Muse

oh okay brother you seem hostile oh i seem host i do seem hostile i mean because i am hostile i'm mad i'm sad to be honest i hate my life why do i have two name tags on now brother they both say currency exchange my favorite restaurant is italian fiesta on the south side love that place them two words don't go together absolutely one is italian one is mexican i used to like lumenati's i can't say it it sounds like illuminati ah every time i eat that pizza i feel like i know too much tbtl your mouth might be saying hey we cool but your eyes are like no we not nice to

meet you no it's not it's all good snow is you're the only one with the capacity for such tenacity

and audacity but more than anything i admire your veracity we don't do meals in my home no every two hours we eat what i like to call a food tease like an oat wedge or a seaweed lozenge can i just say and i think this is really important so i need everyone to shut up

i love your hair it's the story of a man with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human

excrement yeah i gotta say this seems like a bad idea all right hello good morning and welcome

everyone to a tuesday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live yeah oh yeah buddy my name is luke burbank i am your host i don't know who that is and i don't care to find out coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia Another beautiful May day here. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Farmer Burbank going to be getting back after it today. That's how I refer to myself now here, because I bought some seeds on Instagram. And yesterday at the Home Depot, I went ahead and got myself a bunch of other plants, raspberries. I got starts, I think, you know. i mean it's actually amazing that in the first place i actually bought seeds because knowing me my my tendency would be to go out and just buy fully grown plants and then pay someone to install them in the garden but um no i got some starts now too so i got some tomato plants and a whole bunch of things that are going to be going in today i will also say this i got a new hose hose technology has really improved over the years isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheet i just have these memories of like being a kid and trying to like lug this drag the super heavy hose around like to wash the car or water things and it's just like leaking water spraying out of the ends of it and it's just like a nightmare they have really really improved the hose game my friends and uh so i wanted to uh share that with you that's just a little a little free advice here on this tuesday morning if you're struggling with an old hose i would recommend upgrading that because they've gotten a lot better uh this is a major upgrade it's episode 4205 in a collector series speaking of upgrade i need to upgrade this bell things got problems jamming up on me anyway let the fun begin it is episode 4205 and we have lots to talk about including an update from the tbtl little sluggers of the parkside little league of east portland oregon kids and fantasy uh so we'll let you know how the how the kids have been doing also andrew had an adventure at a local seattle watering hole on friday and he's going to tell us about that oh and the adventure begins again speaking of my good friend andrew walsh of course he's the longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he's also a soulful rocker from new hampshire he's joining me right now good morning my friend can't believe this is

a show for children now and you start by talking about your nose problems that is i know as i was

describing it i i started to hear just how just how inappropriate that would sound in another context if you're having problems with your hose yes actually for a few reasons there's the anatomical references there's also the kind of derogatory way sometimes people might refer to women there's a lot of reasons for oh goodness re rethink i didn't i'm just andrew i'm just trying

to tell you no it's true i'm the one who opened this door i just i'm trying to slam it shut as

fast as i can i bought a it's i believe it's a 100 foot retractable hose that you mount like the entire unit is enclosed this is filthy and you you mount it on everything i say

just stop I'm enjoying it too much

but um because you know now that I'm Farmer Burbs and that I needed to

be able to water my crops and uh and so anyway i the the hose that was here was like inherited from the previous owners of this house and it's just kind of one of those things where it's like didn't really i had one of those i still have it actually one of those like a reel you know that you kind of can can wind it on to but it's like too long for the reel and when you're winding it the hose keeps jumping out of the bounds of the reel and then it's getting wrapped around the kind of like mechanism that spins and that you know what I mean yeah as a kid my I mean when I when

I think about these stories from my youth of course I grew up to be super fastidious um we had one of those pretty long garden hoses with one of those crank wheel things you'd wind it up on but and of course I it was like usually my job to like water the you know water the plants one water the gardens and everything and my dad like insisted upon that hose being rolled up meticulously I bet at the end, like lined up, like, you know, like you go, you're like, you're spooling wire perfectly, you know, and if you just like quickly like wrapped it up and it was haphazard, that was not a way to put away a hose.

Well, I'll tell you what, Bob Walsh was right, because when you do it in a haphazard way, as I always do, then you're constantly dealing with a situation. You go out there and like trying to unwind it to, you know, fill up my kiddie pool. I have an inflatable kiddie pool here by the way Which I broke out this weekend And I anyway So I just after dealing with This like kind of imperfect system For I don't know The few years that I've been living here now I just was like I bet you that they make A better version of this now and boy Do they Andrew you got the crinkly kind

Where kind of like it sucks up sort of Like when the water isn't in there

No it's I can send you a picture It's like um it's it's like this big plastic square kind of housing that it so that you can't even like the reel in there whatever the thing that can that that winds up the hose is all contained you don't do any hand cranking it's all sort of pressure based like if you're pulling the hose it just knows to stop trying to reel it in like it's i don't there's some sorcery in there that i don't

fully understand like it's like a ratchet almost like a dog leash or something where you can let it

out and then suck it back in tape but it just it just knows yeah like like you i'll you know go to water something and then it just stops it's not constantly trying to retract but then if you give it a little tug then it wants to retract i had all like 100 feet pulled out because i was filling up the kiddie pool and i was up on this like deck here at the house and i was a hundred feet away from the housing of the hose andrew but i didn't want to get there's no stairs off of this deck everything is still like under construction here so i thought i wonder if this will work so i gave the hose after filling up the kiddie pool i gave the hose a gentle tug and i released it and it retracted all the way into the housing perfectly wow it was the highlight of my weekend it's not

even close i worry that this hose though i mean are we talking about like a hail situation a potential hail situation like 2001 a space odyssey yes sorry i have some sort of a weird Ohio accent probably but um you know where the hose is like you don't want to water those tomatoes

burbs I can't do that Luke yeah exactly um you know possibly and I'm fine with that this hose this hose is clearly more on the ball than I am and if it has some advice about gardening I'm all

ears well I had to admit to Genevieve that I was wrong about something but it's nice when you have to admit that you're wrong but everybody kind of wins in the end we needed a new hose here for the back of our house we have we have spigots on the front and back of the house i mean honestly and i don't know if i've said this on this podcast i know i've said it on spotless and i'm not exaggerating one of the most wonderful things about being a homeowner is having access to a hose i mean i'm sure some renters out there also have access to hoses that has not been my experience in the places i've rented and there are so many tasks like if you have to clean out this is like the worst of the worst that i'm about to mention here but like if you have to litter box fully clean out a litter box i don't mean just empty it or scoop it i mean like it's emptied and scooped but then maybe you have to transport it somewhere because you're somebody's babysitting your cat or cat sitting your baby or whatever um and so you need it to be clean and you're like well i would take this outside and blast it with a hose but i don't have one i guess i gotta like make do in the tub and then scrub the tub and then there are other things that are kind of like they're just like you're trying to use a tub or something and it's like it's like having a hose being able to just like walk right outside one door and just turn on a hose and use it is such a privilege Luke I love having access to a hose so much we had a really old one that came with the house it wasn't working for Genevieve for whatever reason I can't remember why and Genevieve says I want to get one of those hoses that like when you turn off the water and you drain the hose it kind of shrinks back up I'm like no no no no like it just there's something about like the I'm sorry.

the valley city boy in me that that just seemed like some sort of new cheap technology that is only seen on tv type of deal and exactly and no no no that's why that's never been appealing to

me because it it seems like one of those things that i'm trying to think other stuff that i well like for instance i bought a slap chop oh do you remember the slap i remember the commercials for it chopped onions quickly right yes but it was i mean it looked so great in the commercials but but it's totally non-functional the problem with the slap chop is that it's a kind of you know it's it's it's not a knife sort of but it was too dull basically and the way it was constructed it was just a big thick squarish the end of it was just a thick square piece of metal it wasn't sharp like a knife is so you couldn't like cut anything you're trying to cut something with a very very

flat dull edge almost like they don't almost like an apple corer i don't think has a bevel on it either right it's just like a big metal tube that you can use and with enough pressure you push it down on the apple so it's like that it's not sharpened exactly and in watching the commercials

i assumed it was sharp and and that it would solve all of my kitchen related issues but no it uh it sucked and so when i see those hoses that that like can shrink back into some little tiny thing I think that is not that's not going to really actually work as well as it looks like on TV.

Yeah. And I said the same thing. And we've said, I want to power through with this. And I said, do it to it, my dude. And now we have a hose. Now, it doesn't shrink down to some like miracle. It doesn't like almost disappear before your eyes. But it goes from being what looks like, you know, a sort of wrinkly, but, you know, standard. Calm down. Don't talk about your wrinkly hose, Andrew. Looking forward to that Junior Sluggers update. But anyway, you know, it hangs off of our house on a little hose holder thing or whatever. And, you know, whatever, it takes up a little bit of space. But the miracle of it is when you turn the water on, how far that thing can reach around the yard. It is amazing. And we've had it for a couple of seasons now. And it's been great. So, yeah, I was very happy to tell Genevieve I was loud wrong on the hose.

