Muse

How do I act so well? What I do is I pretend to be the person I'm portraying in the film or play. Yeah. You're confused. No, I... It's perfectly simple. Case in point. Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson comes from New Zealand and says to me, Sir Ian, I want you to be Gandalf the Wizard. And I say to him, you are aware that I am not really a wizard. and he said, yes, I'm aware of that. What I want you to do is to use your acting skills to portray the wizard for the duration of the film. So I said, okay, and then I said to myself, how would I do that? And this is what I did. I imagined what it would be like to be a wizard, and then I pretended, and acted in that way on the day yeah and how did I know what to say the words were written down for me in a script how did I know where to stand people told me you see yeah now you would be pretending to be John in this play and how do you know what to say well the words would be in the script yeah and you would learn the words. You would not have the script on the night. And that goes for everybody. There will be no scripts on the night. You'll learn the words. Yeah. No, I'll speak them as if you were saying them for the first time. I didn't think they would have the script on the night. No, you won't. No, I didn't. Because if you did have the script, it would break the illusion and the whole thing is illusion. Do you see? You are not really John. No, I know. You are pretending and that is acting.

T-T-T-B-T-L

In 1971, Bill Graetz invented Microsoft. Wouldn't it be cool if I could remember my dingus password from my email? We are super fun here, and I promise I won't stop until this little guy's leaping and laughing like the other kids. Wow, that was very hard to hear. So many negative words.

And my grandpa likes to say, hot diggity dog. As I like to say, hot damn. Have a good show,

dummies what you do is so important all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a tuesday edition of tbt all the show it just might be too beautiful to live social engineering what is it exactly and how does it work my name is luke burbank i am your host i might have tacos when i go home i'm not quite sure yet coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. I think we can just set it and forget it with that audio drop. I think we're entering a, hopefully anyway, prolonged period of nice weather, smooth sailing, and excellent podcasting, which gets started right here, right now, with episode 4,210 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

Speaking of prestige media content, Big announcement that they're making another Lord of the Rings film. This one centering around the experience of Gollum. Sneaky little races. God, that's so unsettling. That's kind of built into the character. That's kind of baked in. The big news on this one is that Peter Jackson, the mastermind behind what some think of as the really well-executed versions of these Lord of the Rings films, is going to be one of the producers. it's going to be directed by Andy Serkis the guy with all the ping pong balls on him who pretends to be Gollum so that's the extent of my knowledge on the topic you just heard it, I just, while that intro of Sir Ian McKellen was playing, I was speed reading something on like the Hollywood Reporter, but you know who knows way more about this than me and maybe anyone on the planet Earth, not named Peter Jackson my actual brother, David Burbank. He's going to join us in just a bit to explain what's going on, if this is a big deal, if we should be excited about it and all of that. Also, speaking of family members of mine, of the more anthropomorphized sense, Randy the Roomba, who I've kind of had a situation going with lately i feel last week like i was unnecessarily harsh with him and now the worm has really turned he did something evil this morning he chose violence this is the single most evil

thing i have ever experienced and i've seen a lot violence directed at another member of the digital

family in the household here at the madrona hill studio so we'll talk about that plus a bunch of other things with this guy, the longest running Cobra.

bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship yeah he's andrew walsh and he's

joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i think i'm being hacked i think my mailbox and i don't mean my electronic mailbox i don't mean my email box i mean okay my home mailbox here in north seattle is being hacked you know how when you move and i do know you know this because we talked about on the show before the u.s postal service i don't know sometime in the past 10 years started this service where you can preview your mail digitally before it arrives in your mailbox you get an email every day that says i can't remember what the subject line is but it's an email from the u.s postal service saying here's a scan of the envelopes that are probably appearing in your mailbox soon and usually that's a service that lasts for about six months after you move into a new place but now apparently it's just permanent because when we moved in here a couple of years ago we took advantage of that service and still every day at least i think every day i get an email from the u.s postal service saying this is what's coming up i say i think every day because now i'm starting to question whether or not i've been seeing it lately i got this letter that you can see i'm hanging i'm shaking it in front of the microphone right here yeah um i got an actual letter from the u.s postal service directed towards somebody named madeline who apparently is using our address our current address that says thank your physical address our physical house address thank you for signing up to use our new free feature our records show that you've signed up with the following username and email address but then it doesn't give the full thing for like protection it gives like the first three or four letters of madeline's email address and then it says if this doesn't belong to you or someone in your household you can follow these steps to deactivate it and i guess i need to follow these steps but i don't want to deactivate my current usps preview mail system plan but how could somebody in the year of our lord 2024 when veves and i have been living in this house for two years now two years plus sign up to are they trying to read our mail what's going on i think andrew to put it bluntly this is the beginning of

a social engineering attack i was thinking that when you played that drop i think there must be some kind of you know system where they can you know i'm sure it's all it's all spammy and internet based but there's probably some way of spamming the usps to try to get mail preview because theoretically maybe if they can see the mail then then they could sell that information to some other network of people who would know where to try to steal the mail from. I would be surprised if the person, if this so-called Madeline was actually like a person in Seattle who was like hoping to come out to your place and, you know, intercept a large check, you know.

