Muse

So a ghost walks into the bar, and the ghost is like, and the bartender is like, oh god, oh sorry, you're a ghost, with the sheet I thought, and the ghost is like, that I'm a racist, and the bartender's like, yeah, you should probably do like a printed, Stephanie? And the ghost is like, Tom? The bartender's like, I haven't seen you since we went on that date all those years ago what what happened and the ghost is like i died and the bartender's like well i guess that explains why i never heard back from you and the ghost is like oh um i i actually uh i actually had like like like like a week ago the bartender's like it's it's fine you water under the bridge and the ghost is like that's actually what killed me the bartender's like really and the ghost is like no it's just a dumb joke uh it's a car accident and the bartender's like well regardless it's really nice to see you again the ghost is like it's nice to see you too what do you say i buy us a first round and we catch up like old times and the bartender says well i'd love to but you don't serve spirits

TBTL

Please clap

Here's the 1-0 Swung on, there it goes Deep left center That ball is high It is far It is gone

But caught Wow, you're really good at puzzles

I did them all the time as a kid As my mom used to say When you're doing a puzzle It's like having a thousand friends

It's a 16-4 with a loop at the hook Freeze the bars and mute the quarter tones If it ever feels like we're dragging, we're not. It's just that kind of tune. All right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's a kind of magic. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Peace and love. Peace and love. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we...

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

It is so beautiful today. We mowed the lawn this weekend. By we, I mean me. The cat didn't help on that at all. Mowed the lawn, continued the process of trying to, you know, put the kitchen together. It's very nice. It still smells like freshly cut grass around here, which is a real sign that spring is here. Although I will say, I got up this morning and I was getting the coffee ready in the kitchen. I looked out the window and I was so excited because the lawn was all mowed. It was going to look nice. I was going to have a feeling and there's just a giant mole hill.

Want to add a few comments regarding your mole situation?

I felt like I'm in some sort of 1950s cartoon where I am vexed by some sort of critter. Maybe Caddyshack is a better, slightly more updated reference. But I did find myself Googling humane mole solutions this morning Because I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to hurt these guys I just don't, I don't want them ruining my beautiful lawn project This is the kind of youthful content that people turn to here on TBTL As we arrive at episode 4174 in a collector's series

Let the fun begin

Hey, it's April 1st, it's April Fool's Day I haven't seen any April spoofing out there yet, and I'm happy about that. Like, I haven't seen any, you know, fake news stories that are intended to April fool you. As you know, we're not huge fans of that kind of content here on the show. We like to keep it very much rooted in reality here on the show. Like, the reality of what happened to me this weekend involving my Xfinity account. I have an update on that.

Can you verify? Can you give me some 411?

If you remember, I was trying to watch the Mariners baseball game on Thursday night when they made their season debut, and my Xfinity account was giving me trouble.

I don't even own a television.

Because I didn't have the right package. And so then I was trying to sign up for the crazily expensive, super deluxe premium package that would allow me to watch these baseball games. And there were so many other people trying to do it because it was the first day of the season that the website was crashing. So I came home on Saturday night, came back from a really fun trip in Seattle. So nice to see everyone out at Livewire on Friday night. That was a blast. And it's Saturday night, and I'm all ready to watch my game now. I'm ready to watch the Mariners play the Boston Red Sox.

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

That's my feeling as I talk to you here on this Monday.

april 1st so not to spoil it but it's not going great with xfinity i'll tell you that in more detail as soon as we welcome this guy to the program longest running cobra of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships something you may or may not know about him he's also wickedly talented he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my

friend good morning luke you see me as i'm applying my egyptian musk essential oil on my wrists i'm ready on my wrists i should say i'm ready for a week you know pulse points me stumbling here reminds me of a thought i was having before the show and i don't know if this is relatable or not or if this is something that has already been covered but i feel like certain days of the week tend to be more difficult than others and monday for me personally like i sort of feel like sometimes it's like oh monday back into the swing of work it's a tougher day for me than say like

i don't know a saturday or a sunday oh i see in other words the days when you don't have to work you tend to feel like those days go better for you and in fact those you look forward to those days would you say that like you spend the other the other days kind of thinking about those two

days you're not going to be working i do i and i think of even like a friday like when i wake up on a friday i am more like sort of optimistic and excited about the day okay then i am on a Would you say it's finally Friday? I'd say it's my Friday is what I say. When I don't have to work, when I don't have to... Okay, follow me here, okay? Okay, hold on. Okay, do you have a pen and paper? Maybe one of those calendars? So if you're looking at a calendar, there's Monday through Friday. Those are the things that we consider to be like weekdays, right?

Okay, hold on. Somebody should put this down, honestly, like and print it out. It'd just be a lot easier. Yeah, I sort of feel it.

Maybe you can write it down and print it later on your brother printer. Monday and then Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday those are the week days those days where we traditionally work and then the weekend is like Saturday and Sunday again traditionally depending on your job those are the days off so you can get it so you can take a rest but sometimes you don't have to work on Friday it might be a holiday you might be taking a vacation or just a personal day and on those days one of the things I like to say is on a Thursday of that week I like to say today is my friday and it confuses people because they're like no no today is thursday and they'll

pull out wait i've also written down these days of the week on a piece of paper and i have these yeah at the ready and i'm looking at it and i've got the t i've got t circled because this is thursday exactly well let me explain let me expand on that a little i've had people honestly

in this conversation pull out those little bank calendars the size of a deck of cards and they'll say look today is thursday and i'll say no but you're missing the point here i don't have to work tomorrow so it's almost like what i what i have dubbed like a three-day weekend in air quotes there and they'll say so today feels like a friday to me and sometimes they get it and sometimes they don't we just have to go our own way but anyway i'm struggling yeah um i'm uh i'm i'm feeling

i'm feeling okay on this monday mostly because i'm i'm pretty excited about my fashion have you noticed my sweet new hat that i got that came in the mail oh oh it says the burbs like the

The movie that I referenced this weekend, actually.

Oh, on one of your good days?

Yeah, it was on one of my iffy days.

Were you having a sparkling, delightful conversation somewhere at the pub thinking, oh, man, this is just easy. This is so much easier than it's a Saturday. It's one of the S days. It's a Saturday or a Sunday. Yeah, I can't tell if this hat is funny or the height of narcissism. I ordered a hat online that is the movie poster kind of font, if you will, for the Tom Hanks movie, The Burbs. Was this an Instagram purchase? No, you know what it was? It was a long, strange journey, Andrew, which I would like to clarify did not involve me being drunk, although classically this is the kind of thing I do when I'm drunk.

Okay, good. The nice thing is you can recreate that behavior when you're sober now, which is awesome. That's great. Absolutely. No, I love all of the bad side effects of drinking.

No, it's because now what I do is I scroll. OK, I'm scrolling. And so I'm scrolling and I see a clip of I believe it's the comedian Kyle Kinane on some podcast. And he is wearing a hat that says the burbs. And I thought, oh, that's really funny. But I and it's kind of my my memory is it was sort of in the like Chicago Bears font. That makes any sense. Like if you see Chicago Bears written on a hat There's a specific kind of font that they tend to use And am I right

In thinking that it's kind of a thin font It's not like It's not like a big chunky football font Right when you're talking about the Chicago Bears

Buckle up we're going to be talking Garamond

I'll just look it up you know what I'll just look it up you go on with your story

I'm terrible with fonts For some reason this We'll be right back.

This hat that said the burbs on Kyle Kinane, it reminded me of, like, kind of of, like, something Chicago-y. Okay. And maybe that's where it was from. I don't know. I wasn't able to find the hat. I looked around for the hat. But when I searched around for a hat that says the burbs, what I found instead was this one, Andrew, which says the burbs from the movie The Burbs, short for The Suburbs.