Well, yesterday, after I was done working, I went outside. It was a nice evening And I walked over to the hose I unfurled it I watered my plants I put it back And I went inside And everything in my life felt okay For at least 20 minutes Which is all we can really ask in this life Like it was like It's working Also you know the other thing I like about it It doesn't leak All of the hoses I ever dealt with as a kid Either had holes in them From overuse Or did not really adhere or attach well to the spigot or the faucet i would often get tasked with like washing my dad's work vans now i would get paid for this but it was always like we had a janky hose that like and the water would be cold for some reason it wouldn't be like we're not talking about a bikini car wash here andrew this is like kind of not even like it's maybe it's fall or maybe it's spring i just have these memories of the water being actually really cold and it's like it's coming out from where the faucet is meeting the hose and it's just like getting everywhere and it's just

like i hate this i do hate that feeling even in the even in the warm months although you're so right that it's worse when it's like you know when the season isn't proper for it you turn on the hose and automatically just like just the standard way of being is you turn on the hose and just start spraying all over like one thing is our uh and again i'm not bragging here but our hoses never leaked and i wonder if that's because of bob walsh's a hundred percent of wrapping up the

hose it didn't like get kinks in it so much oh i'm sure that everything was you know locked triple a certified at your at your place growing up that was not the move at uh at the burbank homestead everything was pretty janky and probably picked up you know uh used or inherited or you know like and to this day it's just interesting you know working on stuff around the house with with my dad because he is so keen on, I've talked about this before, I mean, his carbon footprint is teeny tiny because he just reuses things and fixes things and says, oh, he's just always got these boxes of random fittings and screws and this elbow that came off of a sink somewhere. It was like, he just always has this stuff. Sometimes the problem is he'll want to spend an entire afternoon trying to rehabilitate a section of stovepipe. And I'm like, we could buy that for $40. That's one hour of your labor. Why don't we just do that? And it also will be nicer. But all the stuff that we grew up with, when it came to that kind of stuff, was janky.

So this sounds like something your dad would do. I was somewhat satisfied with myself last night. I'm going to tell you a little story here.

Stop talking about satisfying yourself. So, you're the one who brought up the kinky hose. Kids and fantasy. So, obviously, I've mentioned many times on the show, I volunteer with a group on Sundays. One of the things we hand out on the reg is little tiny bottles of hand sanitizer, like little travel-sized bottles, you know? And, I don't know, back in the day, there was a woman who would buy these things. She had a good line on these, like, small hand sanitizers. She would go over somewhere on the east side to like a dollar store or something. I think she was able to get them for like, I don't know, maybe I think it I think at a time she was able to get them for like 50 cents a piece or something. This might have been coming off of the pandemic. And so people had a bunch extra or whatever. But it was a really good deal on these things. And then she left for a while. And so I sort of picked up where she left off on buying these things. But I didn't know where I don't know the east side. I didn't want to say what dollar store on the east side will sell me these things. So I unfortunately turned to Amazon, which a lot of people in our group do not like it when I buy stuff off of Amazon because it doesn't seem right on mission with us. But also, if it's the cheapest way to go and we need to keep an eye on our bottom line, which we very much need to do with this organization, well, then I'm going to buy things on Amazon. So anyway, one thing that I realized was on Amazon, yes, you can buy little bottles of the hand sanitizer, but they seemed way more expensive than what Alice was paying for them on the east side. But I realized, oh, well, you can buy empty bottles. You can buy little tiny. I'm trying to remember what, like two ounce. Would it be two ounces? Yeah, two ounce empty refillable travel bottles for something like hand sanitizer. So I bought a box of these things and then just like went to like the store near my house that sells like restaurant goods or whatever and bought like kind of a big bottle of hand sanitizer. And I filled them up and just like, you know, this is a very tedious task that I think you can picture me doing. Maybe Walt as well. Sure.

Yeah, I could see him doing that.

Thank you. I just need to clear my throat. So I just needed I just needed you to say something. That's why I turned that into a question for a second.

I was like, all right, we're checking in. Sure. Walt would do that.

Thank you for the cover there. The listeners will never know. That's the beauty of that. Like, why didn't I just clear my damn throat? Anyway, so I experimented with that, like, whatever, a couple of years ago. And then I just kept doing it. I just kept like, whatever. Okay, we need more hand sanitizer. I just hit order on the same order on Amazon. I'd get these little bottles and I'd go to the store and I'd buy a big jug of hand sanitizer and I'd fill them up. and um last night i was listening to the mariners game i'm like you know what i'm gonna get ahead of these bottles a little bit i'm gonna fill up a few weeks worth of these instead of doing them at the last minute so i'm having myself a little moment as i'm like opening up these little bottles filling them with hand sanitizer and then closing them up and and you know just kind of like refilling the boxes and it's kind of a satisfying little thing but like for any normal human being this is a huge waste of time right and as you like to say all the time luke time is money you say that yeah you bark it at me a lot when i'm in the middle of one of my long sometimes i say

mime is money you do say that which is funny and then when i'm quoting billy crystal i believe from spinal tap oh see he plays the mime in that i think he and like dana carvey are like mimes that have been hired to work at like a record release event for the band spinal tap and i feel i feel like at some point he says mime is money i think i remember you saying i've probably seen

that movie all the way through once maybe twice but you've told me the story of of spinal tap out of order but probably completely about a hundred times on the show because you remember it so well um so anyway here's my satisfying moment it wasn't just the the tedious job of filling these things up i'm more neutral on that than you might think but i had this moment where i was like andrew i don't even really know if you're saving money doing this i've never done like real cost comparison here so i took a break from filling bottles with hand sanitizer and i came my office with a scratch pad luke a literal scratch pad and i looked at some numbers i crunch some numbers and so isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheet i um i'd so i looked up what i pay for these little isn't that for techno geeks with spreadsheet i i looked at what i pay for these little plastic bottles i can't remember all the math on this right now and i'm sure nobody wants me to get in the numbers and then i looked at like i looked at u.s chef store one liter bottle of hand sanitizer the exact same kind i buy and i noted the price of that and then i sort of did some math and i and i'm like oh i am paying about 50 cents a bottle for this little two ounce bottle of uh hand sanitizer the whole thing is like 50 cents plus i'm charging the group for my time which is a hundred dollars an hour um so you got to work that in there no but uh i there's your broken belly in.

Um, but then I did some comparison shopping about like, what if I just wanted to buy like these little bottles already completely filled from Purell or something like that. And the bottles are like one ounce and a dollar a piece. And I am, so you are saving money, saving a lot of money. And it just justifies this weird, tedious thing I do because part of it isn't even like you might think that like, oh, I have these moments of Zen when I'm filling these bottles. And if I do it right, like I was last night, that was kind of pleasant, but usually I'm doing it the very last minute as I'm rushing out the door with like a jug of lemonade and a thing of coffee I'm like god damn it I forgot to fill the bottles again I'm just gonna you know do a few to get us through the through the day but when I saw that I actually like this process that I've been locked into that I've been too lazy to change is actually you know quite I guess monetarily efficient that's not a phrase but do you have a funnel um well that's where I get real cheap get Walter on the line I the only reason I use I don't need the funnel because it's a pump bottle so I can pump it into the little bottles very easily right but when I'm because I'm buying these big jugs of hand sanitizer there's always quite a bit left on the bottom that I can't pump out because just you're buying things in mass quantities like that the little the little pump isn't going to reach everything so I do get the kitchen funnel and I always turn over the almost empty bottle of hand sanitizer into a half-used big bottle of hand sanitizer to make sure that we're not wasting a drop of this stuff, Luke, not a drop. Well, that's good. See, I'm glad that you

have the satisfaction of knowing that this is both occasionally relaxing for you, but also

financially the right call for the pop-up. I mean, imagine how I would have felt if I'd been doing this for probably three years or something. Yeah, and it was costing more or even the same as just clicking a different button on Amazon, I would have been pretty mad at myself because I should have just done this math a long time ago. And I remember even having a little bit of a sense of dread coming into my office being like, I have been asking myself that same question and I do not like the answer. The funny part is you describe it as being too

lazy to come up with a new system. But in fact, it's more labor intensive. The too laziness that i would embark upon or uh traffic in would be that i would just be buying you know these mini bottles on amazon constantly and never actually figuring out if i could do it in a cheaper way you were doing the heart you were doing it the harder way but but i guess it's just nice to know

