Muse

Wouldn't it be weird if you died, and you woke up, and you were in heaven? Just like they always told you. Wouldn't you feel stupid?

There were pearly gates, you know, and St. Peter, and everybody had wings on, there were angels. Wouldn't you go, oh no, oh no, I feel like an idiot.

No, in college they said this was all bullshit. I wasn't so bad, though, was I? I mean, how many times did I take the Lord's name in vain? Ooh, a million six. Jesus Christ, I didn't think that.

TBTL.

Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is. It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

It's called Dissing Your Dog. How to Train Your Puppy with Mockery and Verbal Humiliation. He might be a little fat. He might be a little drunk. But, okay, he can sometimes yell at us a little. But he's the last superhero in the world. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is a whole new level of nerd.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tvtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live it's a waste of time to do that my name is luke burbank i am your host everyone's got a podcast coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where uh oh yeah oh yeah blue skies are here my friends it's just

It's beautiful.

It's a little cloudy, even a little rainy early this morning, but now the nice weather is here, and it's going to be a spectacular Friday. It's a special Friday, too, because we're in the homestretch of I Think You Should Leaf TBTL Plant Advice with listener Karen.

I'd like to grow a pair sometime.

Also known as I'd Like to Grow a Pair Week, so get on over to Instagram to take a look at that. We're going to find out more about if you can still get your questions in or not coming up. Oh, by the way, it's episode 4,183 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

So, Shohei Otani, the pitcher for the Dodgers. I should say the hitter for the Dodgers. I don't think, I just found out from Andrew he doesn't pitch anymore. The hitter for the Dodgers. It has, well, the police or the FBI or somebody who's been looking into this whole situation with his translator. uh gambling they've now released kind of their thoughts on the whole matter about the money that they say was taken by this uh interpreter or translator i gotta figure out how to make money on this thing it's simply too good and the story is just even more wild than i thought although i will say i i need to walk some stuff back i think from when we initially talked about this uh piece of news so we will uh do that coming up also uh time permitting we'll get to um these skies that ended up on an island australia is a wonderful island they were stranded but they figured out how to get off of the stranded island it's a it's just i don't know it's it's news you can use it's a life hack it buddy in case you ever find yourself stuck i'm looking at a couple of islands here on the mighty columbia one called cottonwood that i think it's just made out of dredged silt they've got to come through and like dredge out the columbia river every year or so to make sure it's deep enough for these giant, giant ships to get through. And then they have to put that silt or whatever sediment somewhere and they make these islands. I think if I was stuck on one of these islands, I could swim off. But I could also do what these people did in Micronesia. We'll get into that. Again, time permitting. It's a Friday. Things tend to get away from us. They never get away from this guy, though.

Carol, hold my calls.

He's the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh. She's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I am trying very hard as your friend and colleague to not be offended this morning. Okay. I sent you a text message last night. You did? No, no, I'm sorry. I sent you an email. I communicated with you via some sort of written word last night. It might have been something that I gave to a raven. I'm not entirely sure, but I sent you a note that said, And, hey, a couple of thoughts on the show sheet for tomorrow. Number one, let's not forget to talk about Plant Week. You know, today is the last day of Plant Week. And also I have some thoughts on Crocodile Dundee. And then I wake up this morning and I –

I didn't read the whole message apparently. I just saw Plant Week. I put it on the show sheet as requested.

I know. I just say, you know, it's kind of like when you say, hey, these two things should be in the show sheet and then one of them appears, it feels like rejection for the other idea. It seems like you were totally, without even knowing what my thoughts on Crocodile Dundee are, just saying it's not show worthy. That's how I woke up this morning, saw your show sheet, and that's where you're meeting me right now. A little bit hurt, a little bit licking my wounds, but wanting to have a good attitude

for the show today and you know have a good laugh time with you well let me just re uh let me just re-rack this drop australia is a wonderful island what would you like to say about crocodile dundee

oh thanks oh what a nice thing to ask i was at a um now i don't want to talk about it of course i uh so last night i had to i had to uh get out of dodge a little bit because genevieve was having some folks over she's i think i've mentioned this on the show before she's uh she's kind of got a food club it's like a food country club or a country food club is a better way of saying it she and a group of friends of the world foods of the world but they started with the very first country in the alphabet whatever that is i don't remember i'm sure it started with the letter a or maybe negative a uh and you know and they're going alphabetically what are they god what is the cuisine from negative a i think my blood type is negative a honestly um so anyway they started with the a's and now i think yesterday was croatia so they're into the seas but anyway so it's kind of i i could have stuck around i'm sure but like i i don't usually attend these things it's a rotating you know it's a group of i don't know five to ten people or something and they have dinners at each other's houses might be yeah that makes sense wait no no no no no no algeria

afghanistan albania there's a lot of what countries that start with a the number one country is argentina i have we mentioned search is terrible now yeah right well also like how are

they ranking that yeah we know that i think afghanistan oh af yep that would be afghanistan

albania algeria and dora angola there's no way they're on sea apparently they are yeah it's been going on for years oh for years okay i thought that they just started this no they just started

last week and they're on Croatia no they've been doing it for a long time pre-pandemic pre-pandemic I think I'm not sure so it's been going on for a while

I wonder what they made from I wonder what they made from Comoros I wonder what the region of

I mean I can get Genevieve I mean this was really supposed to be about me and my journey with Crocodile.v but if you want me to get Genevieve in here the listeners will enjoy that more

I know they'll enjoy it too much and I don't want to enjoy it too much

Yeah, we don't have time to put together a good show today. Let Andrew just waste some time with some Crocodile Dundee scribbles from his notebook. Okay, so I feel like I saw the movie Crocodile Dundee when I was a child, right? And I don't think I've ever seen it since. I probably saw it when it was a relatively new movie on VHS. Yesterday, I needed to get out of the house because Genevieve was having this little dinner party thing. And so I did something I have not done in a long time, which is I just got on a bus, took it to Big Mario's Pizza, which is a kind of a smallish bar. The one I go to is in kind of the the Fremont area. And they are always playing movies on VHS tape and they always have the subtitles on. So I am happy to go in there and like literally not just not stare at my phone, but just sit there and watch the TV. I realize I might have looked like a bit of a goon. there are other people and they're kind of socializing or people by themselves are just like looking at their phones i'm just there like literally staring at the tv like like i'm a child and it's movie night um and they started with blade i watched the end of blade i'm not into those kinds of like action and monstery movies so i didn't really know what was going on snipes right i believe it's wesley snipes yeah i can tell you what happens well at least i can't tell you what happens at the end it seemed very complicated but uh anyway so then i'm i get a slice of pizza and I'm waiting to see what they put on next, and they put on Crocodile Dundee. Now, this is great. I like watching old movies there from that period, and I'm seeing it from the beginning, a movie I don't know too much about. I know that it starts in Australia, and then it comes to the United States. And by the way, my first note here is it starts in Darwin, Luke. That's a place where you and I have been, and so that was just to see the chyron say Darwin. It's sort of exciting. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's my best friend, Darwin. Okay, good, because I've been there before.