And it has, like, I'm trying to figure out how to describe it. It's almost like a Tim Burton-y font. It's like it's got some levity to it. It's like kind of 90s. It feels like early 90s. It's jaunty in a way. It's kind of jaunty. The letters are sort of askew. And, of course, it is The Burbs, which is a – actually, I really like that movie. I was going to say it's a delightful movie. I don't think it's a delightful movie. I think it's a weird, dark, sort of icky movie, but I really like it.

Well, this is the thing. I think The Hat is pretty funny, but only if you know that this is a reference to the movie The Burbs. in other words if like it's it's funny to me because it works on two levels it's of course kind of a version of my name it's also a like like a kind of i think considered to be like you said it was a it was a pretty edgy movie it was like for you know tom hanks who we've seen in movies like big and other kind of pretty down the middle sort of you know very popular fair the burbs was a kind of a dark movie like i think a lot of people don't really know how to feel about it i I don't know if it was considered a box office success or not, but it's it's kind of a funny, weird little moment in Tom Hanks's career. It is. And it's kind of one of those, you know, those movies that if you're in on it, you're you know, you're kind of in on it. So I like that level of comedy. What I don't what I would not like is if somebody who I knew saw me wearing this hat didn't get that part of the reference and just thought I'm the kind of person who wears a hat that says the burbs like, hey, guys, the burbs is here.

The Burbs is here. It does have, I guess, like, yeah, in that mode, it would be a little bit like the uncle wearing a some sort of a custom apron at the barbecue or something like that. That references himself, possibly. I don't know how to grill mandarin chief. Right. Exactly. By the way, I had speaking of the Burbs and Bruce Dern, I had a cinematic update for you. that was 10 or 11.

Involving Bruce Dern.

Yes, 10 or 11 years in the making for me. I think you were one of the first people, you know, again, I think it was in 2014 or 2013 to say, oh, you'll love Nebraska. You should see the movie Nebraska. Oh, good. You finally watched Nebraska. Everybody in my life was like, oh yeah, you're the type of guy who would like the movie Nebraska. I've been showing people my calendar before explaining what a Friday is. And they're like, you seem like the type of guy who would like the movie Nebraska. For some reason, I never sat down to watch it, and I did, and I watched it on an airplane when Vives and I were traveling recently. So anyway, I did. I loved it, and I got very choked up at the end, and I was on an airplane, and people say you're more prone to that on an airplane, but I think I would have been anyway. Oh, I highly, highly believe that. Yeah, it's a very emotional journey.

I think it's a wonderful film, and it's got a distant TBTL connection, which is, of course, it was written by one-time TBTL guest Bob Nelson. uh who was one of the folks on almost live for many years and then he wrote this film nebraska

and then it was made by alexander payne wasn't he on to talk about nebraska or was he i think he

probably was i think it might have been like nominated for an oscar at that point or something and like i was like i knew someone that knew him and he was like sure i'd be happy to jump on the line with you um but uh but yeah so i feel first of all i just think it's a great film really i'll watch anything that alexander paine is involved in also a rare cinematic appearance for will

forte outside of the mcgruber verse yes and does a does a really good job and also when i was surprised i did not know that bob odenkirk was in it and bob odenkirk he's playing the perfect role for bob odenkirk he plays the the brother of will forte if you'll recall but anyway i highly recommend it does make me i mean it's such a beautiful movie and i watch it on my laptop on an airplane which is probably not how alexander payne imagined that in 2014 i do wish that i had seen it on the big screen if it ever i don't foresee them returning it is shot in black and white beautiful black and white absolutely interesting choice yeah do you think that the box office will do you think that the people who run hollywood will uh bring that back to theaters for some sort of an anniversary because that'll really help how about the reboot oh the reboot i I like that. It's basically the same as a somewhat.

Olivia Rodrigo is Will Forte in Nebraska. Chapel Rhone and Olivia Rodrigo go on a voyage of discovery in 3D. It is Nebraska.

Thank you for introducing me to Chapel Rhone because I then had that on my Spotify.

dialed up on Spotify when I got in the car with Genevieve to go somewhere this weekend and I was like oh you probably already know about this artist because Genevieve listens to Top 40 radio and it always knows way more I mean I know nothing about pop music so that's not saying much but Genevieve knows what's going on in pop music I'm like you must know this performance she's like no and so I got to introduce it to her I didn't get an oversized response I think she was mostly scrolling on her phone which is fine but I just want her to remember that when Chapel Rhone. You heard it here first. Yeah exactly I'm the one who brought that into your life

By way of me By way of my brother David from the basement Suggesting it Now I'll say that I feel like the thing with Chapel Rhone Is it seems to be As much a kind of visual Experience and like You know Live experience as much as anything Which is maybe how these things start off What I've been seeing online is lots and lots Of kind of like very very enthusiastic concert footage that people are filming on their phones and stuff because i think she's a really seems to be a really good entertainer and the people that come it's like i don't know what they call her fans now but they they come out with this a similar fervor to those of the taylor swift persuasion and so i i like just maybe just hearing it kind of in the car as you're driving around if you're not you know um if you're not getting the full experience maybe that also is a little bit of a you're not getting all of it if you're not seeing her because she also get to see very over the top outfits which are kind of inspired by a lot of drag kind of visuals I think that I've heard that she takes a lot of her kind of makeup and outfit cues from some you know drag performers and stuff so it's a it's a whole thing going on with the Chapel Rhone but I do think I do think we'll be hearing much more out of that person this summer and you will be able to say to Genevieve look who's cool now with my Nebraska references and my Chapel

right exactly because there's nothing better than when like kind of a a partner especially a male partner sort of like dominates like you're listening to that music because i introduced you to it like that's like a really charming no remember it was when you told me i'd never be a writer because i lacked imagination oh you know what i'm sorry i don't know how this show is performing today i don't know if we're if i'm letting the listeners in or not or if i'm just

catching up on things i've been meaning to tell you about well i started by um showing you and

only you my hat that's true i will grab a screen grab of that for the i don't feel like it could go much lower um but i thought of you yesterday because i was also scrolling on my phone which

is something that jenny oh good we were both dealing with an emotional hole in our souls yeah

i might have been just like going to the bathroom or something but i i follow um some i follow a couple of accounts on instagram that are somehow related to i think you should leave and they clip little bits of it and they play it and i think it's maybe i i think you should meme i don't know which one i follow but anyway i'm watching a clip and what always surprises me is i i know that i've seen every sketch but certainly there are some that kind of uh in the first season that i probably only watched once and so like i actually have no recollection of them and there is some um so what is what is the sketch and i think you should leave the tuggers tommyville tuggers or whatever

where they have the tc tuggers where they have they're not a joke though you don't wear them

as a joke you don't buy them as a joke gift they're special shirts with a little knob on them so you can pull out your t-shirt the way guys because my age because if it's kind of on your

belly yeah and you're pulling on your shirt a lot you're damaging your shirt so they're the only t-shirt that comes with a knob to help you pull it off of your stomach and so i'd remembered that

bit which i think was presented as sort of a commercial or maybe it wasn't quite a commercial

but it was something like that like introducing the joke is it starts out if i can just very

quickly this is clearly something near and dear to my heart get to what i'm getting at here yeah

oh well i don't want to step on please do no please i don't it starts as a kind of one of those like cw teen shows that were very popular okay that's what i saw on instagram was i didn't

remember that tc tuggers makes an appearance in some sort of parody of a teen show that's what i saw and i'm like i had zero recollection of that at all yeah the first time you see someone

wearing the tc tugger it's tim robinson i think as the principal of the high school yes so you got this like very attractive guy and girl and they're having one of those very dramatic you know sort of teen conversations that would happen on one of these shows about somebody cheating or whatever and then in the background is tim robinson with his and they're just trying to make conversation with him like cool shirt mr b and he's like yeah it's a tc tugger but it's not a joke you don't wear it as a joke you don't give it as a gift as a joke and then and then they just kind of go to commercial and then the commercial is for tc tuggers and the only way i can describe the guys in the commercial is like you've cloned kyle gas from the um tenacious d and just made like five versions of him of different races just the kind of like