that at least it also saved you money this is my brand of laziness though luke and now we're getting to something here not even for the listeners but for you and i as friends because Because you've danced around the edges of sort of identifying something about my personality that is maybe a little bit hard to put one's finger on. And I do think overlaps maybe with Walt a little bit, although I can't claim to know his motivations or what happens in the heart of a Burbank. But my laziness comes from not wanting to do the homework on something or deal with change in a certain way. I think that because this will happen with the technology that we use sometimes. Right. You asked me the other day or a while back when I was having issues with my mute button on my on my board. You're like, well, can we just buy you a new board? Like, what is it? It's a banana, Michael. What could it cost? Ten dollars. I'm just like, well, I don't want to get into researching radio boards. So I just moved my cable. I just moved my microphone over a pot and just now I know don't use pot number one on my board. And like and I think my computer situation is a very good example, too. I have two computers now, one that I had thought I had retired, and then I pulled it out of retirement like Al Pacino and the Godfather. For one more job. Yeah, my computer, as I opened it up, it said, every time I'm out, it pulled me back in. And the main computer I use here, too, like we're coming up to the TBTL-a-thon. I need some pretty good, powerful computer programming to do what we plan on doing, which isn't that big of a deal, but it's just like it's time to get a new computer, but it has been time. i've been telling you and john since we started this company one year ago almost yeah i'm getting a new computer soon and i did ask a couple of friends for uh for some advice on like a computer that would be good for video editing but also not too big whatever like but the thing is like if i sit down to finally get a new computer potentially that will make my life easier in some ways but the laziness comes in like i don't feel like sitting down to do the research because i feel like with a pretty big purchase and i'm gonna need to buy like a really good computer like i and it's not just like i'm not in a mac setup here so i have to like really kind of figure out what brand i want and like what's going to you know solve all of my problems in life i'm putting a lot on this computer um but it's kind of like i don't know man it seems like to pull the trigger on something is a little intimidating for me because i don't want to blow a big chunk of money on something that ends up being a bit of a disappointment to me and again it's like sitting down to do the research it's like well you know it's easier just trudging along with this stuff a little. bit longer downloading a new driver to your dell exactly i did update my drivers the other day so anyway yeah so do you sort of see how those things kind of fit together like there is a laziness in me it just manifests itself in a way that makes me work harder but i also think

i think you um and listen as a as a co-owner of this business with you i'm very glad you're this way but i think you do take purchases whether it's for tbtb stuff or just in your personal life of large items you take it pretty seriously you want to get the right thing and i think you also are a little hard on yourself if you feel like you got the wrong thing so i think you create a certain amount of pressure on yourself to like to really nail it in terms of the purchase where my approach is to just keep buying things until one of them works out which is why we're in a lot of financial which is why i can't afford a computer which is why you're surrounded by computers you're

currently uploading the show from an abacus and while i'm watching you on the screen right now you're mopping your brow with the computer that is yeah that is i know it's the worst possible use of the technology is that the new ipad is that the ipad that is all the so thin andrew

it's so so thin you just wouldn't even believe it but no i mean i just i know that you so it's like the anxiety around sort of the pulling the trigger on the purchase for you and wondering did I actually make the right call is this the device that's going to uh you know work for me am I going to be overspending or am I going to realize two weeks later I should have gotten this other thing like that anxiety for you it feels bad and so you just continue to limp along the thing that you have so you don't have to confront that other feeling and there's also other things

too that are just kind of like well if I get a new computer which you know should be a good fun feeling then you're like well what also is tied in that is that I have all of the tbtl archive not all of them, everybody calls, people freak out when they realize we're not backing things up properly. But like, you know, I have a lot of TBTL archives still on this computer. It means I need, I have a drive that I'm going to bounce that all to. I have just like, if I get a new computer, then project time begins because, and this is stuff I don't dislike doing, but I'm like, I got to sit down and then make sure that I move everything over and then install a whole bunch of software on this computer. Again, it's not, I think Macs are a little bit better at like, especially and for maybe more creative endeavors. They're kind of more ready to go. I will have to install. I will have to see, you know, like move my subscription programs over to this and hopefully like I don't get an issue with Adobe and transferring it to another computer, dealing with license stuff, dealing with driver stuff. Like there is just like kind of a lot of complications. Not stuff that I dislike doing, but when I sit down to think, oh, man, I need a new computer, I just think about all that stuff And then I'm like, you know what I should probably do is get better at MLB The Show 23 right now.

What's the name of that character that our friend John Goodwin has created?

He didn't create him, but he's like somebody created him on TikTok.

It's like Harvey McCock Swans or something.

Yes, and he's a steroid. I don't know how to do this, but yeah, somebody has made these videos of just make. they've created this character this baseball player in mlb the show which is the most roided up giant character that only hits home runs and then like we'll just like make these hilarious tiktoks for years now these hilarious tiktoks of this uh of somebody doing a voiceover

about the history of this character all right listen let's thank some dazzling donors and then i do want to hear about your uh adventures in bar hopping on friday um so and also i've got to update you on the adventures that the little sluggers have been getting up to by the way i am getting um a uh a note here from our friend uh john goodwin i asked what's the name of your mlb roided up character and he said ah yes

lasteroid daddy hack the fourth that's right tell him i need some more i know i could probably find them on tiktok myself but i like it much better when john just spoon feeds me these uh tiktoks Tell him I need more.

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.

Everybody razzle-dazzle. All right, let's do that thing known as thanking the dazzling donors. These are the folks who are donating a dazzling amount of dough. They are keeping TBTL in business almost one year exactly from when we launched out as, I guess it was our second pass at being an independent entity. The first time was when we got fired from Cairo. Told that story many times. I was called into Rod Arquette's office. He said, we're switching around some programming on the station. And I said, okay, in what way?

We're moving TBTL off the air. And I said, what are the other changes? He said, that's pretty much it. Which is, in retrospect, a pretty diplomatic way to tell you that you're being fired. So then we were independent. But in those days, the entire show was literally held up by a stick. It was a pretty bad thing. You want to talk about laziness, Andrew? You want to talk about lack of upgrading? At least you're using a computer for this. I had a stick holding up the shelf that the computer that was recording the show sat on. because I had installed the shelf so poorly that it kept collapsing and imperiling the entire recording every day.

I wish you still had that stick. I feel like that stick looms so large in the TBTL lore. Yeah, or the TBTL-lonian. Is anybody building a museum to us yet?

I believe there are some plans in the works. Anyway, so then we were independent. Then we sort of teamed up with American Public Media, and then we consciously uncoupled from them, and now here we are, two beautiful, two biz, you, me, and our friend John Sklaroff, all being able to do this as our job thanks to folks like Ann Bost, who's in Orleans, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Cod.

Nice. Yes. Say hi to Jay Allison for us. Thank you.

That's right. So happy to be one of the Tardy Dazzlers, Trademark Between wrinkled hoses and tardy dazzlers This is a very, very R-rated program today, Andrew Here with my message To say thanks for all the hours of fun And silliness and annoyance At the fact that you can't hear me When I add my two cents to the conversation Oh, we hear you, Ann We hear you That part's on me, though, not on you I appreciate how your conversations range From the ridiculous to the sublime Often in the same episode One moment, you're discussing the tracheotomy trope of scripted TV in the 70s and 80s. I saw that on Quincy and MASH. The tracheotomy trope of scripted TV in the 70s and 80s. That would be people that are using, characters that are using those kind of vocal amplifiers, if you've had.

I don't, I mean, honestly, I don't have any recollection of the conversation that we're talking about here. I was hoping you would know Do you think that Anne is maybe confusing us With another podcast

God I hope she's donating to the right show

I don't care Just donate to us Wait let me put that a different way She is I don't mind Anne can listen to whatever she wants to But please donate to this one

That's right And then veering off to talk about anxiety And other adulting topics That remind me that we're all out here Just doing the best we can I heard a Buddhist monk say that life is easier when we accept the fact that we're all bent bananas. Well, now we're talking about bent bananas. I mean, can we get our minds out of the gutters for one second here on today's episode?

I did not see a Peyronie's disease.

We're all bent bananas. I think the way you both share your personal stories and accept each other and the people around you, most of the time, models that ideal and makes the TBTL community a very accepting bunch. Sorry, Ann says for the bland words. It's one bent banana, Andrew. How much could it be?

$50 a month.

Yeah. We've finally figured out how much one banana is, Michael. And it turns out it's $50 a month.

Thank you so much, Ann. It really is. I always kind of want to say this. We thank these donors and these dazzling donors every day. And it's fun to read everybody's messages. um but always in the back of my mind too is i just want to remind everybody like it's truly dazzling like you you say that you know but it's a really i mean that is yeah such a commitment you're talking about me not not your words but how i can be maybe very cautious with money at times and so the idea of donating fifty dollars a month to a podcast that you could otherwise get for free but you want to make sure that easy but you want to make sure that it sticks around for a long time I just want to give folks their due and remind people that these are very, very, very generous donations that we really appreciate. We appreciate all the donations, everything that everybody is doing, but I also just want to point out that this is something really special.