That's in the northern, northern, northern bit of Australia. Exactly. That was when we got to the end of our journey, and then we jumped on a flight. And it was so great being in Darwin because we had been in the absolute middle of nowhere. And then to be in a real city with restaurants and big hotels and things, it just felt impossibly convenient, I think. They just had everything under the sun that we could need.

it also seemed like a little city built in paradise because i remember like i would walk out of the hotel and the area was like kind of nice but it was like oh there's a bank right there some sort of like institutional building like that but in the little lawn were the most brightly colored exotic looking little birds yeah i'm like we're in darwin australia yes i still say one of these days if i ever make it back i want to take genevieve to darwin i think she'd be pretty um pretty uh i'm planning on taking excited about the wild life becca to coober pedy what about alice springs alice springs alice doesn't springs here anymore no so anyway first of all i am watching this and i didn't realize how much of the beginning takes place in australia and then i started asking myself why does he come to the united states great question order well here a question that seems answerable except like i'm watching it i'm watching it and so there's like a reporter from newsday by the way okay last from the past newsday yeah they're able to just send a

reporter to yes right the northern most parts of australia the number one the number one paper on

long island yeah right to do a to do a profile they she was there covering something else and then she saw this crocodile guy and she convinces her editor slash lover to do a profile on him and so that's how the kind of action begins she goes up to the bush she meets him they go on some adventures but the whole time i'm like i'm i kind of have to pee more and more as i'm sitting there at the bar and i'm like i just want to know why he comes to america why does he come to america i can't take it anymore i get up i use the restroom i come back and the plane is taking off and he's on his way to america i still don't know why paul you couldn't have held d hogan i i was holding it it was one of those things where i was like well it's got to be now well it's got to be now it's like no now they're now she's got a crocodile bite now that i'm just like okay i'll go the back and i did it so quickly luke and i come back and it was just so so anyway i still don't know the plot but and this is the main thing that i think i want to talk to you about and now in the morning i wonder if this is a cliche argument that other people have talked about before maybe there are internet chat rooms where people are as angry as me about this but there is a famous scene in this movie luke when they're still in australia and it's crocodile dundee and it's the reporter and crocodile dundee's like elder or like somewhat older like business partner guy he's a famous actor. I think you'd recognize him. They're driving along in this Jeep like vehicle on this very, very narrow road or path through the jungle. Right. And then there's a water buffalo blocking their way. Do you remember this scene? It's an angry looking water buffalo. It's just like the Matthew McConaughey commercial for Lincoln. Remember? Yeah. It's just like that. Only this water buffalo is like staring them straight ahead and kind of looking angry and kind of snorting and maybe even doing that thing where it's sort of pawing the ground with its hoof. I don't know if it was doing that or not. But it was an intimidating scene. But this is where we first see the true magic of Crocodile Dundee. He gets out of the Jeep while the reporter is, I mean, she's not just impressed. I think she is becoming – Catching feelings? I think she's catching feelings.

She caught a flight and now she's catching feelings. That's right.

And so anyway, he gets out and he confronts this – it's a very famous scene. And once I saw it, I'm like, I kind of remember this. He puts his, he almost makes like a hang loose symbol with his pinky and thumb out. Sure, I do remember this. And he's sort of like, he kind of hypnotizes. And he kind of hypnotizes it, kind of mesmerizes it, hypnotizes it. And then this angry water buffalo slowly calms down and then just falls asleep right in the middle of the road. That didn't solve any problems. How do they get around it? And then I'm like, okay, well, now you have a sleeping water buffalo blocking the road. now he's going to be still can't get around it now it's going to be grumpy and then i'm like well how are you going to get out of this now they just cut scenes it's like he he makes the water buffalo fall asleep the water buffalo falls asleep and then the the film just cuts ahead to another part of their journey he's in a subway walking on people's shoulders yeah right he's saying he's saying you call that a spoon um they i just don't understand what's going on with that scene how did he solve any problem i mean i understand that he at least calmed it down if this water buffalo presented any kind of threat to him and his companions then i understand a sleeping water buffalo might be better than an awake one but you still can't get around it it's still blocking the entire road in the bush i don't and the movie apparently didn't have an answer to

this either they just cut to another scene i promise you there was a scene that they filmed where they have to drive i assume they're in a land rover of some kind or some sort of vehicle that's you know for for being in the in the in the bush in the outback I bet you there was a scene where they go around the water buffalo but it was cut because it just felt like we get it like I'm sure that they shot the scene and then somebody who edited this was like going through and just lost that scene just cut that scene it's just to get to the next thing and I think that's happens a lot in movies i bet you they filmed something though i doubt it because i think that

they liked this scene as sort of a benchmark scene of like showing how and i think that that's as far as they thought it through because like just even physically i mean the way it was shot like it just there was no i mean unless you're thinking there was some scene where they like drag it off the road or something like that which i kind of doubt but like the way it was shot like it didn't present an opportunity to even go around or how it would be it was just like this this you know this two rutted two tire ruts through a bunch of dense trees gotcha gotcha like okay i don't even think i film i don't even think a script writer would be like well and then they uh find a way to go around i think that they were just like no this is gonna be amazing he's gonna get out of the truck he's gonna like and there's gonna be this moment where she sees him not as just this oddity but as a super super sexy oddity and she oh that's the other thing verisimilitude drives you crazy in movies i'm a little bit more relaxed about it except for it's about things i know a little bit about and i don't know much about much but i know a little bit about a couple of things i'll tell you like a 50 millimeter lens on the little camera that she was using inside the car through the windshield while he's outside she did not get any good photos all of the photos have a windshield wiper and a and a sun visor in them and there's probably glare i mean it's just ridiculous well

it turns out her dad owns newsday by the way this is the character okay sue charlton feature writer for her father's newspaper, Newsday. And she's dating editor Richard Mason, who you've already mentioned. They don't mention the water buffalo. Actually, they do. Let's see. She is later amazed when in the Outback she witnesses Mick, as Dundee is called, subduing a water buffalo, taking part in an aboriginal tribal dance ceremony. I'm sure there's no way in the world that scene looks bad 40 years later.

Oh there's a lot of problematic stuff in here too

Killing a snake with his bare hands And scaring away the kangaroo shooters By tricking them into thinking One of the kangaroos is shooting back This would be foreshadowing For the movie Kangaroo Jack Starring Anthony King Where I believe a kangaroo Has a bunch of money or something It is running around

I did not remember that at one point Because he doesn't care that these rough houses Are coming into the woods Killing a bunch of kangaroos But the woman from Newsday does And so he's like, fine, I'll scare him away And so he takes one of the dead kangaroos Hides behind it, props a gun in the kangaroo's hands And starts shooting at these drunken outlaws And they think a kangaroo is shooting at them I gotta say, having not remembered that scene I found it effective I think I was, again, at this point I'm like three beers in And I'm sitting at the bar by myself Wrapped with attention on a silent TV while Desmond Decker is playing on the hi-fi in the bar, and I'm just like laughing out loud.

God, that sounds like an amazing Thursday. I was working.

It was great.

Although, you know what's crazy? Last night I was doing LiveWire down at the Alberta Rose, and I made a Crocodile Dundee reference on stage that went over like a lead balloon. How is it that we were both experiencing in some way Crocodile Dundee-related content? I was creating it. You were consuming it. uh yours sounds like a more enjoyable experience uh we were uh we had the uh there's a really great singer songwriter storyteller named john craigie who we have on the show sometimes he's just writes these great songs and he also has a great story to go with him and he had just been touring in australia and we were chatting about that and he said that he had landed in in melbourne but that you know obviously over there it's everyone says i i'm gonna mess up the accent but he did it really well kind of like melbourne or whatever however it is you might say it and everybody he goes oh another thing he said that was funny was when he got there the person that was helping take him around said when you're on stage don't talk about your jet lag because every musician that comes to australia when they're talking to the audience at their shows all they talk about is the jet lag interesting and nobody cares about it and i was thinking well andrew and i were pretty jet lagged i think when we got there but then he said but the problem was every time he went anywhere everyone said god you must be so jet-lagged so he didn't really know what to do right right yeah but so he said something about melbourne and how now he's back in the states and he wants to talk about melbourne but he's trying to not say it in the australian way because that seems pretentious or annoying or whatever and then i tried to wedge and i'm not saying it was a good joke but i said yeah like for i was in australia a while ago and i kept just going around to people saying you call that a knife and just complete silence from the crowd and i was like uh crocodile dundee you heard of it like it's only the most only really well-known movie out of australia of the last 30

years that i can think of i like the way that you respond to people not laughing at a joke to being angry at them as if they don't get it i think they got it i

I think that, I mean, the joke was just the word Australia, and then you call that a knife.

I think that, honestly, I blame the crowd. And I blame you.

And I blame... I'm the ombudsman for that LiveWire crowd.

We can't all be at Big Mario's getting loaded. Some of us have to be out there in these streets trying to make public radio. They can't all be hits.

Do you know that this – well, I shouldn't even say this because you won't believe it at all. I actually was a little bit like – I actually was a little bit miffed. Thursday night is a night that I usually work late so that my Friday isn't completely screwed. And I actually was kind of on a roll with shit. And I was like, God damn it, I do not – I was a little bit grumpy leaving the house because my Friday is now a little effed because I didn't do a lot of stuff I would have done on Thursday night. I got you on that. But I did get to go and sit at Big Mario, something that I had not done in a long time. So anyway, why does he go to the U.S.?