Like sort of like this certain kind of guy of a middle age and he, they've all got these TC Tuggers on and the music that they have playing for these guys are standing on like an empty stage, empty soundstage just kind of dancing with their TC Tuggers. It's some kind of song that's just like boys making noise or something. Like it's like the most perfect pretend song from a commercial where these like, like just the vibe is sort of like, well, here we go. Thank you. Please, please. the most middle-aged dudes just like dancing and pulling their tc tuggers out it is

perfection kind of like this burbs hat that music is your i like i don't know how to describe that or why that is so goddamn perfect but it is it also it's close to the kind of music we talk about like that would be like Thursday night football adjacent or something like bumping out of something I could see that now do you want to I guess only because I have it here I'm going to play I didn't realize that this is what leads into that river mountain high

you're hiding something what happened that night with Riley that's a cool shirt yeah it's a TC top from TC Tuggers do they come in other styles not really no yeah the style is just is just basically this well thanks principal s yeah yeah thanks you for asking about the shirt and thinking it's cool tc tuggers yeah i gotta go bye brandon uh think about what i said about tc tuggers bye claire just needlessly awkward there's another show that i

don't know if you know of it but because i follow this account which is actually called i think you should reel um where they they post a bunch of clips to um instagram reels from the show they also will put other tim robinson stuff in there and there's some cartoon where he it might even be the cartoon is not named after the plumber but he plays a plumber um have you have any no let's see the plumber's a clip from oh 10 year old tom is the name of the show and it looks like it's never heard of it um here i'm gonna play this for you so 10 year old tom i think is the main character i don't know who does that voice um and you also have um tim robinson playing a plumber

here she doesn't talk to plumbers remember my dad was a plumber yes i remember this house yeah she doesn't like the profession right weasels and can't be trusted yes i recall anyway so that to tell you give us the classiest hot tub you've got and install it in the front yard where these smug

b-holes can all see it no can do that's actually against city code oh no you have to do it i don't have to do anything so i chose this job so nobody could tell me what to do well plumbers more or

less have to do what needs to be fixed no there's gotta be laws applying to plumbers i imagine i

mean the same laws as everybody in society has we have to follow but there's no like special laws

for plumbers all right listen it says here in the paper if the plumber gives you any lip tell him to shut his pie hole and just install the thing um can i see the paper yeah it's got

a whole list of response i wish this had been one that i'd seen this is not one that i thought i

playing there's another one where voices tina on um are you just recognizing that or did you look it i don't know it just sounds tina-ish it sounds like it could be in the same maybe the same

voiceover universe some of them had me really rolling i really wish i'd played a funnier one there my apologies to you and the listeners it's a monday luke which i can explain to you later why that today's my monday to this but uh there's one where he ends up the plumber tim robinson's character has to uh or he thinks he has to take a poop in his own van it was a sketch that seemed You go right up your alley. I'll send it to you later.

That actually is very relevant to my interest.

Okay, there we go.

As somebody who was a plumber once. Well, not really. I was like, worked at a plumbing yard. But retained very little of it. In fact, none of it, which comes back to haunt me every day when I have to hire people to do stuff here at the house.

I think we might need to hire a plumber at some point. I can't tell. I kind of don't want to get into it because then everybody's going to have an opinion about it. I think everything's fine for right now, But let me just say that there are some things that are going on that I'm thinking, we might have to call a plumber. And you often mention this plumbing company that you worked for, for, I think, a relatively short period of time. Yeah, one summer. Okay, one summer.

In fact, I didn't even fill out my term there because I knocked the owner's son's thumbnail off with a wheelbarrow. And I was in actual fear for my safety because the owner was a nutcase who had a loaded sidearm on his body at all times. and this son of his was the apple of his eye he had had i think something like four or five daughters and then a son which he named his name junior and then they stopped having babies and i don't think that was a coincidence i think this guy wanted to have

have a male offspring anyway so i had damaged the dauphin and i really thought this guy was going to maybe kind of like threaten me and i got the flip out of there never went back left that

day and did not return and you've made a point of never saying what the name of that plumbing company is on the show although i'm pretty sure that i know people can piece it together probably it's a pretty big plumbing concern in this region and so it's like in the back of my head concerning

how big it is because when i worked there was so shady well that's also part of why i don't want to say the name because I don't want to get in trouble. And I think it's like owned by one of the, like by the son-in-law and one of the daughters. Um, I don't think it's even owned by the dude it's named for anymore, but I can tell you when I worked there, one of my jobs was to sit, me and Joe Dolan would sit next to a, in the basement of this house that was the plumbing operation next to a pile of fittings that had been cut off of jobs. So they were like old used like connect like elbows and but they were made of copper and we would clean them and then take them from the dirty pile to the clean pile and that meant they were going back out to be installed on someone else's house meaning this company was going out if you had to have them redo your pipes they were torching it all like cutting it all out taking it out replacing it but then what they felt they could reutilize from the job was now being cleaned and then reintegrated into someone else's plumbing situation which seems not okay yeah yeah you know and certainly like

reusing stuff like that there could be an argument for that being actually a good way of doing things except i know without even having to look at the books that they weren't probably transparent or

charging appropriately for that exactly and i don't i don't want to i don't want to um assume that one thing leads to the other but i can tell you i don't think it was a carbon footprint issue one of the bumper stickers on one of the trucks for this company said gun control is being able to hit your target among other things i i would yeah so you're right if if there was like a place where they were like you know and there's probably is one in portland like eco-friendly plumbing where here's what we do we find ways to reuse uh you know old stuff and this is so our footprint

is smaller god bless this was definitely not yeah and i'm sure again that they were probably charging uh quite a markup even if they had been at new fittings for sure so all of that is to say

one time we were instructed to just go hang out underneath the place for two days because the owner was mad at the people like they owed he felt that they owed him money or something so we were literally there to just do nothing to run the bill oh my god that's real sleazy so anyway i

point is i have them um you know on my list of plumbers not to call just so you know so because

From one friend to the other, I would say that's a good list to have them on.

So thank you for that. And for you listeners out there, you know it's a company named after a dude. That's all the information.

And listen, I mean, here's the thing. When I was living down in Seattle where we had the Burbank Studios de Bajo and all of that, I hired a totally different company that was, I think, advertised heavily on Cairo. And I also felt very bad about that interaction because it was like I needed a new sewer line, Doug. and it was like one amount of money but then it was like actually we can do it this other way and it's going to be cheaper but actually the materials are more so it's going to be like the number just kept moving it just was a bad it was a bad feeling all around um uh and so i guess my point is and we we might do we have any plumbers listening get at me if you're a plumber and you're listening and you want to fix andrew's house yes exactly we have a problem with our roof so i'm

looking for a plumber i don't know much about this homeowner what's happening that you think

if you don't want to talk about it we don't talk about it because i know what you mean when we say something like this god bless our fine fine listeners and i really mean that god bless them may he keep may god keep and bless you but there usually are like there'll be five to ten emails with theories and then you feel like do i get back to the people on the theories do i integrate the theories so if you feel comfortable mentioning what's going on go for it if not that's fine

it's one of those things where usually you know people send in suggestions i mean i've gotten so much help from listeners whether it's just advice or hey i could help you out with that thing and so i don't want to make it sound like it's a bad thing but in this particular case it's like i i just don't want to get into it because it's one of those things where it's kind of like if i don't open this box it's human hair isn't it human hair coming up and it's not yours or v's the hair dad it's it's the hair gotta shave it gotta it's dirty um it's just one of those things where if i describe what's happening it could sound cataclysmic i don't think it is cataclysmic but i also don't want to hear from a bunch of people who are saying at a somewhat panicked level like get this taken care of right now because honestly i just don't want to open that box right now which just sounds like it's just like the worst thing for me to be

admitting because you don't want to get a bunch of emails going i had that happen and they had

to demolish the house exactly and And I have gotten things like that before, too. It's like, it's very clear you have this. I'm like, I really don't think so, and that's not the case. So in this case, I'm sort of just hiding my head in the sand right now. I think everything is fine.