Yeah, it is. And this is a thing that I say very often when we're in this part of the show thanking the donors, which is the media landscape continues to be a very, very chaotic place. and the the fact that this is working somehow that like this is a job for three people this is three full-time jobs this show thanks to people like Anne is it's just remarkable to me like I don't really know how we lucked into this because there are so many people that are you know radio shows and

you know newspapers and attempts at podcasts and i mean it's just it's a really crazy world out there and it's so hard to figure out the business model and somehow in all of this this little weird thing tbtl like still exists you know 4205 episodes later so so yeah thanks ann and it is you're right it is a dazzling it's a dazzling gesture from the dazzling donors as a person who recently downgraded his washington post subscription andrew oh really this is a bad

time to be bringing that up but what do you mean downgraded it well what i realized was i just

haven't been reading the washington post as much as i i used to i don't know why i think i've kind of engaged with the oregonian and actually you know what i read now you know what i subscribe to is the columbian which is the official newspaper of vancouver washington i you know what it's a family-run newspaper i think it's it's run by the maybe grandson or great-grandson of the founder Which I kind of think is cool

Yeah I think it's going to support local journalism like that

You know I really like that So I'm a digital subscriber to that product now And so I was kind of doing a little inventory Of like okay of the papers that I subscribe to Because I subscribe to the New York Times The LA Times The Post And the Columbian and the Oregonian And the Seattle Times And I was like I don't know if I've been reading the Post quite as much of late So I went and I thought you know what I'm going to replace the I'm going to let democracy die in the darkness That's what I essentially decided

Well you switch from a paper out of the District of Columbia To a paper that is

That's right, as long as it has Columbia in the name I feel pretty good about it I also, you know, to be honest with you Andrew I thought Jeff Bezos is going to be okay Which is a weird way to look at it Because I do really like the journalism Of the Washington Post But it's like, if I'm thinking about the local Family that owns the Columbian Of Vancouver, Washington Or Jeff Bezos I just I'm going with the local family that owns the Colombian so well listen I I I think it's

really important to support papers like the Colombian because they're much more at risk of folding so I'm not trying to talk you out of that having said that I do think I don't think that Bezos is getting rich off of the Washington Post the danger there is if the Washington Post doesn't you know clear you know if the Washington Post isn't operating in the black then we could potentially lose good journalists that are you know what I mean absolutely up there I don't think it's like Bezos is going to go under it's the paper that's going to go under exactly no and

and and so uh I went to the Washington Post and I decided okay I'm going to stop I'll just like read whatever I get you know my 10 free articles a month or something and so I hit I'm going to cancel my subscription and it was like oh do you want to pause it and I was like I'm going to go ahead and cancel it and it was like well do you want it for half price for a year and I was like

all right i'll do that do you lose any any access no it was just kind of like please don't go

it was please don't go girl it'll ruin my whole world it was okay how about if we give you the same amount of washington post but for half the money for a year and i thought all right you've got yourself a deal you hit a big button that says do you love me now mommy i do i thought that was weird yes yeah exactly so all that is to say andrew We really do appreciate the dazzling donors and folks like Ann who are completely voluntarily supporting this operation and allowing it to go on all these years later. It's just kind of amazing. So thanks, Ann. Maestro?

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

Look who it is. It's Jeff Zapata of Ballard, Washington. Is it? Beautiful Ballard.

You think Jeff wrote this?

I haven't pre-read it.

Is there a reason to think that Jeff did not write this? I haven't pre-read it either, except for the very first sentence. I'm starting to wonder if maybe there is a ghostwriter, somebody who's within the organization who's punching these things up.

Yeah, now that I'm reading the first line, this is becoming a disturbing trend. First and foremost, John is the best. The other guys can pound sand.

I wonder if some of these dazzling donor messages have been coming in after we've pointed out how they've been really focusing on John and how much he dazzles. I wonder if this is a response to that.

Also, I mean, do we know for a fact that Jeff Zapata is a real person?

I don't know. I've never been in the same room. Actually, I might have been, and if so, good to see you. Probably at Rough and Tumble there in Ballard, Washington.

Jeff says, I give it to the show because it's important to me and has been for years. starting with cairo and then falling off when they went off the air and rediscovering years later as a podcast i started back just before andrew moved to la and stuck with it even though i was unsure about going forward without jen i'm so glad i did as i count on luke and andrew to go with me on my dog walks every day it always brings me a little joy and who doesn't love that I love thinking of that i love thinking about i'm going on dog walks with jeff yes and the dogs that's right have you been taking bingo on on his catwalks not we never go outside of the yard um and and bingo is he was at first pretty like pretty tense whenever a car would even drive by the house seriously um yeah now he's he's gotten used to that which again i think is sort of a double-edged sword um but i don't think we want him to he seems to be fulfilled by just taking a long walk around the yard with me and Genevieve it's usually Genevieve's deal I've taken him on a couple of walks but it is fun I mean he is just so filled with joy out there and again I want to be clear like he doesn't just like drop to the ground and start rolling around he doesn't do that at all he trots around the yard and he kind of leads us to all these places that he wants to check out and he eats a metric ton

of grass really yeah he loves isn't that supposed to indicate um they have a bit of an upset stomach that's what i heard about oh animals eating grass they're trying to like regulate something i just

i mean bingo will eat first of all bingo will eat anything the reason why all of my plants are like balanced precariously on my uh windowsill above my kitchen sink is because it's the only place where he won't eat my plants um so i think he just has a tendency to do that he'll he'll eat anything he'll eat a bag of chips he'll eat a radish uh by the way i were you and i in the

produce in our respective produce sections at literally the same moment yesterday no i went

a little bit out of my way to return your joke i was checking out i was literally like paying the bill at sprouts i just picked up a couple of things when i got your text message i'm like so i paid and then i marched back to the produce section to take that but i i had not left the

building I was just paying I was picking up some produce yesterday and I saw radishes and if you've been listening carefully to the show as Jeff Zapata has been presumably on his dog walks you'll know that Andrew and I have been talking a lot about radishes lately and I said now weirdly because Andrew mentioned enjoying eating radishes now when I see them I think of him so when I saw some radishes yesterday in the store I took a picture and said thinking of you and what seemed like with lightning fast response i get a picture of an eggplant from you saying thinking of you too or whatever and i'm just i was literally laughed out loud in the produce section of safeway i guess

i could i could use that as a show pic today since we've been absolutely now it's been introduced into the into the canon although i want to let people know i when i look back at that photo i sent of you i like picked up i i picked up the vegetable and took a photo of it the eggplant and send it to you, like, my hand looks all weird and red. I want everybody to know that I'm okay. I think it's just the lighting in the store.

Okay, I'll double-check that. I want you to know that I didn't note your hand looking weird when I – Oh, yeah, there you go. It looks very red, right? No, I was just – there you go with the eggplant. What if I sent you a peach? We just keep going back and forth.

A peach, right. I had to take a moment. Are there any other dirty icons? Not that I know of.

I'm also pretty out of the loop on that stuff. I'm going to be completely honest with you. Yeah.

Oh, I can think of one more, but okay.

We'll just move on. Let's just get back to Jeff's message. Jeff says, I don't have anything to promote, so I'll say, and I'm aware I'm preaching to the choir, if you're in the position to help someone with donations of time or money, please do it. Even small things help. If you aren't able to do that, then just be nice to people. It doesn't cost a thing, and it feels just as nice for you. As I've heard said, help good get the upper hand Oh, help good get the upper hand, yeah I was listening to All Things Considered yesterday I was considering All Things And they have this, I love this little segment It's called My Unsung Hero I think it's from the people that brought you Hidden Brain I believe it's part of the Shankar Vedantham empire Of content creation um but it's it's so life-affirming and it's just you know somebody coming on to talk about someone who did them a service in some way you know somebody was on their way to a job interview and they fell over and they were you know hurt themselves on the sidewalk and someone came and helped them and got them cleaned up and got them on their way to their interview or somebody had lost a loved one and and somebody just came up to them and and said you know in the hospital you look like you need a hug and you know just these little moments i heard this really intense one a guy was in dc and he was suffering through some pretty strong depressive episode and he was having thoughts of self-harm and a woman smiled him on the street and it changed the whole trajectory of his day and potentially his life because this one stranger just smiled at him on the street as he was on his way to potentially harm himself so anyway the one that i heard uh yesterday was a woman who grew up in mexico city and her family did not have a lot of money but they were very very um intent