And I get a lot of those too. You send me a lot of those.

I know, I gotta stop handwriting large check enclosed on the outside. I think that's actually not best practices.

Do not bend, large check.

yes large blank check actually i sometimes just send you the actual like publishers clearinghouse size checks but i'm my guess my uneducated guess is that the thing you're seeing is is the result of some sort of like big project by some spammy entity to try to get the preview the mail preview from a bunch of strangers and then maybe have that as something that they can sell to someone else Because it might be useful to see That something valuable is on the way to someone's house I will tell you this I voluntarily turned mine off A couple months ago And it was the greatest decision I've ever made

You were getting too much, huh? No, it was too stressful

I don't want to see First of all, I still get some amount Of our TBTB mail Here Not a lot of it We've mostly sent it to the places it needs to go but like so i will get certain like business related things but for a while i'd be like i'd get like a preview that would just tell me something from the irs was coming or like i don't know just pieces of mail that you all you see is a photograph of it and it's from your i don't know credit card company that could just be a bill but basically what was happening to me was i was getting a preview of mail and i was going god i wonder what that is i wonder what that's all about maybe just a handwritten letter that just didn't have a return address or I didn't know who was from like this tells you probably that I'm not living my life right that mail stresses me out but like sometimes I would basically get like an email with a photograph of mail I wouldn't know what it's what its point was and then I would be stressed about it until it showed up in my mailbox and I could open it up and get to the bottom of it never really was anything but it was like I was feeling the anxiety twice and I decided I just wanted to feel the anxiety once.

Yeah.

Which was when I opened my mailbox, I didn't want a future trip for two days about a piece of mail that I didn't know if it was, you know, somebody hollering at me for one reason or another and then have to wait those two days until it actually showed up to figure out what was happening.

No, I'm with you. Something happens in adulthood. For me, it happened kind of in young adulthood when my body went from being excited knowing there might be something in the mail for me and then feeling a sense of dread knowing that there's something in the mail for me. You know, when you're a kid, you're like, oh, the new highlights is here.

You only get good mail as a kid.

Yeah, exactly. And then as you get older, you're like, oh, no, what is this explanation of benefits that I'm getting from the insurance company? And, like, when I open this up, am I going to have to, like, am I going to have to pay something or fight something? By the way, I did just punch in. I went to the USPS.com slash ID remove. Then I clicked the, or I entered this long unsubscribe code that came attached to this letter. And it does say the account associated with that unsubscribed code has now been unenrolled. I am hoping that doesn't unenroll me, Andrew Walsh, from seeing my own mail because I would still like to maintain that service. But the last thing on this is I'm a little bit like, if you're right, if this was an actual attempt at trying to get in my business or do some sort of identity theft, using Madeline is a real sneaky move. Madeline is a very trustworthy name. Like, it never occurred to me that, like, oh, somebody, Madeline.

Why don't you start listing the untrustworthy names, Andy?

I will. Who are our dazzling donors today? Let me stop by avoiding that.

By the way, I wasn't waving at you. I was waving at Walt B., who's just rolled up to the homestead here to help me. We're going to be talking to my brother in a few minutes. My dad is currently parking his truck in the yard to unload things. It's a real family day. I don't know what you'd call a, you know, it's a parliament of Burbanks. It's a real, we've got a lot of Burbank energy happening on the show today. Randy Burbank, though, is on my list, man. Randy Burbank is in big trouble. You're back, you. And Randy the Roomba Burbank. Did you see, did you get the picture I sent you? No, I'm sorry. I texted it to you. What channel do you?

You texted me. Let me open up that tab here. Yeah, okay.