Which famously works, particularly when it comes to issues of plumbing.

Exactly, because that's where the pipes are. They're down below the sand, which is why my head is down there. And I'm keeping an eye on things. I'm keeping an eye on things.

I trust you on that.

And by the way, when I say plumbing, I'm talking about my plumbing inside my body.

Your body. Yes. Something needs to be snaked out. Oh, speaking of which, I've got that coming up in a couple of weeks.

I'm getting snaked out. You just made me spill my coffee. I don't know what just happened. It's that Monday thing. I'm getting roto-rooted. I was taking a sip of my coffee. Then I wanted to respond to what you were saying. And so mid-pour into my mouth, I just moved the cup away from my mouth. It really is bananas. No, because you were going to have your colonoscopy. It was scheduled for a few weeks ago, but it was a really busy week for you. And you had talked about maybe rescheduling. And then that was the last I heard of it. So what is, where is it now on this schedule?

It is, let's see here. It looks like it's April 30th. Mark your calendars, America. April 30th.

That's probably not the type of thing that you'll talk about on the show, though.

I honestly, like, part of why I'm doing it is because it's great content. It's good. It's medical best practices, as my doctor kept telling me. Because he was, this has already come up, but, like, he was offering me the option to just take a sample at home and send it in and i in a very unusual move for me said let's just do the full-on situation because again as i've already explained what i found appealing about the full-on situation was if they were to locate anything that was troublesome they can sort of deal with it then yeah and i thought that seemed like a good idea and also as we talked about before i just i've put a lot of hard miles on this rig over the years and i kind of feel like i wouldn't mind i wouldn't mind them having a very thorough look at things because i would be unsurprised to find that the hard living that i that i've done for 25 years uh has uh you know caused various things to to be not ideal so i just would like to i would like to get the full the full thing and the doctor kept saying well it is that's the gold standard of care yeah i was like well yeah well then let's do that let's do

the gold standard of care sir it also like i i'm with you like i assume that they'll maybe want a closer look even if i do the if i go the easier the quote-unquote easier route of submitting like a sample or whatever and then they're like oh yeah we need to go in there anyway it's like oh great now i had to play with my poop and you're still going in there anyway like how about we just like let's just go right to it now i like speaking of advice and unasked for advice unrequested advice i do have one piece of advice for you when you go in for your colonoscopy and i will be asking you about this you must wear that hat and you must insist that the hat stays on i want to hear those words coming out of your mouth to the doctors of the entire staff the hat stays on

i wonder if that has ever been like written into someone's like you know medical chart or their living will or something i did you know work for a guy we all worked for a guy at npr who was a very high level editor who said in his, who was hired while I worked there. Um, and I forget this person's name. And also, you know, I probably wouldn't mention it anyway, just for some degree of discretion. But the, the email that went out was like, um, Hey, I'm so-and-so I'm the new deputy editor of whatever you'll know me as the guy in the baseball cap. And he had some sort of thing going on. I never knew what it was, but he would be wearing a collared shirt and a tie and his like lanyard and but he always had a baseball cap on and he kind of put that out there i forget i think it was even more explicit than that like as far as like you know i wear like i i'm i always i'm always wearing a baseball cap like there was something and the people you know were naturally a bit curious i think it was there was something going on that there was about you know involved this person's head that they would rather keep literally under a cap and so they just kind of let everyone know i'm the guy in the baseball cap which was sort of interesting it is sort of interesting like he would have had that probably in his directives when he was getting his colonoscopy the hat stays on and also please refer to me as you're bringing me out of the

anesthesia as the burbs oh yeah you're this is not you're talking to the medical staff here i'm talking to the medical staff now on the chart you don't want to see first name last name you just

want to see the burbs right exactly hey um all right all right mr the burbs we're gonna be bringing you out now um so uh how are you feeling mr the burbs i would just like to only be addressed

mr the burbs or is the the first name and burbs last name so it'd still be mr burbs mr burbs or mr the burbs if you're nasty if you're nasty let's go to a break here because what you just said reminded me of a theory that i had this weekend but if i give you the theory it's going to alienate um

some of our listeners and i don't want to do that donors first so let's so no i'm not gonna make sure that i'm not gonna bring it up on the show at all we just need to move on and i want to hear

about your comcast stuff oh my gosh andrew i mean i know i'm just winding the the audience i've got a lot of emails in my inbox that would support this theory i'm just winding the audience up with this this but i i wish i could report something differently but but it just continues to be frustrating anyway we'll talk about that in a minute uh here on old tbtl 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. These generous people are dazzling us with their donation of dough, and it is the way that the program can continue on. No donors, no TBTL. Here we are 4,174 episodes into this, and it's because of folks like Rochelle Mortvet of Bremerton, Washington, the gateway to Silverdale, back where the folks live, Walt and Susie.

You know, when I did my radio show many years ago, Luke, I guess, again, that was like 10 years ago, maybe a little bit more than that, Nick Jarin, who produced the night show, he was staying in Bremerton, so often after the show I would drop him off at the ferry at about 10, 15 at night to take the trip over to Bremerton. That's the end of my story.

That's all I got You have some upcoming broadcasts with one Nick Jarin, correct?

I do, after these messages He will be a special guest explaining baseball to me I'm sorry, basketball See, that's where we're starting Needs a lot of explaining Explaining foosball That's my understanding of the whole situation He'll be on the show Tuesday with us

We're of course here though to thank Rochelle for her support Who says, Dearest Luke, Andrew, and John I stepped up my donation so you all can keep this going Rochelle, it's like you just You knew what I was going to say at the beginning of this segment. I have been listening since the radio days. TBTL is my daily comfort listening. Here is to many more years of an independent TBTL. Yeah. I'll tell you what. This is independent media at its finest. You're never going to see us hiring Ronna McDaniel to weigh in as a contributor here on the program.

I don't think I'm following that reference. And I'm going to be a little bit embarrassed if it's just a reference in the culture that I should know. I'm going to be way more embarrassed if this is something we've literally talked about.

We have not literally talked about it. It was just on The Daily this morning on my jog, which is why it's at the top of my mind. That was just basically NBC got in a lot of hot water last week because they hired the former head of the RNC, Ronna McDaniel. Oh, okay. And then the folks on MSNBC and NBC kind of went into open revolt, and then they nixed her contract.

I see. I saw the briefest reference to somebody being outraged about a hire this weekend.

Yeah, because she was somebody who who in her capacity as the head of the RNC really catered to Trump's whims and and made, you know, sort of supported the idea or at least gave gave some oxygen to the idea that there was, you know, the election was rigged. And then when she was going on NBC, now she was like, yeah, well, she literally said you sort of like take one for the team when you're the head of the RNC, meaning she didn't really believe it, but you just kind of got to do it. And people, I think, at NBC were rightfully, like the other on-air journalists were like, it's one thing to bring somebody on with a different political perspective. It's another thing to put somebody on who tried to undo democracy. Exactly, yeah. So anyway, that'll never happen on TBTL, Andrew. that's my promise to you as one of the co-owners of TBTB I can promise to Rochelle and everyone else this is independent TBTL Rochelle says much love and happiness to you all if you can please play my favorite drop I don't know where it comes from but it's the little girl complaining that she can't be a writer or a comedian because she doesn't know how to write she mentions Seinfeld I hope her parents didn't tell her what to say I always wonder where it came from thanks Andrew I've always wondered where this came from. Do you know the story on this tape?