upon being of service to other people and in fact what they did was they um would help people who lived literally within a landfill in mexico city so these were people that were you know you you hear about this in some places where people are actually living within the confines of a landfill because there is stuff that can be sort of harvested and recycled and sold and consumed in various ways and this woman's family even though they didn't really have any money they would go in and and and try to raise money to help build clinics and schools and just try to make life a little more livable for the people that were at the absolute bottom of the economic sort of spectrum and one day somebody came to town from some organization and just handed her mom a paper bag full of money and said buy a house with this and they did and she said that that changed this person was from some relief group in the states and was aware of the work that her family was doing And she said that this changed the entire trajectory of her life, because instead of paying rent on this house, her parents were able to put that money towards her college education. So she got to go to college, and then her kids got to go to college because she had a good job from going to college. Anyway, it was just really powerful, but it was, I mean, that's an incredible gesture to hand someone a bag of money, but it's also an incredible gesture what her family was doing, you know? This idea that they were not people of means. It wasn't like they were rich and they were sharing their wealth with other people. They were poor. But they were figuring out a way to make other people's lives a little more livable. I just thought that was a really good reminder for me and for everybody else that it isn't. I don't need to wait until my ship comes in and I feel like I have all the money in the world and now I can start. Again, this will embarrass you, but I really admire what you do with the pop-up on Sundays. i think that's a really nice thing to do i mean uh i don't i wish you make a casserole or something luke i mean come on man i wish you weren't paying yourself a hundred dollars an hour to transfer hand sanitizer into smaller containers you want to read the fine print on my quote-unquote volunteer work yeah exactly but anyway um no you know so anyway all that is to say uh jeff thank you for supporting us and thank you for the reminder that in in sort of ways both large and small, we can all make the world a little bit of a better place. And it doesn't have to be necessarily a huge outlay of money. Although if somebody has that ability, that's pretty great too. But just being a kind person in the world is also adding to the overall happiness. So Jeff, thanks for the reminder. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. At the end of yesterday's program you said to me i want to tell you about something that happened on friday a bar that you went to and had some kind of experience that's the extent of what i know about this whole thing but i legitimately have been curious about it for the the last 24 hours so what happened okay well

i'm going to do what you sometimes do when you start a story especially when it's been sort of like promoted or you keep on saying i'm going to talk about this then it's time to actually talk about it you like to sort of set expectations and i will do the same exact thing and just say this quote-unquote story i'm about to tell will change your life forever and it will probably go down in history as the best story ever told on tbtl so i just wanted to set the expectation no my point is i don't even know that this is so much a story but it was an interesting experience i had and i'm gonna have to not unlike baby reindeer i'm gonna have to sort of like tell it up to a part and then back up and tell you another part okay okay um so on aurora as you kind of head south from my house but you're getting closer to like kind of the green lake aurora area for people who are around here and for those who aren't you get to this area it's funny like you get to these little micro pockets like on aurora that i think is very interesting as i sort of like going to get to know the neighborhood more and and take walks kind of in that area you kind of walk through like there's kind of a more latin area like kind of between the green lake area and and where i live um with kind of like bodegas and um what is the word for market where you can actually go there are little markets where you can also go in and get some tacos and stuff um anyway i'm blanking on the name but um anyway so i i'm i'm sort of like learning taqueria it's not a taqueria it's like merca carniceria i think it's just spanish from mercado mercado thank you i think that's the word i'm looking for um so anyway on friday i thought i was going to be done with my work really early but i kind of ran into some technical snags on some things and so i was um i worked yeah called

called muting me on the show that's right i believe was the technical snag i had forgotten

um when you were talking yesterday you would you had mentioned that we had recorded friday's show on thursday i had completely forgotten about that when i was telling you about my technical snafus, but that must have played into it. That's probably why I forgot.

got when i sat down on friday to upload the show and i learned that my main recording was sort of was sort of um you know unusable compromise exactly i'm like i'll use the backup and now at that point had been like 24 hours i'd forgotten that the backup also was compromised in its own way that wasn't interesting so anyway again setting expectations for what you're about to hear so anyway um on friday i i worked a little bit later than i expected to and then i also like kind of weird but like i sort of like like kind of pounded some um teriyaki kind of late in the day it wasn't teriyaki though it was a yakisoba so it was like kind of like carb based there's there's a reason i'm bringing this all up i kind of got done with work and usually on a friday i'm like oh yes i'm done with work like put on the ball game or go you know whatever throw some darts or whatever but this time i was like i just feel gross i've been sitting in my office eating unhealthy food and I just feel like kind of gross and greasy and I feel like maybe I want to take a walk but I'm not entirely sure so I just sort of cautiously leave my house I think I throw a camera over my shoulder and I'm like maybe I'll literally walk around the block and come back or maybe I'll just take a longer walk like let's just see what happens here Genevieve was out on a walk herself I think with her hammock somewhere in a park and so I leave here not exactly knowing what I'm going to do and i'm like you know what there's this little bar down on this in the stretch of aurora that i was telling you about um that we've passed a lot like kind of in the car and i've never been in it and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna i don't know why i'm being protective i'll tell you everything about this place except for its name but you know somebody could figure it out pretty easily i think um but there's this area where there's a lot of motorcycle shops and scooter It's like a little microcosm or a little micro economy sort of on Aurora in this place in this like, I don't know, two or three block radius. And amongst this is a little bar that I think it was probably some sort of a garage, like whether it was an auto repair or a motorcycle repair shop at one point, or maybe it was in a motorcycle dealership itself. I don't know, but it's now a little bar that seems sort of vaguely motorcycle themed, but I don't mean like motorcycle bar like in the 1980s version of somebody obliviously walks into the wrong bar. And the next thing you know, you have to do a special dance to tequila in order to get tequila rather to get out of there with your hide. It's not like a biker bar like that. It seems to just be kind of culturally birthed from, you know, this area of of motorcycles and scooters. And you see some people hanging out there. I don't even know if I've ever actually noticed the clientele before. All I know is I've always been a little bit intrigued by it, but can't really see into the windows that well. And I don't know what's going on. And I always say to these, we should try that sometimes. And Vives always says, like, I don't know. Do you are they going to ask me what kind of motorcycle I drive? Like, it's just like a little bit of social anxiety about going into this place.

so okay now this is the part where I'm going to back up a little bit and tell you something that seems totally unrelated I also and it's a confusing name on Instagram I'm not going to tell you the handle right now but I follow a Instagram account that I find absolutely fascinating I can I don't want to get distracted with it now Lucas will derail my story such that it is but I'll email you a link to it later because I think you'd like it it is like a design based Instagram account that is mostly these astounding awesome graphics from like textbook covers and like instruction manuals and stuff but like from the 1960s and 70s and it is just so cool I know that it would be up your alley I love it to death and it's somebody who runs this account and they just you know they accumulate these things this is not stuff they're creating this is actual kind of archival stuff or so i thought what i realized while scrolling one day that some of these some of these illustrations that are in this instagram feed are actually originals by the person who makes the account or keeps this account so mostly it's just stuff that they've gathered and they're sharing but some of these are little posters for a dj night at this little motorcycle bar ah and and the posters that this person is making are so cool they're exactly in the style of these old kind of 1960s geograph uh what's the word i'm looking for um not geographical but whatever like very very shape-based design and everything it's very very cool and i'm like wait a second what is going on so this person whose account i follow i had no idea it was a seattle based account i thought it was out of europe somewhere but i look more closely at it i see several people that I follow in Seattle and friends follow this account and that this person who, you know, apparently creates this account also is a DJ who hosts a little DJ night at this place. Now, I am not.

somebody Luke who sees a poster for a DJ night and says I want to be there that is like the opposite of my personality but there was something about seeing this strange converted garage that is now a small bar that also has a DJ night that is somehow affiliated with this really cool Instagram account that I follow and everything just sort of seems like I think I gotta walk in this place so on my walk on Friday I find myself wandering south down Aurora and then at one point I like look up I'm like how far is this place it's like I don't know maybe two miles from my house maybe a mile and a half and I'm like let me just see let me just wander down there and if I get tired I'll turn around otherwise I'll just go down to the bar so I make it all the way down there and I'm a little bit huffy huffing and puffing at this point um and I I kind of the door for the bar is off of Aurora it's on the side street it's on the corner and it's unclear which door I'm supposed to go in one of them is sort of boarded up or whatever and I go to there's like a group of people who are like having beers on a picnic table right outside the bar I assume they're customers but I'm not paying attention to them I don't think they're paying attention to me keep in mind there's a little bit of social anxiety around this bar anyway like am I cool enough to go in here do I need to ride up on some sort of a Harley or a Vespa or something cute or you know do i have to look like a dj or whatever but so i try this one door and it doesn't open and i don't realize i'm being watched until like everybody at this picnic table outside yells wrong door hey that's the wrong door and i'm like okay i'm being watched here but it seemed very friendly and i'm like oh what is it this one around the corner like no no just the one right next to it i'm like okay this is a strange interaction that i figure out which door works so that seems like a victory to me i go in there's literally nobody in this bar it's a it's a very small little space and like i say you can tell it's like converted from something else you i see that there are a couple of like on a very very small i wouldn't even call it a stage a little kind of corner of the bar there is like kind of a dj setup but nobody's there it's quiet in there the only person who's in there is um the bartender and i think maybe he is serving a couple of other people a couple of beers out of a cooler there are no taps there's no booze there's just like a little you know kind of a cooler refrigerator thing with various kinds of bottles of beer in there and so um he's talking to his other customers and then i order like a miller high life and he sets it down in front of me and this is a very small detail but like it's a twist off cap he doesn't even open it for me and i don't know why that struck me i kind of like this is how socialized social engineering this is how socialized i am like i know it's like kind of the law i think you have to open it for a patron don't you or at least it's some sporting events am i am i wrong about that it's rare you know why they give you an unopened beer you know what my