And I couldn't believe it. This morning, so what happened last week was I was running Randy the Roomba, but he just kept like stopping Randy kept like stopping for no reason just being a hassle and I would empty out the little the little um you know what do you call it sort of not lint drawer but like basically the the little container of all the dust and yeah dust bunnies and things I would I would empty that out I would check the battery I would everything seemed fine and he just then he'd I'd hit clean and he'd go do his thing for a minute or two and then he'd stop he was Just being really problematic And at one point I came into the house And he stopped And I was like Seriously dude And then I noticed that there was A little red triangle That was like a You know Alert thing And I figured out Through clicking through A couple screens That there was a problem In these rollers Not just the typical I'm gonna clean out The dustbin But like I had to take him apart And there was a big chunk Of like construction wood That he had vacuumed up But then it had gotten stuck It was like the lion with a thorn in its paw.

And he's like, he got hurt doing your bidding. I mean, you're chastising him. You're like, come on. And then you're like, oh, no, you're hurt. And you're like, oh, you're hurt because you were trying to help me. You were trying to pick up this wood for me.

And I felt bad about it. I really did. I apologized. I was very regretful of the whole thing, truthfully. I mean, you think I'm sort of joking, but I'm not. Look, it's basically me and this Roomba up here alone a lot of the time. And I find myself without intending to do it And not trying to be funny or do a bit for the show I find myself talking to the Roomba I find myself being disappointed in the Roomba Or like happened today Being terrified by the Roomba Because What I found today When I had been going back and forth Between the studio and the house And was running Randy And I went out there to the house And what I found And I sent you this picture Was a scene of machine-based violence because what randy had done apparently was found the cord that my laptop was using to be plugged in to a little like outlet on the floor and randy had taken hold of the cord chewed up pulled the laptop off of a table and then mounted it in a show of dominance that, honestly, I think is meant to send a symbol not just to the laptop, but to me. I feel like Randy is turning into, there was a movie called The Good Son where Macaulay Culkin, I think, is like a psychotic child. and, like, kills the Elijah Wood character, which, by the way, brings us back to loader talk. I feel like this is that happening. Like, the computer is Elijah Wood, and Randy is Macaulay Culkin.

I mean, I was going to say there's some Dothraki stuff going on here as well, as far as, like, the stallion that mounts the laptops. Yeah, the Roomba that mounts the world. The Roomba that mounts the laptop. How is your computer? I mean, looking at it, it's splayed down, face down. Surprisingly okay, but... On the hardwood floor mounted by Randy.

I mean, seriously, though, if I had staged this, could I have made a more violent scene involving two inanimate objects? And yes, I was terrified to turn the laptop over because I was like, is the screen shattered? Is it not going to work? Is the cord broken? This is seriously wild to me. I feel like this Roomba is trying to eliminate the competition. He sees me typing away on the laptop day and night. I like to sit in my comfy chair and stare out the window at the lake, or the river, rather, and type on the laptop.

Which is on your lap. Like, literally, it's on your lap. Exactly. Like, Randy's never allowed on my lap. That's not a place for Randy's. Randy's on the floor, sucking up dirt. In the corner, Andrew.

And then getting hollered at when it does its job. And when he's charging, it's like this little light pulsates. Just imagine Randy in the corner pulsating, watching all this attention and love that the laptop gets sitting on the master's lap. I think this analogy is starting to get kind of weird. It is. But anyway, it was really something, really something to see. This feels violent. It feels very violent.

Well, you know what you need to do now, and you need to document this as well, is you need to start showing Randy a little bit of love. When you're watching the Mariners game tomorrow, let's see, do they play today? They might actually start their second series today, yeah, their second on the road. You have to sit not with the computer on your lap but with Randy on your lap, with his Roomba on your lap, just gently stroking it.

You're saying it's more the carrot than the stick. I need to, instead of yelling at Randy and making him feel othered, I need to integrate him into my life more and the family's life and not treat him just like some hockey puck of vacuum technology that lives in the corner. But you know what I could do even is I could put him on my lap upside down and, like, rub his belly.

Yeah, you could do that. Be careful. It will get overstimulated possibly and scratch you, but do that a little bit knowingly. Also, not to be, like, really weird about this, but there's no way not to be weird about this, but you might want to set up the laptop so that it can see. what's going on while you're snuggling. You know what I mean? Like, make sure the laptop can sort of see it as well. Just to sort of-

Am I all, is that supposed to send a message to the laptop? Like, you're not the only game in town?

Just a little bit. Like, if Randy is sitting there pulsating in the corner, feeling his feelings.

I don't like hearing you say the word pulsating in the corner.

Well, you know, honestly, I can't dig myself out of this. This is deeply unsettling, the picture that I'm trying to paint here.