I had to look it up again. My journey with this tape was, you know, I've got this weird thing where I can kind of remember. I don't remember very many things, as you well know. People's names, faces, where I parked my car. But for some reason, especially when it comes to this show, I remember where I was when I played something or when we talked about something. That's fascinating, actually. If I remember it at all. But I can sometimes be like, oh, yeah, that was in the Wallingford studio. I know we talked about that. I can picture myself like. But this one, I remember you and I were in St. Paul, Minnesota, visiting the mothership. And I got a text message from a friend of mine saying, I don't even know if it said anything. She was just forwarding me this tape that she found on Instagram. And I'll play it here in a second. But what I think is interesting about this is I thought, oh, this. is good intro tape and she said yeah that's why I sent it to you I'm like okay good so I used it as an intro a long time ago we've used it from time to time uh but I couldn't have told you how long ago that was until we played it recently coincidentally probably after Rochelle had already sent in this message we played it on the show I think last week or the week before and I got more emails and messages about it like what is that tape I love it so much so I had to go back into good thing I never get new phones Luke so I could still find the text message from my friend And it was sent to me almost exactly five years ago. I think it was 2019. And the Instagram account, it does not look like it's some sort of meme account with a million, you know, hits or whatever followers. It's somebody named Grace Spellman on Instagram. And I think it's just some I think it's probably just this account holder taping their kid saying this.

I'm watching Cypher and I'm like, he does great of those. How can I do those if I'm going to be a comedian or a writer? I don't even know how to write. Or a storyteller. I don't even know how to do stories that funny. Only a Snow White one.

I love that. Only a Snow White one?

So I felt he does really good jokes, and I can't do that much jokes because nobody laughs at me.

I feel you.

And I need someone to tweet me. We need to copy him, so you need to print it off so I can do each word at a time. And I need to memorize that so I can do each word at a time. He does great of those. How can I do those if I'm going to be a comedian or a writer?

I think I made an ad. This is something that always bothered me. she's got a circular way of talking but also Instagram has a circular way of just looping audio and I think I made an edit mistake at the end I think I actually have her loop I think she

repeats herself at the end there that is so great I would love to find out where this young person has landed now you know what six seven eight years later if they are in fact writing for Seinfeld now I also find it so interesting that Seinfeld is who she picks because you know I I like everyone else was a big like most other people I was a big fan of the Seinfeld show when it was on I do think it kind of suffers a little bit um in the watching I don't mean that it's inappropriate I just don't think it's as funny as I thought it was when I was watching it you know for the first time like it's not something that I would be interested in going back and re-watching whereas like Arrested Development is still very very funny to me when I watch it Seinfeld stuff it's it's fine But it's a funny thing for a person of that age to be saying is funny. Do you think there'd be something a little bit more updated, a little bit more relevant? I mean, the whole thing about Seinfeld is that so many of the jokes only make sense when you get into adulthood. And you have a shirt that you're not sure if you can pull it off or not. Or you like to go to a place to get food, but the person running it is kind of rude. But the food is really good, so you just put up with it. These are adult ideas. it's surprising that this young person was was interesting yeah and it's interesting so as far

as that i see this was actually from i see it was posted in 2018 so i actually got it kind of a year late um and as far as like i i think rochelle said i hope that this wasn't like written out or instructed by the parents i'm watching the little girl there's no way it could have been

i really don't think so give that kid a flipping oscar yeah she's standing in the little and you

can tell she's like in her family's office or something there's like kind of it looks like where a printer would be which is probably why she's saying you need to print it off for me and like i almost hope i'm not blowing up this person's spot too much like this has you know about 2400 views it's like it's got like five comments and it looks like it's mostly from friends of the so and the seinfeld thing is probably just reflective of what's on in the house right like probably like sees the the adults in the house or whatever watching seinfeld and laughing at it and and so she's like it has to and and so anyway what i like about this is that it does seem very um kind of real and not fabricated just for you know content likes or whatever having said that i hope it's okay that we're um that our whole legion of listeners now

know where this lives online i wonder if the i wonder if the folks in question the the young person or the parents even know that this is being played on tbtl i would and if they find out can they give us a heads up i want to hear how i want to hear how the writing career the joke career is going for um for this this young uh young person and i also want to thank rochelle for supporting

the show and for reminding us of this the maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go everybody rattle dattle luke i'm gonna jump in here for a second if you don't mind

so i had to really jump in quick because i didn't want to interrupt you but regarding what we were just saying i don't know if this needs to be said or not but i think we should also maybe mention

to our listeners not to reach out to this person on Instagram. Would you agree with that behavior? The Instagram poster with the little girl talking about Seinfeld, I think it would be a little bit weird if they started getting a bunch of messages from our listeners saying, hey, you're...

I guess you're right, yeah. I don't know.

Maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe we should talk about this out there.

Should we invoke the everybody be cool protocols?

That's sort of how I feel, especially when you're talking about kids. I'll defer to you on this. I don't know. Whatever, we're putting it out there.

I mean, that may not be the last high-level interaction this show has with the youth of America, Andrew.

Yeah. Well, I see what you're going for there. Something to think about. Much to consider.

Much to consider here as we thank Rachel and Matt G. of Bellevue, Washington. We are longtime donors, but first-time dazzling donors. See a theme here? Rachel has been listening since the Cairo days, and Matt has been listening since he met Rachel in 2011. Hey, Rachel, nice work. Nice job converting Matt over. It's tough. With your new phase of the show, we really wanted to show our appreciation for all you do by upping our donation this year. Admittedly, we don't engage much with the show or the other listeners. Now, this has an asterisk, Andrew, and I don't know where that asterisk is going, but I have a feeling I will find out by the end of this message.

I was worried this morning as I was kind of skimming this, that we lost the asterisk, like that we didn't have whatever that referred to. And I was wondering if that was going to be trouble for us. But it looks like it will pay off now that I look more closely at this. So thank goodness.

We don't engage that much with the show or other listeners, asterisk. But Luke and Andrew and everyone in the TBTL universe feels like our friends. you've been with us through sad times happy times and are our companions on every road trip so thank you for always being there for us and for all the laughs and then here comes the asterisk note we did go to the 4000th episode and we sat right behind Nick Arms we sat right behind Nick Arms the perfect 10 he is such an awesome dude so also shout out to him for being great to chat with and maybe we should engage with other listeners more Nick is a as an absolute sweetheart so I can I understand how Rachel and Matt got this opinion also shout out to him for being great to chat with and maybe we should engage okay I read this part also very curious about our Rachel and Matt doppelgangers in Denver maybe we'll meet them at a future show now this did they have they have doppelgangers there's just other people named Rachel and Matt or are these people who look like Rachel and Matt I'm I'm thinking I have to admit I'm not fully tracking on this story. I'm sure it's something that we talked about probably on stage and then now it's like whiffed

out of my brain. I'll bet you we didn't talk about it. I think we probably thank another set of donors named Rachel and Matt. Well, I know we've got a Rachel in Denver. Right, in Broomfield who I think we thanked. We met Rachel in Denver and I think Broomfield I'm guessing Broomfield is just right outside Denver so I don't know if that's the same one but my guess is this Rachel and Matt has heard reference to other Rachel and Matt's and are just kind of wondering, hey, are we two sides of the same coin here?