understanding of why they do that at sporting events i'm not even kidding so you don't throw it and bonk somebody yeah so if you throw it it will presumably leak out its contents and it will be less damaging yeah that's what i had heard like when i was a kid or something too like we can't give you something with the lid on it because then you're containing the liquid inside and you

could just chuck it from the 300 level yeah and I guess bars especially since the pandemic you see like I was in a bar one time when somebody came in and ordered like a few bottles of beer to go and that was in like big Mario's or something so it must not be a law but it's just very so anyway he sets down this beer in front of me and I sort of just waited for a while like for him to open and then I realized oh this is just a twist off and I like twist it off and then like somehow as he's chatting with these other two people at the bar he incorporates me into the conversation and I can't remember exactly what it was there was a Mariners game on and I was sort of hoping there would be a tv or something in here and the Mariners game would be on but there were no tvs but that's fine so I I'm trying to dial up the game on my phone um and the people who he was serving sort of leave and then it's just me and him and he's just acting first of all I think he might have looking back I think he's probably had a couple of beers at first I thought oh maybe he's been enjoying a little bit of mary jane he was definitely like he was very chill he was very friendly but also it seemed a little bit like the conversation was all over the place with him and um we're chatting a little bit i think maybe about baseball or whatever the conversation is sort of all over the place we're talking about the neighborhood a little bit but then people are sort of coming and going and i guess these are the people who are hanging out at the picnic table but like at one point like a woman comes in and she orders another beer from this guy but it's clear like everybody knows each other really well and she looks at me and she's just like why are you in here just come join us at the picnic table I'm like no I'm fine in here she's like okay I'm just like and I'm starting to realize I'm sort of keeping this guy at the bar like it's such a casual sort of scene and I sort of realize oh and you know what else he's got like a kind of a toaster oven looking thing behind the bar and he's like making ribs like baby back ribs every now and then like just a couple of like slabs I'm sure it's not actually a toaster oven, but it's like a tiny little oven. in that's behind him like sitting up behind the bar it's kind of like got two shelves and he's got like a a rack of or maybe half a rack of baby back ribs on like this top and bottom and every now and then he just like goes in and then one point he just like picks a little piece off of it and tastes it i'm just like what is this place and he starts telling me he's like yeah no this used to be more like a real bar like you know i used to have staff and everything but ever since the pandemic it's just kind of me like we used to be like a grill like you could order food and stuff and I'm like okay whatever and but I still keep on having this feeling of this like wait a second he just wants to be outside with his friends uh-huh and so I think a couple of times people come in order something from him and then say to me like you know you can just join us outside I'm like no I'm here and everybody's like it's a nice evening there are no TVs in here you're staring at your phone by yourself they don't understand that I'm just a guy who likes to sit at bars sometimes you know even if it was for the beer even just for the you know just I like the scene of sitting at a bar and that's what I was in the mood to do but it seems so it just seemed like it didn't fit with what everybody was there to do which was be friends hang around a picnic

table and probably talk about motorcycles while having a beer me yeah I guess so and but I really

appreciated like it's could you know could have gone the other way it could have seemed very clicky right like all these people know each other they all have something in common which I don't have in common with them you could see them being like oh this guy's ruining the vibe but they were

just kind of like did you knock over one motorcycle which then led to many other motorcycles tipping

over because that could have alienated you it did but it did lead to a very memorable dance I'll tell you um but uh so anyway I mean I don't know that well I guess I don't I will warn you I don't have a great power out for this but um eventually I oh and this was just like serendipity at one point he puts on a song called Teenage Riot by um by Sonic Youth and it's one of my favorite Sonic Youth songs if not just one of my favorite songs uh it's like the the lead track off of daydream nation and um i'm just like oh man did you just put this song on i couldn't tell if an algorithm just picked up or if he just put this song on but it started from the beginning i'm like did you just put this on he's like yeah i'm like oh man this is one of my favorite songs i love sonic youth and he's like oh yeah and then what i realized what he's done and i don't think he did this for me because how could he know he just put on like a random mix of nothing but sonic youth songs so i'm in there just like listening to like songs that i haven't heard in like 20 years and having this great like kind of um you know nostalgic moment where i'm sitting at the bar listening to all these great sonic youth songs and one at one point i say to him i'm like hey listen you don't have to like stay in here with me if you want to go outside like i'm just happy sitting at the bar but like don't worry i'm not going to steal anything he's like yeah that's what people always say when they steal something uh and anyway so so he leaves and now i'm just sitting and now it does feel weird

he does take that uh sort of not permission yeah you say you can go hang out with your friends he's

like okay yeah kind of and like he's kind of a let's see he was kind of a bit of a shorter guy I think he even mentioned like I was shocked to hear this he said he was in his 60s he would not I mean I I would have guessed that he was my age um like and I'm 47 but like yeah so I guess he's a little bit older than me he kind of brought that up again the conversation was a little disjointed but also he was very very sweet he was a nice guy he started like busting my chops a little bit like people would come and be like this guy's a hipster he knows everything about the mariners and sonic youth i'm like i'm not a i'm not a hipster he's like well who's in the lineup right now and i'm just kind of like i'm trying i'm sweating as i'm trying to like name remember everybody in the mariners lineup it was just a very strange conversation well we've got

the steroid daddy he's like taking the mound but you know there are those people who kind of grew

up in seattle they they knew about the mariners during like you know the 95 96 season and then they stopped watching and they're like I'm trying to get back into it because I know they're supposed to be good now but anyway so he does leave for a long time then this is what really kind of took the what really is stole the show for me was um then a woman comes in and she's kind of she's a cool looking woman she's maybe about my age or something and she's got a kind of a bikery jacket and cool hipster glasses and she just comes in and I realize I'm sort of like my beer is empty and I'm sort of looking at the ball game on my phone probably I I have this like kind of resting anxiety face i think i probably have my hands up to my forehead and i'm just looking down at the phone show title i'll write it down by the way it was a blowout the mariners were winning something like eight to nothing at this point i wasn't anxious at all i think i just kind of give that that vibe off and this woman comes in she says you okay hon and i'm just like and she's she's behind the bar and i'm like um oh yeah no no i'm fine i'm sorry i just look like this i'm just watching the ball game and she's like no no i mean can i get you a beer or anything i'm just like oh okay yeah um i'll take another miller high life and i'm like oh it looks like he's out of them i'll just take that other bottle there or whatever and she's like handing it to me and and i'm like do you work here and she's like no no but i'll just tell sean i'll just tell sean that to charge you for this i'm like okay like so again i'm in here people who don't work here are just coming in grabbing beers out of the cooler giving them to me and serving me while they're all hanging out outside I can't tell who works here who doesn't work here or whatever Sean comes in even maybe one more beer or spliff uh later he's the owner guy and like he's a little bit more uh disoriented and he like kind of asked me three times as he settled as I settle up the tab what it was I drank but he's like I want to show you like my band space like we have because I said I mentioned something to him about like well my girlfriend was kind of hesitant to come in here because we weren't sure if it was kind of a biker bar he's like biker bar this isn't a bike i'm into art i'm into music we have a dj i mean my band plays in the back he's like before you leave later i want to show you i want to show you the band space i'm like okay so now i'm getting ready to leave we settle up and he's like and then i go to use the restroom i leave and i'm literally walking out the door he's like i was gonna show you the band space and i'm like okay okay cool and then I realized that that's then I realized oh yeah this is where the garage part of this building once was and there's an area where people can kind of sit and then he takes me kind of around back and it's like literally like going into like your friend's half converted garage where they work on motorcycles but also there's a drum set set up and like literally there's a workbench but you could see somebody setting up a bunch of chairs in here he's like yeah I got open night open mic nights but he like sort of just like pulls up a stool sits down on and sort of leans back on his workbench in this way that just reminded me of being in college again just like yeah this is my hangout room man it's pretty cool right what have i walked into but i'll tell you

what and if i i know that this has been a rambling story i'm going back man and i'm taking that was

with me yes that was my number one question was it did all of this sort of lead you to think oh yeah i want to i want to experience this energy and this vibe again yes which is odd because it's

not what i but it's not what i'm in the mood to go to a bar to like pull tabs and you know have a boilermaker whatever again like there's no there's no booze here it's just like a cooler but it just seems like basically and i've sort of got a whiff of this and other sort of seattle neighborhoods like this record store i go to in the sort of uh u district ravenna area that is like it's kind of a record shop and it's kind of a community space and it's just like kind of weirdos wanting to do their weirdo thing sort of and i sort of feel like this is that it almost i feel like there's little pockets of this in la too sort of like it's hard to say exactly is this a pizza shop a coffee shop

or a venue it's like yes okay right uh and you can do your laundry and you can do your laundry

