gonna ask i asked him to get me a bag of chips i didn't give any more specifics okay um okay so here's the thing that i was thinking about andrew as i was putting the show together now a couple of weeks ago and i had a you know i had the sort of audio responsibility let me let me turn off our doogie theme here and turn on the thing that I wanted to tell you about I was putting the show together and you know how and I was putting the end of the show together and I was putting in the music or I was playing the music and talking over it and you know how like of late I feel like I've been sort of the conversation around the song words by doves has come up like what lyric we're on I said I always try to wrap up before they say the f-word and then You and the listeners inform me they're not saying the F word.

and I was like yeah I just always want to try to be in the part of the song that's like not the lyrics that annoy me I might have even said I certainly have thought I don't like the lyrical part of the song words by doves I don't really love the lyrics I like the build-up I like the instrumental the music part of it and what I realized when I was playing the outro music for myself recently was there's an instrumental version of this song that we used for probably the first i don't know four or five years of the show certainly the entire radio time the version i'm playing for you right now never has any words in it oh i'll bet you you guys

You probably edited this, right?

Yes. Words, TBTL, outro, instrumental.

It even cut. I feel like that. Can you start that from the beginning again? Yes. I feel like it is. You also.

Is that not where the one we play starts?

I feel like. Let me hear this.

little bit there's a little bit of there's a little bit of talking there

no this is that is the one i did you did you scooch ahead a little bit the first time you played that oh i did yes yes oh you did okay yeah that's what i because i was like oh wow you guys really cut no no i was jumping around okay yeah yeah yeah yeah okay well that's what i heard no we just send me that we can go out with that from now on or i can cut my own version Of it if you want I bet you'll like your version

Better than mine I'm sure I made this you know But it just explains a lot For me personally like no one Cares about this except me but I kind of was like I wonder how it is that I'm always Hitting it on the wrong part of the lyric or like I don't even know really what the words are To the song which is you could say Highly ironic considering the name of the song But like it makes so much More sense that for a good amount Of the early part of the show and now of course there's been So much more of the show that has Not been this right like the vast majority of the show actually has been with the one with lyrics but somewhere in the back of my brain i'm always i think i'm talking up to the one that has no lyrics in it and i had forgotten that that ever existed until i was just like searching out on my computer okay words by doves and then i found this words tbtl outro instrumental and i was like oh that okay that makes a lot more sense

well send it my way my my concern is not that the edit won't be good my concern is that it's from an era it's like this is going to be from 2008 so the the quality of mp3 might not be that good it might be like kind of like some things were super compressed and stuff back then but uh send it my way and if nothing else i can actually make a you know an andrew walsh remix of it and people have been waiting for that you make the breaking news sounder please

Meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, meep, me

I stutter.

All right. I am going to wrap the show up now. I'm going to go down, and I'm going to try to figure out what's going on here. And I'm going to thank everyone for listening. And I'm going to say we'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Oh, my goodness. I'm listening to today's episode. And will you believe that I had no idea that Gentleman's Quarterly was GQ? I thought they were just two things that I'd heard of separately. So thank you for enlightening me. I had literally no idea. Okay, bye-bye. Power out.