Kind of like Google Gangers. Yes. Which famously, I'll mention that the other Luke Burbank didn't want to be on TBTL and is now my sworn enemy. There's something very cinematic about that, honestly. That many years ago when we were still a radio show and we heard about this phenomenon of Google Gangers where you find someone that has your exact same name and then you reach out to them and chat with them or correspond in some way. And we thought what a fun bit for the show And then we found the other Luke Burbank There's a few of them But there was a guy who was the head of the Missouri Cattle Association Or something named Luke Burbank Who I'm oft confused with In my Bonvoy account When I'm checking into a hotel And he wanted no part of the show Which I think is really funny and weird I don't want to make too many assumptions And who knows Maybe it was a misunderstanding Or maybe it was like oh I'm busy that day I took it to be a very uh a pretty big rebuke what's the word i'm looking for a big kind of rebuke from someone

with my name and now i must destroy them yeah and do you remember when we had this is such a strange thing and i think we actually did have them both on remember a a younger person approached me online and said hey man you like to fly i got something that wait no that's a different story but somebody said hey are you my old teacher Andrew Walsh and I said no but then I think the hive mind found the teacher that this kid was looking for and we had the student and the teacher reunite on TBTL

honestly some really good content

yeah it really was

because this person really remembered their teacher Andrew Walsh really fondly and had never been able to find them and that's how they if I remember right I don't think that person was a TBTL listener They do.

just found you online yes exactly and just said hey i'm reaching out to andrew walsh's because i'm looking for my old teacher um and then yeah that's why i was trying to as i was telling that story i couldn't remember if we hoped to get them both on at the same time but i think we delivered we had them both on we did promises made promises kept boy we used to do cool stuff we should get

back to that thanks to our dazzling donors i just want to thank our dazzling donors for making this all possible Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, Andrew, I got back to town, and by town I mean where I live in between a number of small towns in southern Washington. And it was Saturday, and I'd had a productive Friday of content creation in Seattle, including our chat with listener Sierra, which is part of the Week in Review video. video that's now gone out to the internet that was really a whole was it was a it was a fun it was a fun let's say active day for me in the content creation space you're in kow you're on tbtl you did a video you did live wire at night all of that did went to a reception after live wire it was a it was a lot but but so I was all the more excited to get home on Saturday and and kind of have all of that stuff, you know, handled and in the rear view mirror, and critically to watch my maddening but beloved Seattle Mariners baseball team. Now, the issue that I'd had on the previous Thursday was I was trying to give the Comcast Corporation by way of Xfinity more of my money so that I could watch these baseball games, even though there's very, very little on cable TV i care about or want to watch there are basically two channels that i want i want msnbc and i want root sports and i have to now get the highest order of stupid xfinity cable packages just to get the root sports they know this they know that it's a for the people that care it's a big tune-in factor uh and then and so they're they're leveraging that and i just say what it was cost

too because we looked it up it was so to it's an extra 19 a month to get this higher level package and that's on top of whatever you're already paying and as a former comcast subscriber myself you're probably already paying quite a bit and this would add like another what 240 bucks a year

or something to watch mariners games i can tell you this is from memory but i can tell you that i think the new bill for me to go up to this mega package of 185 plus channels between the cable television and my internet which both come from this unholy company I think the total bill is now something in the neighborhood of 220 dollars a month maybe more a little bit more that's what the new total will be. And I don't like any part of that. But as I have said so many times on the program, I like the idea of when I'm, you know, living my life and doing my thing and grilling up my veggie dogs as I was all excited to do on Saturday night. You know me, I'm very like I kind of create these little moments in my mind that are going to be so great for me. And then I like every little part of that moment to be just how I want it. And so anyway, I just like to be able turn on the TV and watch the thing. I don't want to have to jump through a bunch of hoops. I don't want to have to snag it from the internet somewhere. I just want to point my remote control at the TV and turn it on. So it was Saturday, and I thought, well, okay, I'm sure that the hullabaloo has died down on the Xfinity website. So now I can go. Because, by the way, you can't call a human being, as you well know, Andrew. Even in the sales department, they are constantly trying to shunt you to chat Or to the website They do everything in their power To keep you from talking to a human Even to sell you more of their bullshit

Well it's a pandemic

Yes exactly We're experiencing a higher than usual volume of calls Of people physically threatening us Of people screaming F you robot Give me a human So I go online Saturday I go to the thing I have to log back into my account which is a nightmare because it's already forgotten the, like, ridiculous password that it generated for me on Thursday of a bunch of, you know, nonsensical symbols. It's my computer or the Xfinity site or whatever. Somehow we've already lost that in translation, so I've got to, like, do a new password generation just to get in. It's very dual, very multi-factor authenticated, which, you know, people that know from web security will explain to me why it matters that Xfinity is. I think the idea of someone breaking into my Xfinity account to order cable that I didn't want, it seems like a low. a low thing but I don't know I mean that did happen to Becca honestly not they didn't break into her account but somebody subscribed to cable in Illinois and then didn't pay the bill and they did it under her name or they had the same name and then she was sent to a collection agency over and it was it was madness I mean let's just continue piling on this company it was so insane for her it took months of her life to try to get this taken off of her credit even though she could clearly demonstrate she never lived in illinois this was not her you know she was paying for the service at her place in portland at the same like it was so provable that this was not her but it just you know took forever but all that is was it a

was it a mistake or was it identity thievery i think it was identity thievery i think it was

Somebody thieved her identity And signed up Under her name for this thing And then what they were doing I think was Putting a lot They were ordering tons and tons of On demand programming And running up this Crazy bill because they knew that at some point This account was going to get Shut down because they weren't going to pay the bill But before it got shut down they were going to Order every pay per view movie on the face of the earth Which is ironic because I don't know The last time Becca looked at a television You'll find her doing the New York Times crossword puzzle With a mug of tea Before you'll find her ordering Fast and the Furious 9 But all that is to say I get on the internet I get a new password generated I log in And it is hurting me Andrew It's physically hurting me to click On this expensive package And then it goes to my shopping cart And then click on the account And then buy it So I do it though Because I'm really excited to watch the game

Can I ask you a question? How close to game time are you doing this transaction? Is it a couple of hours before? Is it like 7 o'clock for a 7-10 game?

It's like two hours before. So let's say it's like 4 or 5 and the game's on at like 7 o'clock.

Okay, so you don't have a ticking clock.

It's not super duper like happening right now. So I click on it and it actually lets me, by the way, lets me do this process, which confirms my suspicion that on Thursday the issue was there was thousands of people at the website trying to do this. Oh, most definitely, yeah. Which infuriates me additionally, because it's like you're going to take advantage of us in this way, Comcast, and you're not even going to build in the capacity to take advantage of us. That's just somehow especially infuriating. So, Andrew, I hit go on this thing. I bite the bullet. I agree to spend all the money on this, all the extra money. I hit in the cart, which works. I hit buy. I buy it. and then I get a message. Thank you for, and I'm paraphrasing here, but effectively it says, thank you for changing your subscription package. We'll let you know with an email when we've accepted your change. So guess what happened on Saturday night when I tried to watch the baseball game? Same error screen. You need to upgrade your account To get this Go to xfinity.com The place of course I'd just been I thought well okay maybe this just takes a little while To cycle through their system Nope All night on Saturday no game on television Sunday Sunday Sunday I turn on I'm like okay The automated system now it's been 20 hours it's been 18 hours Okay it will have kicked in by now Sunday turn on the television at 1.30 to watch the game or whatever same thing this morning andrew before i came out just just out of curiosity it's now uh at that point it was 9 30 a.m west coast 12 30 it's the afternoon on the east coast turn on the television go to root sports still getting the same message i have now by but what i can tell i'm i'm assuming that i've now been paying for this upgraded cable for like what almost two days a saturday night a full sunday and a monday morning and i've had zero access to root sports even though i paid for it they basically sent me an email saying thank you for getting on a waiting list to be so lucky as to accept this overpriced content of a team that's averaging 1.4 runs per game thank you for uh we'll let you know if we have decided that you are worthy of being allowed to view this content that's the gist of what they sent me and as of today as of press time andrew i am still being deemed unworthy that is ridiculous and adds fuel

to the fire um i love i love the fact that they sent you an email that just said thank you for the money i'm looking for that drop now and i can't find it but they did it their favorite

It was a message on the screen That's the problem In other words, it wasn't even It wasn't even like they sent me an email yet They just showed me on my On my screen of my Xfinity account Hey, thanks for trying We'll let you know, don't call us, we'll call you And what I've been waiting for, by the way That was my Bill Maher, new rule New rule, cable companies Stop being jerks Yeah, they I'm waiting, I'm like i'm i'm like you know it's like i met someone and i'm wondering if they're going to message me back but that someone is a soulless behemoth company that already has my money that i'm hoping that they'll email me back to say we'll allow you to watch the mariners cleveland guardians game tonight

now you're not in the room now where the tv is right i was going to say i'd love to if you could turn it on and see if you could um watch it right now but that's in the that's in the house right and you're out in your studio right now.