and it just sort of felt like that in this charming way and so like i don't think it's the type of place where i'll be like hey i i want to go watch the game somewhere or whatever and and just you know kind of like or read a book or whatever but like if i'm ready to like sort of engage more i found all of these folks being and again i i've told you so many details about this place if anybody cared they could figure out what i'm talking about and i would assume that some people in our audience probably even know some of these people i don't know seattle is such a small space but um i'm definitely interested because everybody was so just delightful and welcoming but also seemed like they already had their small little group thing going on and i was just charmed by

the whole damn thing so it's like it's the place where if you if you feel like being social it's a place to go because people are going to strike up conversations people are going to hand you a beer yeah like it's that kind of vibe as opposed to sometimes you want to sit at the end of the bar and like lose yourself in a like watching home alone three muted right exactly which is more your big mario's kind of afternoon or evening or whatever so like you want to go back but you're going to go back when you're in the mood to kind of like chop it up with people because that's the

that's the energy see what's going on with the gang again see if they accept me in and see i didn't i should have mentioned this they did have to jump me in so that was that was something i wasn't quite ready for uh when i just wanted to take a little leg stretcher of a walk but uh well the funny thing

the funny thing about all of this andrew is and again we're just ultimately kind of pointing people more and more in the exact direction of this place that's fine but when you told me about it i i did a little googling this place is i mean steps steps from where i grew up like i'm talking about that intersection is if i close my eyes it's one of the most kind of like sort of regularly visited parts of the map of my childhood like it's you know and it's where my dad's sign shop was it's where craigen's pharmacy used to be it's and what's really interesting to me about it now looking it up it's first of all this place looks really rad to me it looks like a place i would totally love to go to even though i know nothing about motorcycles or motorcycle culture but it is shocking to me how much cooler it is than anything that was there when i was growing up we had nothing cool in that area you know what the pub was and it's not the same place but down the street was the lion's lair

which I just remember walking past the lion's lair as a kid and just thinking like light cannot penetrate into this place. Like it was just where like it was where grownups did where grownups went to do bad things in my mind. Like they smoked cigarettes and they drank beer and they got loud. And like there was just like it's I guess my point is with the changing nature of Seattle and where people live and the kind of folks that move into different places. this is me learning that there may be some cool shit going on in the neighborhood I grew up in which had nothing cool going on when I was there

yeah and I was talking to the owner slash bartender a little bit about that too how it sort of seems like and especially around Green Lake like we've said on the show that the part of Aurora that I live off of is still like very very rough in a lot of different ways a lot of crime another kind of big drive-by shooting again just like last weekend yeah I mean you hear this and you see a lot of people struggling in a lot of ways and you know it's rough and it's kind of funny as you walk down Aurora sort of seeing it change just a little bit slightly you know what I mean you get it when you start putting some of the huge storage uh what do you call them like the storage unit places behind you which is those are always sort of an indicator of a neighborhood too I sort of feel like um you store it sort of places the further you walk and then you get towards Green Lake which is a little bit more moneyed but this area that we're talking about is not necessarily moneyed it's still

aurora it's where you can go to maybe buy a used computer from a guy that will only open the door

that will only open the top half of the door exactly yeah um and so anyway but i i i'm generally i i'm a little embarrassed i don't think that story really went anywhere but it was just sort of a very charming unexpected night and then i ended up walking all the way home too so i definitely kind of got my steps in and it was just one of those nights where i got done with my work at like seven or whatever it was and i was like eh should i play some darts right now should i just like play my play my video game or whatever i'm like well let me just stretch my legs and just and just see maybe just walk around the block next thing you know it's like 10 o'clock 10 30 at night i'm coming home and telling genevieve like you will not believe what happens in that bar that we've always been curious about and i am definitely taking you back with me because you will love these folks it definitely see that's what genevieve really liked about la with this sort of like warm welcoming i don't know who you are but here's a beer and let's let's talk about what we do you know and i think that genevieve will really like this place that's

awesome now i'm glad to hear that i'm glad you enjoyed it and you want to go back because and this is a very weird this is a weird place to take it but i've been thinking a lot about social connections lately um what they've been doing a lot of research on like longevity and and one of the things that they've found that is almost as important as genetics in terms of a long life and also a quality a good quality of life is social connections now I don't know why it is you have to go to the bar to find those but it's like I've been thinking about that in my own life because I talk to you pretty much every day for this show you know I've I do have people in my life that I'm close to but I do think that oddly enough for someone who's very I think because a lot of my job stuff is it feels very social yeah that I actually have a tendency to kind of a little bit withdraw when I'm not working oh me too man definitely you know like it's just you're kind of I don't I'm that whole like my social battery is really dead like I don't know about that whole terminology but I do feel like there are a lot of times where my social battery is kind of run down and I don't actually like I'm not good at maintaining friendships necessarily like you know staying in touch with folks checking in on them etc like I just I tend to either be like on and believe it or not this is me being on people or I'm off and I've been thinking about that a lot lately like I need to really work on social connections and on maintaining my relationships with friends and family and and stuff like that because it is very important to us as we get older to have those connections and i don't know if you're going to get jumped in at the biker bar and that's going to be your social i mean you have a good cohort you have your friends there who you who you know you go to the eagles with and everything and um and and so you know i just have been thinking about that a lot in my life lately partly because i like live on a hill overlooking the columbia river by myself right now which is you know i'm i'm a little ways away from like anyone and everyone that I know unless I become really good friends with Bob and Brian, my neighbors. So I don't know. I've just been thinking about that and I'm glad to find out that you went there, you socialized and you enjoyed it. I guess is my point.

I mean, I still was weird. Like I didn't go, I didn't accept their invitation to hang out at the picnic table or whatever. Maybe that's your next step. I mean, you know, honestly next time, but I do think that like, and I don't know why I keep on putting this on Genevieve, but Genevieve is, she's better socialized than I am. Let's just put it that way. So I could see her like definitely that puts a lot of pressure on her.

But what about swapping scoot about stories?

Well, that's true, too. And I mean, you're not here that I had a 2001 Honda Elite that ended up getting stolen and trash.

Was that a 50 cc's? What's the cc's on that bad boy?

Yeah.

See, you act like you're a complete neophyte. First of all, you've got dirt bike dream. and you once had a scooter that you could talk about, I mean, you could throw down with these folks.

Yeah, or they can meet me where I am and talk about Riverside and how it works and how you need to have backup recordings rolling at all times.

All right, Andrew, we've got a Junior Sluggers update courtesy of Ben, the manager of the TBTL Little League team, plays in the Parkside Little League of Portland, Oregon. Now, if you remember, I believe they're coming off of a victory, right? They were triumphant. I forget the name of the team they beat, but they actually did manage to win a game recently. So they came out hot. If you're scoring at home, the TBTL Little Sluggers started off pretty hot. Then they ran into a series of teams where it sounds like the other players were easily twice the size of the Little Sluggers. And that was a little bit challenging. I think that's the Hollywood, maybe Hollywood Park Rose League. There's like an adjacent Little League that sounds like they're growing them taller over there. And so the Junior Sluggers have had a difficult time with that league. But when they stay within the ecosystem of their league, the Parkside League, they seem to do really well. This is what Ben says. Sometimes you win by out-hitting the other team. Sometimes you win by out-pitching them. And sometimes you win by just outlasting them. That third option is just what happened this Saturday when your TBTL little sluggers took on the parkside Golden Tigers. Okay, that's a new one. Yeah. So we've got the Fire Sharks, I believe.

I feel like last week's was also something on fire. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, because we were thinking that if you get a rain out, The Fire Pumas have pretty much lost their advantage right there. These are the Golden Tigers. It was a hot, hot day in East Portland, and like any good duel, our game started at high noon. This was our second game against the Tigers, a team we handily beat last time, but they have significantly improved over the last four weeks, and this was a real battle. We took a two-run lead in the top of the first, but the Tigers immediately tied it up. We picked up a run in the second, then the Tigers got two. going into the third the sluggers were down by one and the heat was rising it was like legitimately hot on saturday down here like like not just like oh it's a beautiful early it's a beautiful spring day this is a preview of summer's like oh this is baking like it was like almost 90

in portland it was in the 80s here and it was i think low 80s but it was uh very strange to have it it just to have it come and go so quickly like that it was like chilly the day before like a 20

degree temperature change or something our first two hitters editing recorded quick outs uh like luke in a dark movie theater they just couldn't find their way to a base that's pretty good pretty good one ben it seemed like it would be a quick one two three inning before another sweaty rotation in the field but then our bats came alive for a late rally solid hits by andreas armani and fox loaded the bases then jayden absolutely crushed a ball to right center for a clutch two-run double in any other league. It would have cleared the bases, but our league mandates station-to-station base running.

So is that – wait, what does that mean?

I think it means you can't advance around. Like, there are no home runs. You can't go all the way around all four bases on, like, a single play. I think that's the key.

But you can't hit a double and you can't hit a single. You just can't hit a home run?