Well, a couple things I want to clarify. First of all, I believe I said Anthony King. It's Anthony Anderson is, along with Jerry O'Connell, the two stars of Kangaroo Jack. I was right about the basic plot, which is two friends from Brooklyn, Jerry O'Connell and Anthony Anderson, are forced to deliver mob money to Australia. Their misadventures begin when one of them places his red jacket on a kangaroo while attempting to snap a picture. when the kangaroo bounces off they realize the mob money is in the jacket and are forced to give chase through the outback now that my friend it's a hell of a plot i mean how can you be that careless i mean honestly and how did you find a kangaroo that was that hashtag chill remember when we were in australia and i was obsessed with seeing an alive kangaroo we kept seeing kangaroos that were And X, as Monty Python would say We kept seeing X kangaroos, right? All along the Stewart Highway, unfortunately From those, what do they call them? Road trains Those big, big, you know, multi-trailer Kind of semi-trucks That would unfortunately hit kangaroos But finally, on almost the last day I was out jogging around Wherever we were Tennant Creek or something And I saw a couple of kangaroos in the wild And it was so spectacular It made me so happy But the idea that these guys, Anthony Anderson and Jerry O'Connell, just find a kangaroo and he's just, like, standing still long enough for them to put a hoodie on? No way.

Before we left on our trip to Australia. Yes. When we were getting ready to leave on that trip, people just kept on sending us videos of jacked up kangaroos just, like, boxing people. Swole kangaroos. Just, like, causing major damage to human beings. Like, I don't think you're going to put a jacket on. And then also, like, and again, I know that I live life maybe a little bit too carefully, but, like, first of all, you're involved with mob money. Like, even if you're staying in the States, even if you're staying in your own house, I would feel a certain amount of anxiety about that. I'd be constantly checking where it is and everything. Now you're flying across the world to Australia with this. But you're just like, oh, oops, I'm going to take a quick photo of this kangaroo with a jacket. And, oh, it didn't occur to me that there's money. like the whole point of you being there is this money do not put it on a kangaroo i'm very upset

by that plot also what is the scene with the australian mob yeah like yeah well-known australian mob you got to get these brooklyn guys got to get that australian mob money delivered and they give it to the kid from stand by me no yeah give me a bark anyway back to uh crocodile which cost eight point eight million dollars to make and andrew did 328 million u.s box office

alone this isn't you say that and paul and i didn't realize i think until in the past couple years that like paul ho this was his vision right like yes his story idea he was the one who i think

first wrote the screenplay i believe so yeah i think he was it's it's sort of yes story by paul hogan it's kind of like rocky right in that that was like sylvester stallone's whole project and they didn't want to let him play rocky they were going to buy the script for all this money and he just stuck to his guns and and he was right on that one um yeah eight and a point eight million at the for budget and then 328 million at the box office this would be a very interesting thing to look at how did crocodile dundee do in australia because it was a an unqualified hit in the u.s if you're my age you just remember when it was like everything was crocodile dundee at some point i guess this would have been in 1986 oh 86 uh well oh no yeah yeah 1986 was the release date in the

u.s um but it would be also can i oh sorry you go ahead go ahead i was just gonna say i mean this is kind of jumping a little bit back to the problem with the plot that i'm just remembering now this wasn't even in my notes luke i'm just totally freelancing here just it's like free jazz but

But there's like the whole point of this is not only has Crocodile Dundee never been to New York City, which for some reason, our reporter just finds that so hard to believe. It's like, yeah, I'm sure a million Australians have never been to New York City. He says he's never been to a city at all. It's really setting the stage for the culture clash when he comes to New York City. Right. And that's where a lot of the humor is derived. but the one thing and then there's some real like homophobic anti-trans humor that i did not appreciate at all in a bar scene as he's getting to know u.s culture he assaults somebody as far as i'm no really yeah i'm not going to go into detail i'm not going to sully this beautiful conversation about crocodile dundee he goes outside though and then he meets a couple of women who are clearly sex workers right a couple of prostitutes young women and they're like saying hey you want a good time or whatever the cliche thing they say in movies is and he does not recognize that they are prostitutes right he thinks that they're just you know just women

who want to have fun with them they're flirting with them they're fans of of having fun even though

they give him you know plenty of context clues about what's going on here and here's what i'm getting at like he may have never been to a city before but i've seen the bar that he hangs out with i've seen the roughhousers that he hangs out with like he not he understands prostitution i'm sure i mean i don't it's not in the script i don't want to write any fan fiction here i'm sure that he's come face to face with some aspect of the business before would be my guess would be my guess i don't think that being in new york city makes you completely blind to the fact that these two women are propositioning you as a business arrangement it's like because he's been in the

outback he doesn't know what gravity is he doesn't understand that's part of it he's scared of

escalators how can a man who i'm sure spent his whole life like skipping now i'm just dragging the movie i didn't mean this to be a whole complaint but like there's this other he's just showing up the airport but he's he does not use the escalator and it's going down and he's scared and i'm like dude you've probably like skipped across wet rocks in a rushing white water rapids

before you can handle the escalator but the escalator but but see the the the rapids were not they weren't moving up or down in that way I'm siding with I'm siding with Paul Hogan now

yeah maybe I will say it was weird when he slowly and awkwardly comes down the escalator and then says he's running for president I did not remember that being in the movie I don't like the fact that

when you mentioned the escalator that's also what came to my mind how is that guy also ruined escalators for us like what a what collateral damage from the possible the the attempted and possibly future end of democracy in this country and how is it that wrapped up in all of this i can't think of an escalator without thinking of that moron right exactly like they're like we

were happy when we when people thought of mitch hedberg when you thought of us and now like now the PR has really gone sideways. So here's the

plot on Crocodile Dundee. So Sue is kind of, as you've already mentioned, a little put off by Crocodile Dundee's uncouth ways when she and her guy are out there doing a kind of a story about him. But then when he puts the water buffalo to sleep and then asks no follow-up questions, she's impressed. The next morning, um uh let's see uh she stops at a billabong to fill her canteen she's attacked by a large crocodile and is rescued by mick andrew so this is where things start to take a turn well something

happens though i mean this this is leaving something out they must get into some sort of tiff because they part ways yeah he calls her a sheila which is someone who can't live in the outback right oh i just thought it was i just thought it was his way of saying woman i thought That was the Outback way of saying a woman was a Sheila. I didn't realize that.

This is just from Wikipedia, and I haven't donated in a while, so I don't know how much we can believe what Jimmy is telling us here. But so then he saves her from Crocodile, and then she invites him to return with her to New York City on the pretext of continuing the feature story. Again, the budget from Newsday at the time was robust. We're going to fly y'all to the Northern Territory, and then we're going to bring Crocodile Dundee back to New York. i i don't know just to continue our series of interviews he doesn't want to do it it's just

to continue the series of interviews that's it that's it that is such that is so tenuous i don't

believe that um he does not want to come back but then she tells him the newspaper will cover all expenses and then so he knows what expenses are yeah what is he the witzelerts are yeah that's

Is that guy's name? Johnny Danger, expense report expert. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that – and also –

The movie begins with her on the phone with her editor slash lover, and she's saying, no, I don't want to come home yet. I'm going to have the paper fly me out to Darwin. And then when she gets to Darwin, you know, Crocodile Dundee and his business partner, they run some sort of like outdoor adventure company. And she said, yeah, I'm willing to pay the $2,500 for this. So first of all, she's essentially paying for an interview, which is already weird. But, yeah, they're blowing a lot of money on something that she just has a whim about.

Well, her dad owns Newsday, though, so I guess that's helping. So she brings Crocodile Dundee back to New York City He's perplexed by local behavior and customs Now the words behavior and customs are hyperlinked But I don't feel like clicking on them right now I don't know where that's going to take me In Wikipedia

U.S. customs office

But he overcomes problematic situations Including encounters with a pimp And attempted robberies After this, Sue realizes her true feelings for him And they kiss Now, of course she's still with Richard Although Richard, recently, he reveals himself as self-centered and insensitive. He shows his true colors during a period of intoxication. So her guy gets drunk and shows that he is really not great. So she calls off the wedding and ends up with a crocodile Dundee. But yeah, the reason she brings, he comes back to the U.S. is to continue the article. That's as much work as they want to put into that part of the plot, Andrew.