Do we have, does Riverside have a mechanism for me to call in?

Call into TBTL?

Yeah. Can I call into TBTL and then walk into the house and then try to turn it on and see what's happening, what's doing?

I guess we could do a speakerphone situation. You're also putting on speakerphone? Is that worth it? Let's try this. I do have, wait, can I ask you a question first before we do this? Because I don't know, because I have, actually, I did want to talk about this a little bit, and if we put you on speakerphone and that ends up, if I don't get you back into the studio, I want to make sure that we get a couple of things out here. I am curious if – now this is – I just leave. I just go out for a pack of smokes. Honestly, I've been hurt. I've been hurt before. You know, I'm curious, and I know this doesn't solve your problem, so just I want that acknowledged, but I do wonder if you tried to watch the games online through Xfinity now, if you would legally have access to it. It's just that it's not coming through your cable at this point. It still doesn't solve your problem because your whole thing is you don't want to watch them on the computer or plug a computer.

Well, I don't want to have the cable management. You know what I ended up doing on Saturday night?

No, that's my next question.

I busted out my projector, my Epson short throw projector that I got some time ago that my dad and I were watching various BBC programming on for the first few months here. and i hooked my lappy toppy up to it and i went to a website that may or may not be streaming the games on the fully legal front and i projected the game onto a wall in my living room and you

know what i did andrew i grilled up and you projected it using what though using one of those gray projector no yeah no i mean but you just like found the game online using some of the mechanisms that i use which are um let's just say the exact mechanism through the cracks yes hey

which by the way knock wood it's been it's been working it's been delivering better than the mariners hitters yeah i know the last few games and i ended up setting this projector up on my table and and projecting onto a side wall in the living room and you know what it allowed me to do So I sat out on my deck and I ate one of my beyond meat Italian sausage thingies and diced up a bunch of onions. And I sat there and this was the game, by the way, the Mariners won in the 10th inning. And I watched the game and it was blissful. It was so much fun. And then my thought was, can I get this? Can I claw this back? Do I just maybe this is just how I watch baseball this summer. Or maybe I don't give these bastard people my money, which they don't seem to even want to accept anyway. And I just like, this is just what I do. Now, the problem is, like, you know, there's a certain amount of cable management and cord management. There's HDMI stuff. There's, you know, like, it's not a clean. The other problem, and this is so you want to talk about first world problems. I have a fantasy, Andrew, that I will, when this kitchen, this little kitchen I put in is done, I will be able to prepare my meals and also do the dishes whilst watching the Mariners. And I know it's just like, oh my God, what a life, right? But like, so where the TV is placed, so my little house, which is very, very small, I can't overstate that. When you and Veves come and visit, you'll be like, this is what all the talk has been about. Okay. But like, it's teeny tiny. And so there's a little kitchen area and then there's like the living room area and they're quite close together. And right now the TV is oriented so that that fantasy moment can unfold of me washing dishes and watching Chris Hayes. If I were to do the projection, it's on a different wall. The whole fantasy falls apart. I cannot wash the dishes or chop up the onions for my hot dog experience and watch the game. So that would be a major disincentive to this. But otherwise, I'm like, I'm starting to really think like if I can solve for this, could I?

this be a W for me? Could this save me, you know, $240 a year and critically deprive Comcast of the satisfaction of, of getting more of my money for this service? That's so annoying. So again, I know

that we're up against a bit of a time constraint and we are going to, I think maybe for the email section, we'll, we'll, we'll go to calls and the call will be from you. So I don't want to extend this too much but i was thinking about this a lot this weekend obviously because i also watched a couple of the games um using you know the these links that you can find online that are again like i i don't think it's illegal for me to be watching these but certainly if comcast or if uh the mariners or root sports was able to tamp down on these uh on these extracurricular feeds out there which I imagine they will do like is what they're doing is they are squeezing the fans more and more right by making by putting it in this higher tier or whatever. And then this weekend I was like, you know what? Maybe I am being immature. Like how much is this Fubo TV? That's the one thing you can because I don't have cable, but I'm like, OK, I have a smart TV and it is a pretty integrated experience. Like it's really something I turn on my TV. Sometimes I see it suggesting to me a hey dummies video with you on it. And sometimes it's suggesting, you know, literally the burbs, you know, a movie or whatever. And so, like, even though I don't have cable, I have a pretty seamless TV experience, except for when I need to watch a baseball game because I need to, like, kind of get that up on my laptop, then plug my laptop into the TV. Or, I mean, for me, in my kitchen, I don't mind just having the laptop on the counter while I'm cooking or whatever and watching the game there.

Well, that's the thing. It's enough. Like, the laptop, the size of the laptop screen is bigger than any television I grew up with.

Yeah, right, right.

It's sufficient for the knowing what's happening with the Mariners. Like, it's just, I've got this fantasy that I've created.

Right, but so anyway, so I look up Fubo, I'm like, you know what, maybe I should just, for all of my complaining and everything, what is it, FuboTV is, and that's like the only way that you can kind of have an app that'll play the game kind of legally for you. I'm like, what is it, gonna be 40 bucks a month? Maybe I just sign up for six months for the season and then cancel it or whatever. No, like, that's $80 a month, And I'm just like $80 a month to watch. And I just start thinking like they're making it harder and harder and more cost prohibitive to watch, you know, a game that they are there. The league is constantly complaining about not being able to attract people to the game. They they're losing viewers. They're losing fans. It's not young enough, but they're making it so cost prohibitive unless you find these these, you know, less than legal ways, I guess, of finding the games online. And I know that the next thing they're going to do with their money is tamp down on that. I know they're going to crack down on these feeds. And I was literally this weekend and kind of imagining having a conversation with you about this, like, what will my if I'm right about this, if there's no if they don't give at all on the cost of watching baseball on television and they do start cracking down on these other feeds, like, where is that going to leave me? Like baseball brings me so much happiness, not the business of baseball, baseball in the business of baseball. Obviously, that's got us infuriated and not necessarily the team's output or offense. That's got me infuriated. Yeah. And not the pitching that I saw on Sunday by techs, by big techs, Bryce Miller. That didn't get me excited. But generally, generally speaking, baseball, I think, brings me happiness now that I'm thinking about this. Yeah, well, the Akron groomsmen being in first place on this Monday morning brings you happiness. Exactly. So anyway, for whatever reason, baseball does bring me a lot of joy and opening day and sharing that almost national holiday with all of my friends who also like baseball. There's something special about it that is relatively new in my in my life as an adult. So I don't want to give that up, but I really was thinking, like, if I lose these streams and I'm not willing to pay $240 or even $80 a month to watch baseball, like, do I become somebody who literally only listens to the games? I listen to a lot of games while I'm mowing the lawn and puttering anyway, but still, there's something like, especially the early games, I don't know what Jorge Polanco even looked like until I turned on the game on Thursday. and like you need to sort of like I like to start to be able to envision the players a little bit and then when you transfer over to listening on the radio you can picture their faces you can picture their stances or whatever so I don't know I just sort of I thought sort of future trip just thinking like I don't know will I be able to be a baseball fan in 10 years will I only listen on the radio will I have a chip implanted in me that streams the games directly into my frontal lobe I have no idea but it's definitely dire out there and it's like really infuriating because you and i are having this conversation we're infuriated but we can afford it we're pissed about it but we can afford it you're paying for it i'm finding ways around it but could pay for it if i wanted