I guess you – yeah, it sounds like you can hit a double. but maybe you can't hit home runs because, you know, at this age that ball could roll a long, long way and you could maybe have some, you know you could have some long innings if the home runs were allowed, I guess Let's see here We ended up We ended the inning back up by one and we were gearing up to defend our lead Alas, there was no need to get in ready position because the unseasonably warm weather intervened The Tigers coach unexpectedly announced that his team was done that they were forfeiting the game. A close game, too. Evidently, our rally had kept them on the field too long, and they were simply exhausted from the heat. They weren't even interested in taking their half inning at the plate. I want to hear that conversation. Like the coach, I imagine it's a Walter Matthau type. I don't know. Does he have a flask in one pocket of that dress shirt, short-sleeved dress shirt he's wearing? Possibly. Taking the meeting with the players going, do we want to go hit? And the players are going, nah. We want to cut right to the Otter Pops.

Yeah, that's what I was going to say. We like baseball, Coach, but we like popsicles more.

I bought some popsicles on Saturday, by the way.

What kind? What are they?

Just like the kind of standard, you know.

fruit like not even fruit but you know what i mean like irradiated lime green colored kind of

a thing i'm glad to hear that i mean and you know everybody can enjoy what they want to enjoy but it's a little disappointing when somebody's like you want a popsicle and you're like yeah and like comes out with fruit in it or something right it's like a big chunk of a raspberry nature's best or whatever no no no i want popsicle brand i want nature's blurst yes exactly right i want

some non-naturally occurring colors on those popsicles um uh let's see and with that your sluggers arrived at a five to four win did we ride to victory on the wings of juvenile dehydration and low-level heat exhaustion perhaps but it's a win and we'll take it jayden got a hustle pin for his clutch hit as well as an awesome play at second during which he got a force out and then mad dog the base runner pointing him back to the dugout whoa an additional rally pin went to ollie for sweating it out in the catcher's gear wow i was a catcher in little league for a while which i forget about that that's a whole it's a whole situation with the gear yeah definitely that's a

that is the toughest position in baseball but by far the most interesting right um yeah yeah i mean

i i feel like i don't think we had when i was a catcher i don't think we had a sophistication with the pitching where it was like i was you know i was telling him like throw the off-speed stuff i think it was all the off-speed stuff it was t-ball and you're kind of like what we're

going to do okay what i'm calling for here is setting the ball on top of the t the big thing

with catching as i remember it was it was a constant question of am i taking the shin guards off or not because what would happen is you'd get all you know guarded up with those shin guards and the whole thing and then you'd be waiting to bat and then if you got on deck but there was two out you would keep the shin guards on while you were in the batter circle because if the guy in front of you got out you didn't want to have your shin guards off and have to put them back on there's always this game of like when do i commit to fully taking the you know the protective gear off to hit and i just for some reason i remember standing in the like on deck circle with the shin

guards on taking my practice swing that's a i've never considered that before even at the major league level like what a pain it is i mean when you think about the catcher's job just being very very difficult very complicated at that level too but also just like oh yeah he's got to cal's got

to get dressed and undressed every time right and man what a what a trooper the big dumper is yeah he gets hit in the hand last night with a baseball bat now technically it was catcher's interference you gotta not do that cow but like like he's sitting there he gets his hand whacked with a major league baseball players bat swing and then he rubs some dirt on it finishes the inning comes back, I believe hits two more base hits in the game. Like, what a tough customer. I would honestly retire from baseball that moment. I'd be like, I am done. You hit me in the hand with the bat. Game over. Like, career over

for me. Yeah, absolutely. All careers

over. Just... Yes, exactly. Cancel it. You know what? Everybody's dehydrated. We're all going home. We're not even finishing this game. You're not. Oakland Athletics. Yeah. And let's see. An additional rally pin went to Ollie for sweating it out in the catcher's gear. The win brings us, even on the season, Andrew, four wins, four losses, and a tie. We go once more into the breach on Thursday evening.

Thursday. Okay, good. Well, I look forward to Friday's update.

I know. I wish I could go on Thursday, but I will be doing a live wire at the Reeser in Beaverton. If you're over in that neck of the woods, come see us. If you're not already going to the Junior Sluggers game. Interesting aside, ever since my premonitious, is that a word? It should be. Ever since my premonitious dream at the beginning of the season, I've been wearing knee-high powder blue socks and shorts for every game. While this superstition has not resulted in consistent winning, it has culminated in a very interesting tan line on my legs. Picks on request. We've got to get Ben on the show, right? Yeah, I would like to do that. We've got to do a debrief or a season check-in. I've got to get to one of these games, too, before the season wraps up. So there you go. There's the update. Your TBTL Little Sluggers, four wins, four losses, and a tie. Not bad. Not bad at all. Not at all. 500 ball.

And they're tough. That's what I like about this, too. The Junior Sluggers are tough. They're toughening it out.

Exactly. I mean, you've got Jaden mean-mugging and mad-dogging the other players, which might be over the line.

Pointing to the dugout. Yeah, let's keep it.

Dog walking them back to the dugout after after getting them out at second, which, you know, yeah, I mean, let's let's let's, you know, let's keep it friendly, everybody.

But you want to transition really briefly into to a little bit of Mariners talk. J.P. Crawford will be making his re.

CAB debut in Tacoma tonight. So if you're not catching the Mariners game, maybe switch on over to Kixi Radio. Hear how our boys doing down there. I forgot. Don Canzone also.

I forgot. I'm not even kidding. Because they've been kind of winning fairly consistently of late. I mean, they've been taking series, right? They've been. I forgot that we had a J.P. Crawford.

Yeah, we do have a J.P. Crawford.

Which I know is insane because he was like one of our top players last year. And when he went out hurt, I was like, we were playing badly and we lose JP. I'm like, this is just a lost cause. But then you get some timely filling in from Demo. Yes. And Rojas looking good. And like, you know, you're just kind of like, you forget that we've got a JP Crawford. Yes, exactly. So that'll be pretty exciting when we get him back. If he can return to form from last season, I mean, we should be all right. I mean, I believe we are, what, a half game in front of the Rangers for first place?

I think a full a full game, I think. Oh, even better. Yeah, I can look it up. Yeah, I was thinking, boy, how cool would it be to actually make it down to Tacoma this week to actually see JP play in a Rainier's game? Unfortunately, this is a bad week for me to try to make it down there. But let's see here. We are. We are now a game and a half ahead. Oh, hell yeah. Rangers lost again yesterday. So that's good. So anyway. Yeah. So I don't think I'm going to make it down there. But if anybody has the ability to go to a Rainier's game, I recommend checking out JP.

I'll tell you, last night, the dream of the 90s was alive here, Andrew, in that. And actually, it has nothing to do with what I just said. But my whole dream scenario, I told you, I watered the plants. And I didn't have to deal with a janky hose. And then I made like a kind of an orzo salad. I'm not really a salad, but I cooked up some orzo and put some feta in it and chopped up tomatoes. and Kalamata Olives, and I was doing all of this standing in my new little kitchen area watching the Mariners prevail, watching Luke Raley hit a two-run home run while I was chopping all this up and cooking food, and I was like, this was the whole idea. This was what we were hoping for the whole time. Love that feeling. Yeah, definitely. So it's nice to – I love it when a plan – and the words of Hannibal from the A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together.

Did you want to do any voicemails today?

Do you have anything pressing?

Well, I mean, what does pressing mean? We're not a breaking news show. I mean, I have some weekend play. It's up to you. But we can save it for tomorrow if you want.

Let's do it. Let's do it tomorrow. I'm going to call the Junior Sluggers update our email segment for the day. Because it did come in the form of an email.

Yeah, no, that sounds good.

That's not true, actually. It came in the form of a text message from Ben. But then what I do, Andrew, is I copy and paste it into an email and print it out for myself. I don't trust myself to read a text message off my computer. So I've got to print it out and read it off of the printed page.

Well, this, when we get Ben on the show, now we know what the first most interesting question from me will be, which is, is he really typing all these, tapping all that text out in a text message form? I'm really impressed with that. Great question. I would need to sit behind a computer and, you know, tap, tap, tap, tap into a word process.

I have this system here with my Apple-branded products where I can type text messages into my laptop. He may have that same thing.

Can you do that on your computer? I can, but I had to kind of download a different – I had to download specifically a Google-branded texting service in order to do it. But I do have that ability. But I like picturing Ben sort of hunched over, sitting in the dugout, blue socks still pulled all the way up, right, and just, like, tapping out, like, the recap of the game.

Just a huge wad of big league chew in his mouth blowing a bubble as he's pine tar, just pine tar resin still on his hands.

Yep, yep. Love it.

All right, that's going to do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for hanging out with us. We are going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Go little sluggers. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

hey i'm sorry this just can't wait um i am in new seasons right now and i went down the aisle to try to get an ice cream a dairy-free ice cream product for myself and i came across ice They are selling at New Season two-inch round ice sears, six in a package, for $10.99. I'm so sorry, but I just had to let you know that immediately because that is absolutely insane. $11 for six ice caps. Oh, my goodness. Okay, bye.

Power out.