All right, just one more thing. I wasn't going to bring this up because now I'm just sort of on this jag of being very negative. So let me just bring up my last sort of nitpick with this. And, again, it was a product of its time, I'm sure. But, like, I came home with all of these complaints to Genevieve last night. And she actually did a pretty good job of defending the movie in ways that surprised me.

Well, she was all pepped up on Chivapachiba.

So, anyway, this reporter, what's her name again?

Her name is Sue Charlton, played by Linda Kozlowski.

as she is warming up to a crocodile dundee and they're having conversations about their past while they're camping or something um she talks about her ex-boyfriend or ex it sounds like a pretty serious ex-boyfriend she's like march march all we did was march we marched for women's rights we marched for the environment and there was a third one and then something like and we marched for we marched for let's just say it was civil rights but it was like three good causes we were

just like activists and this guy with was wasn't what a weird what a weird plot line for why she was not into the x because he was too socially conscious and then she says i don't know what he's doing now he's probably marching for gay nazis oh god what lazy lazy what does that mean

first of all let's just take you don't think nazis could have been gay andrew

i think they had a policy luke this erasure will not stand sir but but also like are you

you set that up by saying we march for things like environmental causes and women's rights and now you're saying and he's probably marching for gay nazis are you saying that those causes are also like what is the equation here what is the yeah and then also gay nazis then like you're taking something that's really bad and something that's really good like what are you marching for there like i just didn't make sense like you're setting up this idea of who this character who this off-screen character is yeah you could have just said he's marching he's probably even if you wanted to i don't know you could have just come up with some ridiculous but still good to cause why are you throwing nazis in there he's trying to save the whales the whales or but you could have made it kind of ridiculous right yes of course with some silly sounding he's protesting he's trying to save earthworms sure yeah exactly your animal that we don't know yeah good job

you know what this goes out not just to paul hogan but also ken shady and john cornell the three of them credited as the screenwriters of this i want to know which one of them wrote gay Nazis into the script and I want that person to have their WGA credentials suspended until we

can look into this further I I want to know what else was in there what was the placeholder was that the placeholder and they forgot to go back and and and punch oh it's like me doing music for

your weekend this week I noticed that I have I have a big TBD there and I haven't deed it yet I haven't deed mine either oh no we have zero it's a very it's actually a very lovely powerful message from the listeners so maybe maybe it'll just be a a week where we play we're really

slipping on our music for your weekend i have in summertime been listening to a lot of baseball like i just haven't been listening to music i've been listening to beyonce's record which is really good but it just it seems silly for me to play a beyonce song on tbtl like saint texas people i don't know what that means that makes no sense why would you say that in the lead of a story

um hey can we be we gotta thank some dazzling donors but uh my question is it's tbtl plant week as everybody knows over on instagram and our friend listener karen uh is has been answering questions and answered one of my questions too by the way which i was so stoked about which is it sounds like i've got up

until maybe late May to get some tomatoes and other veggies in the ground which I am very happy about because I haven't done any of that it's on my list but I haven't missed the window for that so that's exciting I'm wondering how is this is today the final day of of I think you should leaf

on the TBTL Instagram page this is my understanding of it today you can continue to submit questions you can also do it after today's deadline but then it's a hundred dollars per question okay sure which is mostly coming to me if i understand correctly 75 bucks to me per question no you know i honestly don't know the rules on this i mean karen and john have both been working hard on this behind the scenes and it's been really fun and i'm and karen also um maybe today would be a really good day to say this if you have any follow-up questions uh for karen you can reach out to her directly on her instagram as well so i would say you know if you have any lingering questions you can send them to uh you know to our account too beautiful to live on i can try to answer them just based on um you could get out on the wikipedia page exactly and then um if you're somebody who already was sort of engaging with that process you can reach out directly to karen uh on instagram as well i'm looking to see if i can find the actual handle but i'm pretty sure it's karen hugh k-a-r-e-n-h-u-g-g on instagram um and uh and yeah just continue the conversation there but i don't think there's any kind of hard and fast rules but huge huge thanks to karen for for coming up with this idea along with john hugh thanks to karen and don't forget to um check out her book

leaf your troubles behind absolutely thanks to everybody who participated we're gonna i think do more of this kind of stuff we're gonna really activate that instagram feed uh even more which which is saying something because john has done a great job uh with with you know putting lots of stuff out there but this has been really fun to get to watch this this week and see all the people who've been putting stuff up there it's just fun to continue to grow these different communities and different places that people can kind of interact with the tens really because that's what it's all about we're kind of a background character we're like sue charlton's soon-to-be ex-fiance we're just here to kind of move the plot along a little bit and possibly be the bad guys and act uncouth while intoxicated to support the main characters of this narrative which are the tens and john sklaroff and listener karen yeah thank you guys and also it's my role to

say things that are problematic which i'll do in the next segment perfect we was hoping for

some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle on your mark on your mark get set Hey, let's thank some dazzling donors.

These are the folks that are keeping TBTL rolling with their donation of dough. We absolutely could not do this five days a week for our jobs without the help of people like Corey Plucker in East Hampton, Massachusetts.

Hello, Corey. Thank you, Corey.

Corey says, hey, Luke and Andrew, I asked my daughter Rhiannon what I should say in my dazzling donor message this year. And she said, tell them that you can't change the past, but you can make a big difference right now and in the future. Gosh, that's sage advice from Rhiannon.

Really sage advice. Seven-year-old Rhiannon saying this. That is something that I have to literally remind myself. a lot when I'm, you know, we talk sometimes not to get super serious here, but you know how sometimes we talk about beating ourselves up over things we've said or done. I, I have a sort of a informal mantra that I find myself saying lately, which is just like, the only thing you can do is learn from that now. Like if you're going to keep on thinking about that, the only thing you can do is don't repeat that behavior in the future. And for me, that behavior is probably making a joke that wasn't very good or something, or talking about my eczema for too long. But all I can say is there's nothing I can do to change that. The thing is take a lesson away from it so that you don't have this feeling again tomorrow night or the night after that.

So that it's less of a powerless feeling of like this thing happened, it's out in the world, I can't change it. It makes me feel like I don't have any ability to change the situation too. I can actually take action from this and it's just like going forward maybe don't do that. Yeah. Now take the lesson and move on. Yeah. Rhiannon is seven years old and is interested in making the world a better place for people regardless of their differences. We had a W. Kamau Bell on Livewire last night and he said something that resonated with me so much, which was I forget what exactly we're talking about. But he goes, well, the thing that I take, I'm saying the I'm going to say something that sounds kind of dark here, but I'm this is in the spirit of honesty, because I feel like sometimes this goes through my mind. And this is the difference between being 47, soon to be 48.

being seven and I'm so glad to hear that Rhiannon is um is thinking about a brighter future for uh Rhiannon and for everybody else but Kamau said something to the effect of yeah sometimes with that stuff I just think yeah but I won't be here he goes and I just take great comfort I go I kind of think that sometimes like you know I'm not so much about like the actual planet because that I feel I legitimately feel really shitty about the fact that like this place is getting worse like from a climate standpoint and it's going to really hit the generations shortly after us the most but just generally just like a thing like i will see a problem now sometimes and i'll think i'm not going to be like ai oh that's what it was it was i was we were talking about comedy because um vulture did a thing where they had an ai program write jokes like kamau so they basically were like feed in a bunch of his comedy and then have the program kind of like people have been done sort of with our voices and stuff yeah and then have the program write a joke in the style of w kamau bell and he said the jokes were terrible which they were i read the jokes they were awful but i go does that make you feel better were his just joking kidding so he was like i go i go the good news is these jokes are really terrible i go but so you've got like a five-year head start on this thing but is it going to be better than you in five years because it'll be better than us in like two years he goes but that's but i just tell myself when it's you know i'm going to be dead soon so it doesn't matter and i was like i find myself using that logic a lot unfortunately yeah

I'm actually glad that you used the example of like, you're right, like AI taking over the arts is not like the best thing in the world, but it's also not like the state of democracy or the planet. Because at first I thought you meant the big stuff, but you're right.

No, I'm talking about the little stuff. Like, will we still be podcasting? Like, will we be able to do this podcast in 30 years? The answer is no. There will be a program that does it much better than us. But that's okay because we may still be on the planet, but I don't think the planet will be needing us to be originating content. They'll be needing Rhiannon to do it.