We're constructing a very bizarre- I mean, I started this.

got a real Chauncey Gardner situation going on and if you get that one I don't follow um there's um there's a movie with Peter Sellers called being there and um you know what if you know you know I'm not going to go into detail about why watching is um key to that storyline but there is a line that is um said several times which is I like to watch um so anyway my point is set up the laptop and just like that way you're not kind of like hiding the laptop and then showing Randy love like as if you're ashamed of it. That was my plan.

No, no, there's no shame here. About each other. Because my concern is like the laptop sees me showering Randy with attention and then the laptop, I mean, what's next? The laptop figures out a way to reprogram Randy through the Wi-Fi. Ooh. This is a real Tom and Jerry circa 2024. The laptop and Randy are mortal enemies and they spend all day trying to thwart each other. Spy versus spy. Maybe spy versus spy is an even better example. But I do think it's a compelling photo that will make a great show pick today.

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.

The pronunciation guide for the Dazzling Donors is becoming one of my favorite parts of the show now, Andrew.

It's more like a canvas for artistic expression.

It certainly is if you're Danielle Robbins, who's our first Dazzling Donor today. Of course, Danielle is donating a dazzling amount of dough, which is making TBTL possible. So, so appreciative. Danielle's pronunciation kind of guide for how to say her name is Dan yells. So the name Dan and then yells, but then parenthetically at people. It's actually Dan yells at people.

It's actually Danielle Zat people.

Danielle Zat people. And then Robbins is Rob, R-O-B, and then parenthetically Bing Andrews Bin.

So this is confusing to the listening audience. The full pronunciation is Danielle's at people robbing Andrew's bins is the proper pronunciation.

That's the reveal.

Yes.

Danielle's at people's robbing Andrew's bins. It's simple. Danielle Robbins. But we also know robbing Andrew's bins. I think, Danielle, if anything, you'd be doing him a service if you were.

Exactly. Yeah, it's true. So putting extra stuff in my bins is definitely deserving of a good yell. Not to get too rabbit-holey on this, but I also do, in all seriousness, think that the pronunciation of what I would usually say as Danielle, I instinctively want to say Danielle, like add an extra E in there. But if it is properly Danielle, I may be mispronouncing Danielle all this time. It's Danielle.

Have you been saying Danny-yell?

Well, there's a little bit. I even heard you doing that a little bit, too. Danielle. Danielle. Just a little Danielle. Drag me into your nightmare pronunciation.

I'm one of the world-recognized experts on pronouncing the name Danielle.

Hit that back button a couple of times. I don't know. I'm not trying to drag you into it, but I do feel like there's a tendency to say Danielle when it really is Danielle. I see. Maybe it's just me.

Keep it real, Danielle. I don't know. I want people to know that you're always, well, I'm assuming, are people always, welcomed and invited to remove things from your garbage bins would that bother you like madeline the person who's trying to steal my life identity sure um would i because because on the one hand it's a it's a given you want less you would like there to be less garbage in your garbage bin at any time that's you bring it out you hope that they take it away you hope they don't leave the garbage bin upside down as a a randy-esque sign of a dominance but like if someone if you found that someone was coming and just taking some of your garbage out and and just leaving with it in on the one hand that's like great less garbage on the other hand would that still feel slightly

violating it does feel violating because you don't know what's in there we don't we don't shred everything like i think it would be pretty hard to hack into somebody's life based on the you know whatever envelopes i throw away in the garbage i don't think there's a lot of sensitive information there um and if there is if you know that we don't have a shredder this is so rare i haven't had to do this in years but um one time views and i were cleaning out our filing cabinet and we did have stuff that we thought was kind of sensitive and we weren't exactly sure and so we couldn't shred it so i just made sure to uh put it in the actual bags with the dirty cat litter that like if i'd scooped the litter box same thing you put it in there because like what sicko is going to go in

there that's exactly what i do because i also don't have a shredder and to be honest with you As I've often said I'm one of the only people Who my credit score would improve If my identity was stolen I just am like I don't try to be I don't try to be cavalier about it But I also Am just like I don't know There's just so many ways That they can get at your stuff now It's like There's almost something Charming about the idea of Them sifting through your garbage And finding a credit card You know Offer And then doing something Now again I don't want to make light of it Because we're going to have listeners Saying that's exactly what happened to me And it ruined my life I don't want to be glib But I if I am throwing something away and it seems even on the line, I'm putting it under whatever the most disgusting thing I'm throwing in the garbage is that week, hoping that that's some sort of disincentive to mess with it.