to but there are so many fans who can't do i just think of young people who are like fresh out of school like how are you ever gonna afford

to just watch baseball games no wonder you're losing your audience and it's also i mean i'll tell you maybe seattle is different but in portland nobody has the game on tv at the bars because they have to pay an even more exorbitant package to have it and so all of this like it you really it does seem and i know that the mariners will tell you it's comcast's fault and comcast will tell you it's the mariners fault or root sports's fault but like it is a again i'm In a city that doesn't have a super strong Mariners, in fact, I got an email From listener Zach Jost, who was like It's really frustrating, he's a huge baseball Fan, and he was saying how Like, it's frustrating because He and his family live down here in Portland And that it's, you know Portland is considered a local market Which is hilarious Because you can't find two Mariners Fans to rub together, and by the way, if you do find them Don't ask them to rub together, you don't know their relationship looks like but like there it's not a mariners town and part of it is because you they're like zero bars playing the mariners game because it's so expensive and not enough people are asking about it's not worth it for the place so it's just this kind of like dimming of the signal at the same time like you said andrew that there's all this hand wringing about like why is the sport not more popular what we really have to do is like put a zombie runner on or like The problem is the games are too long. Well, yeah, but also the problem is no one can see the games anymore. Yeah. Like, that seems to be a really critical issue to the whole thing.

And just to throw one more log on the fire, too, like you mentioned, bars. Here in Seattle, you can catch games a little bit easier in bars around here. But you're right. It's not just like, oh, they can pay whatever you pay, the $224 or $240 a month. No, no. If you're a bar and you're showing the games, then you've got to pay something that is even more exorbitant. And then Major League Baseball will be like, oh, you were hoping to have a bunch of people at your bar on Friday to watch a Mariners game. Sorry, it's on Apple TV. And then they black it out. And so the bars would then have to find it on Apple TV, which is – and it's just like – or it's just like exclusively on Facebook is something they were doing. It's like they're just – even if you finally give up and pay everything, here's all of my treasure. Here's all of my treasure. They're like, yeah, but just so you know, this one we're going to put behind a paywall on Apple TV.

This one is only going to be on Truth Social.

Right, exactly. And you can re-truth it if you want to.

Kurt Schilling will be doing the play-by-play on Truth Social.

Oh, gross.

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.

By the way, one email-related thing, which is I mentioned I heard from listener Zach about his frustration around all of the broadcasts. I've also listened to Tracy reached out to say, it's almost equally bad if you're a Kraken fan right now.

Oh, yeah, right.

Because she, you know, ponied up for that Root Sports stuff so she could watch her beloved Kraken. And same exact thing. Like, you just never know when you're going to turn this thing on and they're going to tell you that for whatever reason, this particular game is not available on this thing you're paying all the money for because they've also sold their birthright to some other streaming situation and are now going to make you go over to that other place and very likely pay money over at that other place. It's just dirty. It's all around. And we're going to find out just how dirty it is, Andrew, here when I voyage into my little house here to see if, in fact, Root Sports has kicked on. And I'm going to start by calling you. Okay. Tell me if you...

I was trying so hard in this past minute. I was trying so hard to download a funny ringtone, but I guess we'll just go with this one. I want it to be like cream by the Wu-Tang.

Am I going to go to your voicemail, though? You better answer.

No, here we go. I think I got you here. You got to kill your microphone. Let me see here. Luke, can you hear me okay on the phone?

Okay, I hear you. Hold on. Okay, I've got you. Are you hearing me on the cell phone?

I can hear you on the cell phone. Roger that. So you're going to go into your house now. Okay.

I am. I'm leaving. Oh, okay. Got some mail. i wonder what the uh post what my mail person what she thinks of whatever it is i'm doing in the studio because she's now taken to dropping like if i get a book in the mail or some slightly larger package from usps she now just puts it right on the door of the studio which is glass so she could see me in there i wonder if she just thinks that i'm i don't know some really aggressive zoom person okay i'm now in she probably thinks you have a podcast i mean you know that's probably the most likely explanation she's probably aware okay andrew so here we are i'm standing in the living room i'm turning on my television it does this weird thing too where it defaults to espn so can you hear that espn in the background every time you turn on the tv it

starts at espn Thank you. When it has been, I'm muting it now, when it's been on Root Sports and I'm getting the error message, the next time I turn the TV on, it's moved one click down to ESPN. And what that means is every time I turn the TV on, I think, oh, it's working. And I realize, no, it's just giving me ESPN, which I already had. Okay, so now here's what we're going to do. I'm going to try to go up to Root Sports, which right now is allegedly showing NHL hockey, the Dallas Stars against the Kraken. And I've clicked, oh, this requires a subscription. To watch this program, you'll need to subscribe to this channel. Go to xfinity.com slash go f*** yourself. I'm trying to make this a family show.

This is a clean show now, Luke, don't you know?

We'll bleep that out. No, I am still I am still waiting for the Comcast Corporation to allow me to watch this. And again, it's the kind of thing that 100 years ago, 100 years ago, we're not even here. This is stolen land. But OK, 10, five years ago, I just call up the cable company and I go, hey, I signed up for this thing. Can you like can you, you know, click on whatever activation thing you need to click on? but i can't even do that right now because nobody answers the phone at this place it's rotten it's rotten all the way through unless i want to unless i want to like invest i'd rather invest many hours of complaining about it to you on the program because it's obviously great content but unless i want to block out a couple of hours of my afternoon to just like chop my way machete my way through the forest of not getting a human on the line i don't really know what the resolution of this is like how is it that i have signed up for the thing and they don't have some automatic system that just approves it that i am still waiting for them to allow me i'm coming back into the studio by the way yeah how am i that's what dad said to allow me to to to watch this content i don't even know um you missed a hilarious joke by me i said that's

what dad said um and um also all right i'm back i'm back okay you're back so i hang up the phone now okay you already hung up on me yeah it is uh i mean it's been two full days now that's what i was gonna say it's been i mean if you let's just say that you signed up at about four o'clock on friday well it's about noon on monday now so we're four hours away from this being a full two day delay in getting the service that you paid for hands and the big question will be

uh the big question will be uh was i paying for that like that's what i wanted when did the clock when does the clock start ticking and you know me generally speaking this is not something that i would um worry about overly in fact i should worry about it more but i probably wouldn't really note what was the literal hour that i started getting charged the extra amount but in this particular situation i really want to know that detail because if i've even been paying for one minute of this content that I haven't had access to, I'm going to be, in your words, ripshit.

That reminds me, a little forward promo maybe for tomorrow if you're interested in this, but I have reason to believe that my garbage collector is mad at me. Maybe. I'm very interested. Maybe. We need to explore the evidence that led me to think this, and you might just tell me that I'm off my nut.

This is great. Honestly, Andrew, between my battles with Xfinity and yours with the garbage collection, we're never going to run out of shows we're never going to run out of content

and I want to say my garbage collection mostly has been good I don't feel like I'm at war with my garbage collectors, I want to be their friend I gave one of them sort of a little tip of the hat, I wasn't wearing a hat but kind of one of those little gestures with my two fingers off my forehead

can we get you a The Walsh hat?

The Walsh, so yeah I'm not mad about anything but I'm worried that they might be mad at me, I can explain more tomorrow if you want

Great. I'm looking forward to that. I really am, actually, which is weird to say, probably. No, I mean, I'm genuinely, like, I'm intrigued in a way that I want to just, like, go after the show. Like, hey, so what happened? But I'll wait until tomorrow. Like everyone else, I'll have to find out tomorrow. That's right.

You don't get any freebies, Luke.

All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves. Go Mariners. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to you all. The most rewarding part was when he gave me my money. Power out.