Yeah.

And Corey says that Rhiannon would like to make the world a better place for people regardless of their differences. She's an inspiration to me and her mom. Hopefully this is better than me asking for you to play the slab jacking drop for the third year in a row. Well, Corey. Slab jacking.

White shoes.

Tradition. White shoes?

I said why choose. choose oh i wasn't sure if you were joking no it's like is there something about the slab jacking ads that i missed we provide the white shoe treatment around here it's kind of like the

white glove treatment i literally thought you were referencing i thought there was there was like a reference that i wasn't following involving somebody who we used to work i guess for or with who used to love about love to talk about like this white glove service that we were getting or that i don't know i just remember that making you and i think rightfully so andrew that making you

about as angry as i've ever seen you okay i can't tell the whole story right now for a lot of different reasons but mostly not out of decorum but just where we are in the show right now in time constraints because actually i would have no problem laying this whole thing out but basically i was me after we were at american public media for several years and there was somebody in a certain role who left the company and then they hired somebody new but when they hired somebody knew they kind of changed the job description and everything as often happens in industries and uh and i just finally had a first get to know you conversation with this employee who's no longer there by the way didn't last very long and i just said so what is your role like that was it it was just like we're supposed to get to know each other he never asked a question about me or the show or anything i just said so what is your role and he literally went on for 35 minutes with just bullshit blabber about providing white glove service to all of the departments but never saying what that meant it was one of the most i i it was one of those things where i was literally like taking the phone away from my ear at times and just staring at the phone like is this happening am i on candid camera so white glove service no but what i said here was why choose in other words we can hear rihanna's words of wisdom and also here slab jacking and we can hear some slab

jacking thank you cory and family for supporting the show we really do appreciate it maestro

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, rattle.

It's Allison Scheiderer of Edmonds, Washington. Allison says, I don't have anything to plug. So I thought maybe requesting an old drop would be fun. Thinking back to the early days, Lil Bacon came to mind. I actually searched the archives and listened to the audio from one hour of TBTL in 2009 when Little Bacon debuted to refresh my memory and to see if it would be too problematic for me to request in 2024. Thank you, Allison, for...

Doing that advanced work for us, because as we've just stated with Crocodile Tundee, anything from more than an hour ago probably hasn't aged well. But let's see. Allison says a little bacon was indeed a problematic character, but it also brought me joy to remember why bacon is good for me. And I keep losing it. Deals will forever live in my mind. So there's my request. So is Allison saying that this kid, Little Bacon, was a problematic character in the context of this show, which I think was like trading moms or mom swap or something, right?

I'm looking it up. This would be more your territory. This was when I was a listener of TBTL. I remember listening to these drops.

I was one of these shows where the premise is you take two families and you take the mom from and these families are diametrically opposed in their approach to living. And then you take the mom from one family, like a family that eats really healthy. And then you put her in a household where they eat any old thing and then vice versa. And then, you know, the the conflicts that arise is where the television magic happens. And so, of course, there was this mom was was living with the family of I don't even know the kid's name. he'll always be little bacon and the the premise from the reality show i cringe only because i can only imagine all of the behind the scenes talks from the producers with everyone involved going okay um hey um let's just say that the the mom who'd been sent to live with the little bacon family let's say her name was um was sharon um hey sharon so could we just have you go through the refrigerator and throw everything out and then they go over to little bacon they go hey um hey little bacon could we just have you really mad about everything that's and then they did it once and then he wasn't mad enough so then they took all the stuff out of the garbage and put it back in the refrigerator and close the door and did it again like this is the kind of stuff that

happens right i'm scrub i found the whole thing like a like a minute long version we won't play it you have the drops but i'm scrubbing through it on youtube now it is from season five five seasons at least of wife swap episode 18 and yeah just watching just like seeing just watching this

is giving me hives it's definitely not your kind of tv they should have called it that's my wife swap my wife that would have been a better name but um uh yeah it i mean it's the kind of thing where this kid little bacon he was so he was so good at just being kind of a lot being extra that It became famous tape on the show I would be curious to see Kind of where he's ended up Again I don't even think this is how this kid really is I think that what this kid was Was kind of a little bit of a ham So to speak And the producers just got him all wound up But I mean it just When you watch I've watched these scenes not that long ago Andrew is the crazy part And it just It has that It just reeks of Quote unquote reality TV production of the mid-2000s. Yeah. Just between the production value, the way that their whole job, the producer's whole job is to try to create scenes where something seemingly dynamic is happening, even though it's all totally manufactured. So I've got... Now, do you want to play the entire scene or do you want me just to play...

That's your call. The entire scene is about a minute long, it looks like. Would you be interested in hearing this? It does look like you're right with the setup.

I've got bacon on wife swap for a minute and 20 seconds here. I've got low bacon full for a minute and 20 seconds. And then I've got some bacon is good for me. And yeah, that's I've only got bacon is good for me. Oh, you know, I have to search under a different thing. I have to search under sorry people for some of the other.

Let's play it. Well, let me just I'll just play this. And if you want, it sounds like you have the audio version of this anyway, if they're both about a minute long.

I need you guys to help me in the kitchen to feel these. We can do it. I don't like this crap. Definitely no cheese in a can. No! Very happy to be throwing this away. Bacon.

No, I want my bacon. I got to tell you something. Bacon is good for me. This is very mean.

You're going to be going to the grocery store.

She thinks, out of the blue, she's a smart little girl, that she can do whatever she wants. No, that's not how she can do it in our family. She's the queen, and we're the sorry people.

joy i have been nice to you but now i'm coming to the edge i promise you one thing okay if you do not have at least one food that you like i will buy you a piece of junk is that a deal

no i keep losing at deals and i don't want to make a deal anymore i am leaving and you can't stop me i'm packing my bags i had a very very calm day until this i was both in the road Cums and sheepies.

sarcastic. Curtis. I won't be coming back until Saturday when you leave. She's going to try to stop me, but she can't run in those little high heels. Never see this face again.

Well, except for Saturday. You said you're coming back Saturday.

I think this kid's name is King Curtis, and he is now by the internet saying that he's 22 years old, or at least when these articles are written, and he is a big fan of hunting, so things have turned out well there, I think, and he's a welder, and he looks like he's living, based on these photos, he looks like he is living a very, very, I don't want to say typical in a pejorative way, but I mean, he looks like he is living a life that's very common for a bunch of people that are living in the area where he is. He loves fishing. I'm just looking at pictures of him. He loves fishing. He loves hunting, and is working as a welder. He was on an episode of Pawn Stars, apparently, in 2016 but that was the last that was the last sort of reality TV he participated in on the subject of the memes that he has amassed this is from the mirror in the UK by the way Curtis concluded if I can go up to somebody and make their day and make them smile I feel like I've done a great thing

I am looking right now I'm not going to play it because again I feel like this could really spiral out of control and you wanted to dedicate so much time to crocodile dundee today i don't know if we have time to get into all this but um this is a weird way for me to judge somebody so that that type that is great tape obviously for tbtl but also like the the it sets my teeth on edge hearing a little kid talk to an adult that way and and calling an adult a little girl like a lot of things about that i'm just programmed to reject right but i am now seeing a um a little video here from what looks like about a year ago what was posted in this King Curtis wife swaps most infamous spoiled brat and he looks like a young man who's in his looks like he's in his early 20s or something and just his body language as he's talking to the TV or as he's talking to the camera here makes me forgive him he looks like he's got a big smile on his face and there's something about the way he's talking that is both like he's got a smile but he's also a little bit sheepish in the eyes like he knows that character I'd be interested in hearing this it would be it would make me actually happy to know that he's actually a well-rounded

i mean my sense i'm gonna generalize here he just seems like he's a good old boy you know yeah he just seems like he's just kind of another bearded you know guy who lives for hunting and fishing living somewhere i don't even know where this was based but i'm guessing not new york city and like he's just kind of just living his life he was a he was a an outgoing probably a kid that you know, was up for being a little bit ridiculous and that time in his life is over. It just seems like he's just integrated into normal life around there in a pretty seamless way.

Well, I always root for people to be or become good people. I wouldn't say good person.

I mean, most of his photos, he's killed an animal for no reason. Oh, really?

Okay, I guess the images you're seeing are different. And this one, and again, people with beards, I don't know if you know this, Luke, but I used to be a beardo myself. He doesn't have a beard here. He seems much like he seems like maybe he's even a teenager in this what I'm looking at now. And he doesn't quite he doesn't there aren't all of those like kind of cultural kind of indicators that you're pointing out. He just is like sitting in a room somewhere looking like he's like kind of sort of like kind of laughing at himself. Like he might have grown up to be a decent young person.

Like what he hasn't become is somebody who is perpetually showing up on like MTV road rules, real world gauntlet or like he's not into that character. A professional reality TV type thing performer who just, like, has to jump from one, like, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. It's the little, it's the bacon is good for me kid. And he and Kathy Griffin are in a jungle trying to get out together, you know, with, like, I don't know who else. I'm trying to think of some of the more random celebrities you could throw in there. Anyway, he doesn't seem to be that. He seems to have just kind of like gone on and lived a pretty normal life for a guy who grew up around the place where he grew up. So there you go. Thank you for the support to our dazzling donors today. I got to say, donors are good for us.

Did we read the end of Allison's note, though?

I don't know. It was so long ago we started it. I'm honestly, I'm looking at it. I'm on a totally different series of email.

I got it in front of me. So, um, little bacon was indeed a problematic character, but it also brought me joy to remember why bacon is good for me. The quote, and I keep losing it deals will forever live in my mind. So there's my request. Thank you, Luke and Andrew, for keeping me company through everything from divorce and despair over the 2016 election to the daily joys of cat.

and good music thank you to my fellow tens who helped keep this thing going you just wanted to

read that because the day after the election was really your day to shine that day you talking about your experience that day was very very very memorable for the listeners and you never miss a

chance to highlight that that i have mixed feelings about that brought some personal uh issues into my life oh okay well sorry i didn't mean a kid too hard whenever anybody's kind of like well whatever I don't want to talk about it but it hit a little bit close to home for some people in my life

alright well Allison thank you for supporting the show and I'm glad that the show has been able to be a support and something in your life so thank you you have been a support in our life specifically the life of our bank account which always needs more support so thank you very much hello and welcome to top story um okay i just because we talked about the shohei otani thing i know it's a it's a sports story but it's really not a story about sports it's a story about a guy apparently stealing 14 million dollars from his friend which i mean just like on a personal level this story is is so fascinating to me um and most of our listeners whether you're a sports person or not you probably have heard about this the story about this very very famous baseball player for the dodgers shohei otani he's a phenomenal hitter he's a phenomenal pitcher and um uh it turns out that uh his there was this money that was going to a a bookie an illegal bookie in california california is one of those states where you can't just like bet on sports on your phone yet they haven't it's probably to me it's there's probably so much money in play in a state the size of California that there's a lot of wrangling about who's going to get what percentage of what money. I think probably the bigger the state, the more complicated and protracted the conversation is around what the legalization of sports betting. I mean, it's legal if any state that wants to do it now can because of a Supreme Court ruling, but different states are kind of figuring out their plan at different, you know, sort of timelines. And so California is one of those places where you can't pick up your phone and make a sports bet and they were, I don't know which FBI or somebody was looking into some illegal bookmaker in California and when they were going through this person's, you know, Rolodex as it were, they saw Shohei Otani's name pop up and upon investigating figured out that his interpreter his translator had been sending in these bets and so this of course became a big story it's very very very uh not allowed if you're a major league baseball player to be betting on sports particularly betting on baseball but i think any kind of sports betting uh if you're in the mlb is going to get you in trouble and what i said at the time was this just feels like the most simple explanation is that shohei otani was betting on sports and having his friend to do it for him and what made me feel suspicious especially was that the first press conference press availability that his translator did his uh his interpreter did was to say that shohei otani had

paid off the debt for him and then like we saw yeah because we saw an actual what for about four million dollar payoff directly that had shohei's name on it like it came from his account so then

like a day or two later everybody's huddled and i mean the thing that i said back then was like Shohei Ohtani is, I think, would you say arguably the most famous baseball player right now in MLB? I don't think it's even close, right?

Internationally, it's not even close. In the United States, I think it's not that close either. I guess Trout would still be number two as far as name recognition. Baseball players just don't have that name recognition outside of fans of the sport the way maybe basketball players do.

Ohtani seems to, just because he's such a phenomenal player. And again, his ability to pitch and hit is just it's just shocking. It just hasn't been seen in in, you know, 50 years or something or whenever Babe Ruth was playing. But I just thought it was very sus that you had this money going from Shohei Ohtani's account to this bookmaker. And that then there was a press conference where the guy said, yeah, yeah, Shohei paid it off for me. And then all of a sudden the lawyers get together. And then the new story is, no, Shohei had no idea any of this was happening. It just felt weird to me. And I also was of the opinion And I still have this opinion That there's nothing Major League Baseball wants less Than its beloved Shohei Otani Turning out to have been like low-key Betting on sports, even if it wasn't baseball Just anything that tarnishes his Halo even a little bit is bad for baseball So like, yeah, baseball's investigating this But how hard are they looking? How much do they really want to get To the bottom of this if it means they have to suspend Their most famous player? And so So I will say, though, so that was what I kind of said back then. I was like, well, why?

Watch this space. Well, now I'm actually, I have to say, having heard more of the evidence, at least this is according to like the, you know, FBI and whomever. I have to say, it sounds like it really was just this interpreter. Like, I'm sure that you're kind of read in on this now. The like they found basically they found voice recordings of the calls from the interpreter to the bank pretending to be Shohei Ohtani.

I was actually better read in on the story when it first broke. yesterday's news about like kind of the release of this information from like kind of prosecutors and law enforcement I'm less read up on so I didn't know that in fact I have like more questions for you I have some answers probably not enough but some okay who put the line in Crocodile Dundee who put the bomb in the bomb the line my question is like what is the explanation of that of the payment that set off this whole chain of media events the again which now seems paltry 4.2 million dollars that was literally seemed to come directly from Shohei Otani's account with his name on it was that all forged or something oh

basically that's what no idea that's what the police and the FBI are saying they're saying a Shohei Otani is purely the victim here it's more like 14 million dollars that went missing and the way this happened was the train when Shohei Otani got to the US he didn't speak very much English at all and so this guy was hired to be his translator but he also kind of became sort of a de facto manager and fixer and this was all based around language so he sets up Otani's bank account or at least some of his bank accounts or this one bank account and Otani is not you know he's he's because of the language barrier this guy has access to this account and he goes in apparently this is all you know alleged and they have these voice recordings where he calls into the bank and is changing like passwords and access and he's calling into the bank telling the bank that he is Shohei Otani so that would that would answer the question of how money is going from Shohei Otani's account to this bookie because this guy has apparently allegedly and and again this all has to do with you know the bank not knowing what Shohei Otani's voice sounds like he's talking to So he had to go into like authorize some of these large transfers. The other thing that he had done apparently was You have these business managers and other people that are in Shohei Otani's You know orbit they don't speak Japanese Generally speaking and so which is a weird way to say it most of them apparently don't speak Japanese generally or specifically speaking And so this guy this interpreter is like the one person involved in all this who's kind of can play both sides So he is icing them out of this part of Shohei Otani's financial life because he set up these accounts. He's calling in. He's saying, I'm Shohei Otani. He's giving himself certain access, making sure other people don't have certain access. Those people can't really get through because they don't speak Japanese. Shohei Otani doesn't speak English. So this guy was apparently in this unique position to kind of like for a while anyway, keep playing all these different sides and language barriers off of each other so that he could then sort of have access. To this and transfer this money around and no one Really including Shoei Otani really knew what was Going on that's what the FBI Is saying and I have to say that story Actually kind of makes sense

To me yeah it does make sense

And but this is what I was saying in our In our text chain yesterday And I don't know this is just because I'm you know kind of a person Who is both slightly a DGN and also Interested in that hashtag DGN Lifestyle I'm really curious if this bookie ever Had to make with any of this money and In other words, because this guy is the the interpreter, I think, is rumored to have like put something like one hundred plus million dollars in action. I think it was one hundred and eighty two million. And like he won one hundred and forty two million. But the problem is that's not one hundred and eighty two million. So that's where the deficit comes in. Yeah. He won a lot of money. He was betting like between, you know, as he was sometimes betting one hundred thousand dollars on a bet. but like I didn't have I didn't ever really have a bookie but I had a guy who had a bookie that I could put bets through when I lived in LA years and years ago and we're talking peanuts we're talking like I'd be out in Pasadena at this one house of this couple named John and Julissa who I've talked about on the show it was formative for me and they don't even know it to this day these people have no idea that they sent me on a certain kind of life trajectory they're just this like, they were like my first ex-wife's, they lived on the street in Pasadena where my first ex-wife's family lived. So my in-laws lived out on this street in Pasadena and we would go out there and they just had this very beautiful, the Spanish style home with a swimming pool and a great outdoor setup with a big TV and a barbecue. And we would go over. there and the game would be on and we'd be drinking nice tequila and swimming in the pool see swimming pool fantasies and like watching the game and there was a guy you know you could call like you could say to to john hey i'll get 100 on this at usc game or whatever and then he had a guy like it was all kind of you know was just like you called a guy and then you had this money that you'd either won or lost theoretically but this is the thing that happens with people that that do a lot of this sports betting, they never get the money. You know what I mean? So let's just say you start out, you bet $500 on a game and you win. And now you've got a thousand dollars with this bookmaker. Well, you might just say, you could say, give me my thousand dollars, or you could say, okay, I want to put 300 of this on the Tyson, Jake Paul fight. And I want to put 300 on this. And I want to put 300 on that. And pretty soon you've now quote unquote, reinvested all of this money into other bets now two of those bets lose and one of them wins so now you owe the bookie on the bets you lost and the bookie owes you on the bet you won and there's this back and forth of all of this theoretical money that sometimes people never get because you never want to take it out because now let's just say that Shohei's interpreter gets way down early so he's down five million so he's now got to like send this bookie five million to get even because the thing

is the bookies do want their money when you guys gonna say the one thing that you need to emphasize here though is the bookies it's not theoretical to them no it's real money to buy in the first time and then if you want to chase that that's real money the bookies aren't playing with

and they may give you some credit at some point if you've been doing it a lot a lot i've never yeah gotten to that and again i never even had a bookie i just knew someone who had a bookie so i could put in bets if i wanted to but like i just think this is a fascinating it's almost like it's almost like a crypto or something or any of these like weird financial crimes where i don't know why this is the part that that obsesses me so well but again first thing is it sounds to me like otani really didn't know about this which just sucks by the way not even the money but like this was his best friend practically like what a massive betrayal like we don't think about these athletes as human beings but like in the craziness that would be being shohei otani coming to the u.s getting all this attention probably not being able to relate to a lot of people in your orbit you have like this one person who's kind of your like ride or die the that's how these guys became really good friends and then you just find out that they were just like completely you know sabotaging you behind your back like on a personal level they just must suck for him the financial

level personal level of course as you just said and also just reputation wise like shohei otani's reputation is just like he's not a draw he's not a dramatic person he's just like he's a superstar because he is, you know, a once-in-a-lifetime talent who comes in and is also just so likable. I mean, I know he's a Dodger, but still, he's so likable and he doesn't want any of this. He doesn't want the name Otani connected to any of this shit and he doesn't live a life where his name should be connected to anything other than being, you know, in the Hall of Fame forever and ever. Yes. It's just it's kind of on. So you got the personal, you got the financial and also just like the professional reputation stuff. And I mean, his name is being cleared here, but he doesn't want any of this. He just wants to play baseball. Yeah, it does make.

And, you know, to the degree that I participated in it early, I mean, I think when we go back and we look at the places where Shohei Otani's name may have been tarnished, I think TBTL will be low on the list of of programs that impacted that. But even so, like I do want to walk that back and say this based on hearing this, it sounds to me like there's a pretty reasonable explanation as to how his name was on these various transfers. But, yeah, I just also like I'm thinking about becoming a bookie now because it's only now occurring to me that you could really I mean, you could really make some serious dough. And you don't ever as long as as long as the person who's winning all the money never asks for their money, you could I mean, you could make this work for some period of time.

Yeah, so I guess it was $182 million. I can't get my head around that. $182 million in losses.

How much did we raise in the last Thawne? It was around $180 million, wasn't it?

But he had won $142 million, so that's pretty good. But it still leaves you in the hole for like $40.6 million in losses. Jeez, Louise. I mean, this is also usually the part of these conversations. He's going to go away for a while.

Yeah, he is. this is usually the part of these kind of conversations where I also is it empathize or sympathize what is the one where I have I always miss mix this up the difference between

empathy and sympathy um I can't remember either I think empathize maybe you've been through it before and sympathize you have I don't think I guess I'm sympathizing because believe it or not

I haven't been through this I haven't like lost money gambling that I siphoned off from an organization even though it does seem like something I would do but I kind of can Thank you.

Sympathize with people like that this interpreter because I do I feel like I have it in me It's just below the surface of letting something get out of control like this and just not being able to get it back under control like something starting small And thinking like ah, you know, okay. I lost my cuz oh side note. This guy was making Great money to do his job as a translator for Shohei Otani I forget what the amount was, but it was, you know, in the like 700 K range or something like in one of the initial stories. It was talking about what his income was. It was like a very, very, very healthy amount of money to make to do this job. And like I can see it just being like he started making some bets and he kind of got behind. He probably won early. This is what gambling does to you. He probably won some early, was feeling great and then got behind and thought there's this big pool of money over here that I can access. What I'm going to do is pull a little bit out, do this thing, win the money back, and then put it back in the account, and no one will ever know it was gone. That's how this stuff goes. And then you don't win, and now you're more screwed, and then you have to keep pulling money out to try to win enough that you can put it back in that you can get ahead of this. And you're just kind of – again, I haven't actually done that myself, but I can very much relate to that mentality.

I was wondering, too, by the way, I guess empathy and sympathy is you don't you don't have to have been through it. But sympathy is you you kind of feel. Let's see here. It says sympathy is acknowledging somebody else's pain, but empathy is choosing to feel the pain with them. So it's almost like if you think of an empath, I guess that might be a way.

I thought it was. I was under the impression one was something that you could identify with because you had experienced it yourself. And one was something you hadn't experienced, but you were feeling emotional for this person. And that was sympathy versus empathy.

That's what I always thought, too. And maybe like we keep on poisoning our own wells with that information. But it sounds like, I mean, those things might be connected as well, because it sort of says. So sympathy says I care about you and empathy says I'm hurting along with you. So it's actually the the actual feeling of the emotions along with somebody as opposed to just understanding that somebody is feeling emotions intellectually. But that's neither here nor there. Well, sort of is here and there. But I was going to say, yeah, I wonder about this as well as this as this interpreter is, you know, making these illegal transactions and getting deeper and deeper. Like, is he just hating himself?

Oh, well, that's the thing. I mean, and then you get up every morning and you go down to the clubhouse and there's Shohei, big old golden retriever of a human, you know, just like it seems like a sweet dude, super good at baseball. All reports are a nice human being in the world. And he's just like, hey, buddy, how's it going? How just, you know, did you, you know, like what did you get any breakfast yet? you know there's like the converse again almost like you and i when we check in in the morning andrew kind of like hey how's it going man all right we're talking and like one of us just has a secret and like he's just talking to him and he must have just been he must have been ghost walking asleep walking through like like he must have had that have you ever i don't know if you've had this experience i have actually where it's like you get some kind of weird news or something Sort of intense but you also have to Be performative like it's like You're about to we're about to do live We're about to do live wire in my case or Maybe tbtl or whatever like i've had some Experiences where it's time to Be performative but i have like also Some big life news or something has Happened and you almost My experience with it is you almost get That kind of like ringing in your Ears that people Talk about when you get like news that's Really kind of intense and it's like they do movies sometimes do a pretty good job of portraying this where it's just like that kind of like that weird feedback ring and kind of everything is sort of fuzzy but then you have to go and just like do like act like everything is okay it's a very very weird very very bad feeling and this guy must have had so many days where it's like yeah they're the media is asking otani well what did you think about you know that he gave you the off-speed stuff on that two and two pitch was he trying to set you up for the for the fork ball I don't think they throw fork balls at you where they probably renamed it it's probably the slurve or something but like like and then this guy's just like just like that hum in the back of his head of like I lost four million today I lost four million today and then he's translating like that must have been so I wonder if this guy is actually like I'm so effed but at least the lie is over yeah I do wonder when

you start spinning out a lie like that for so long if there's almost a certain relief that comes along with it but again I think I saw like something like facing I can never tell how much truth is in this or if you're just saying the bar high as a prosecutor because you know it's going to be negotiated down but up to 30 years or something in prison and you know if he's a man in his is he and it's 30.

i'm guessing i have no idea yeah me neither i think that seems like a safe guess but i mean i just can't imagine just saying that like i'm facing losing well half of my life and i also

don't want to i don't want to um i don't want to ignore something but i also don't want to overstate it because i just don't know i don't know very much about japanese culture from a personal experience standpoint but the sense i have is that it is a culture that is very um there's a lot of conversation around honor right and about how you are in the world and i mean i'm guessing that some of that goes back to the like older days like i don't you know i don't know currently how big of a how big a part of the story of japanese life it is but it's something that i've i've heard historically is a big deal in japan maybe bigger a bigger deal than in the u.s like i and i don't think in the u.s we have a strong a sense of like have i dishonored someone and this i mean shoya otani is probably like you think he's popular here in the u.s my guess would be that they could elect him king of japan if he wanted like he could he emperor emperor of japan he walks on water if he wanted to be called king emperor they would do it like my guess would be he is beyond the most popular figure in japan because he's so incredible um and so to also like basically have like embarrassed that dude like that i you know i just think there's another layer to this probably also owing to the fact that these guys are both you know japanese folks that that's got to be some whole other level of thing that i'm not even grasping here point being don't dishonor us andrew because i will throw you under the bus just like i am right now by asking do you have any music for your

weekend um well i mean we mentioned earlier in the show and because we are a little tight on time like there is a song that i've been listening to but i've played it on the show before and i don't know if we necessarily need to do that especially if we have a special um request from a listener

i mean if you need me to no i don't need me to play something we've done more than too much show i'm just mad at the shazam program andrew because yesterday when i was driving uh down to portland to do Livewire, I was listening to All Things Considered and a song came on as like bumper music and I was trying to Shazam it in my car but because I had Waze on, it wouldn't let me do it because I was plugged in. I was hardlined into my system and then I had to unplug it and then the person behind me was beeping because I was at a red light that had turned green and then the ATC host on OPB started talking over the music and I was like, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up. I was trying to hold my phone up against the speaker, but the whole thing had turned off. It was just like technology was – and then the music came back on in the clear, but Shazam had stopped looking for it now because it had been too long. So I was trying to return on Shazam, but instead I accidentally hit Spotify because they both start with S, and they're both on my main screen. It was a disaster. You know, I have a song I could play for you. Good. Because the dog ate my homework.

Does that make you feel better? It does. um so uh do you play around in the ted leo space at all i'm more of a pharmacist's guy yeah ted leo there's a serious pharmacist ted leo plus pharmacist after um kind of after college when i was hanging out with uh genevieve and my friend paul in boston a lot we went to see a lot of ted leo shows i think he's he's dc was originally dc guy i might be wrong about that But I sort of associate him sort of with that scene. He was in the band Chisel. But then I think he's more famous for his solo work. And, you know, we were talking on the show a couple of weeks ago, I think, about my relationship with the Beatles White Album and how a lot of those songs I heard for the first time over the phone as my friend Tony was playing them for me as a kid. And sort of having those like sort of shared musical experiences with your friends that are also remote in some way. And I guess I sort of had that the other day. I guess it was I think it was last Saturday. Genevieve was out with some friends or something, and there's a somewhat early Mariners game on. So I was like, you know, I'm going to go to the bar and watch this Mariners game. And I did that. And I'm texting with my friend Pauly. And he's like, oh, hey, the family's out of the house. I just realized I can play music as loud as I want. I think I'm going to listen to some Ted Leo. I'm like, oh, man, this game is wrapping up now. I'm going to put on my headphones and start walking home soon. listen to it and so like we're both kind of in different parts of the city both like reliving our our days of listening to ted leo and so ever since then uh this week this song timorous me off of the the uh album the tyranny of distance has been going through my head so i will play timorous me by ted leo plus pharmacists

We'll be right back.

Johnny sitting in the green grass I don't remember too much From that far back in the past But man, oh man, was Jonathan Laff In those days Apparently he was my very best friend We spent wild summer days Wishing they would never end But I only know from photographs I look at every now and again T-T-Johnny Oh, all that left us was an apple tree And oh, let it go And oh, I didn't leave And oh, why do I grieve? Now, I don't ever see Jonathan no more But my life falls on just like a deadbeat fall And I only wonder what it is that I even miss him for

I don't think we get to the chorus in time on this one, but it's a song. Yeah, it's a nice song.

I've never heard that before, but I like it.

Yeah, it's a nice song. And so that's been sort of rattling around my head all week since I was walking south on Aurora listening to it and Pauly was in West Seattle blasting it in his basement.

I like that idea. I want you and I, Andrew, to start listening to pavement music at the same time.

Ooh, that sounds good. I'll hit you up. Get Pauly in on that, too. Okay, good.

Yeah, we could be a throuple on that, 100%. Nice. By the way, Ted Leo, I don't know if the pharmacists are going to make it, but Ted Leo is going to be touring this summer and will be at the 930 Club in D.C. on June 20th, the good old 930 Club, as well as the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey. What about West Coast? West Coast hitting San Francisco. Well, that's actually in the fall. Wait, I should double-check this. Have these already all happened?

If Ted Leo is coming to Seattle, I must go.

I don't see. Well, let's see here. Okay, hold on, hold on. You know what? I might be. I can't quite tell if. it doesn't have a year it just says so this may have it's either already happened or it's going to happen we can narrow it down to those two things okay well that sounds good it looks like he's got some upcoming stuff it's gonna be at the fine line in minneapolis on september 13th it's gonna be at rev hall in portland in august august 30th so you could come down here you could crash

with me yeah i'm looking at that yeah look at that just plain old so is portland more of a rock in town than seattle because this is the second tour that i've looked at this week i'm sorry i can't remember the first one where i saw they were coming to portland and skipping seattle

and i was like i find that curious well you know they just know that we're kind of cool down here none of them are stopping in kalama washington is the yeah i guess is the main takeaway for me but um all right here is the uh listener suggestion and uh it comes from our friend kelly who says I got the news yesterday that a dear friend passed away last Friday at 55 years old from cancer. I'm still processing the news. The pieces don't fit together, and maybe they won't ever. What I do know, though, is that she lived wildly, boldly, bravely, and made her mark. I'd be so grateful if you could play the song One Hell of a Life by Cattell Koenig as a celebration of wild card, sassy pants, Shannon. Shannon sounds like she would have been a – if she wasn't a TBTL10, she should have been because that sounds like our kind of person. Kelly says, Vaya con Dios, my friend. I love you. So also she says, I love you too, Luke. What you do is so important. Yeah, that's really in there. It's funny. Love you too, Luke. I know. Luke. Doesn't mention Andrew. Luke. So just know that I am currently the favorite of the listeners, including listener count.

Well, just wait till they hear my hot takes on a movie from 1986 at the beginning of the show.

At least I was a willing audience for that. I was trying to spread that gospel last night to an apoplectic crowd at the Alberta Rose Theater.

You felt empathy for me.

I was feeling every possible feeling last night as I was deteriorating on stage. It was a fun show. Thanks to everyone who came out last night. That was super fun. All right. So that's how we are going to wrap up this broadcast week. We're going to play this song from Kelly in honor of her dear friend, Shannon. Rest in peace, Shannon. And I hope you all have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. Go TBTL junior sluggers. And please remember no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Lay me down in a wooded field. Plant a bush above my head. Well, lay, Lay me down Don't go writing on my grave I've said it all before the end Lay me Lay me down When I'm dead Please don't philosophize I'll feel regret Just remember me when I said I had one hell of a life One hell of a life

If I had one hell of a lie

Throw my ashes to the wind Watch them blow into the sea Well, throw me, throw me in

You can cry up there on the cliff

Scream to heaven where you'll be

you call that a knife this is a knife that's not a knife that's a spoon all right all right

you win i see you've played knifey spoonie before power out