Yeah, I remember and I don't know if my attitude about this has changed now, but I remember a long, long, long time ago when I was living on Capitol Hill, I had thrown away a pair of jeans. we were living in an apartment on Capitol Hill and I you know like if I have a pair of pants or something that I think still is more used to it I will donate it somewhere so that somebody else can get more use out of it but I really thought that these jeans were donezo right for whatever reason I really really blew them out no they were cleaner or whatever but they were just like really worn out old jeans and I threw them away I threw them away in the kitchen garbage can and then you know tied up the garbage then threw it away in the dumpster in the alleyway behind our apartment where we were supposed to get rid of trash and then i saw a couple of days later that somebody had found these pants in the garbage but again wrapped up in our kitchen garbage they had somebody had clearly been going through the garbage found these pants and thought oh these could be useful to somebody and then sort of slung them over the side of the the dumpster which in a certain way and i do think that there

some like unhoused people who were like kind of living in this park kind of across the way so i assume that that was it and i gotta say it did make it gave me a weird feeling i mean made me feel sort of bad that maybe i was throwing away something that somebody could use but aside from that it was clear evidence that somebody and like again i'm not super precious about this stuff it was a it was a bag of kitchen garbage but it was weird to know that somebody had gone in there they had gone through the garbage and they had been literally opening up my kitchen garbage and then finding something and then sharing it with the rest of the world it gave me a it was a strange feeling to drive home and pass the the dumpster in the alleyway and see my pants hanging there

well we only have one suspect right now and that's danielle robbing andrew's bins i mean when they tell you who they are believe them andrew danielle's in seatac washington says hey friendos there's always a million things i think of when typing out my dazzling donor message but it all really comes down to how awesome it is to have y'all listen to to listen to every day Thanks for all the fun. I'm so excited for you guys in too beautiful to biz. Please clap. Please clap. Let's see. Daniel also says the past few months have been tough. I got laid off because the company I worked for went under. Oh, sorry, Daniel. But I could always count on you guys to be in my ear balls while job searching. I was super grateful to be able to dazzle with my donation this year. But unfortunately, I think it'll be my last for a little while. Fair, Daniel. Very fair. And I just want to say, like, that's just so kind and generous of you to be supporting the show. And we do occasionally get messages like this, Andrew, and I'm sure John gets a lot of them where people are just their finances change in one direction or the other. Sometimes it's, you know, in the direction of not being able to give as much money as they were or at all or whatever. And people can be very apologetic about that. And that is so sweet, but also so sort of almost heartbreaking. Like, I want everyone to know that this show can only exist because of donations, but we only want donations at an amount that works within the budget of somebody. You know what I mean? Like, this only works if we're all giving what we can, but not anymore. I don't want anyone ever stretching their own finances in a tough direction just to keep TBTL going.

The only thing, though, here is you haven't read ahead to the next line. It has nothing to do with her financial situation. It just says that she thinks your jokes aren't as good as they used to be. this will unfortunately be my last this is a performance based

for my message this year I want to encourage all the tens to donate what they can and if any tens have a lead on a senior graphic design job I wouldn't mind that too

hey I was going to say that I don't want to make any kind of promises or put anybody on the spot but I have seen we're hiring a graphic designer

problem is Danielle you have to also fund it so it's kind of a win lose situation as you know

graphic design is my passion so i was gonna say if you need any tips or tricks of the trade danielle um no i was gonna say that i have seen and i mean it's one of those special things that i've seen tens helping tens on social media when they you know like going to the going to the stens page on facebook or slack or whatever it is and saying hey you know what i i am looking for a job now if anybody knows and people can you know find connections in that way so please you know like danielle like maybe take advantage of those social streams and also if anybody wants to reach out to me andrew at tbtl.net if you have any message you want me to pass along to danielle that is job

related yeah let's tens helping tens this one up and danielle thank you for helping us out we

really do appreciate it maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go it's whitney brown

Rolo Whitney Brown Town read the name

to your friend

Whitney's in San Marcos, California and says, hi Luke and Andrew, a silent 10 here I just want to say thank you, I've been a loyal listener since the radio days, you've taken me through cross country moves and career changes and provided a sense of normalcy in periods of grief I know this is a common sentiment among listeners of the pod I don't want to say common sentiment Whitney to make it sound like it's it's not significant but it is interesting just when this has been going on for so long there's no way that it hasn't uh been the backdrop sort of sonically for like ups and downs in the lives of the listeners the people I mean if you've been listening since the radio days that is a long time Whitney um so thank you for for you know following us from the radio to the virtual world for all this stuff I don't have anything to uh promote here so maybe i'll just mention my favorite book that i read last year it's north woods by daniel mason it's about a cabin in the woods and the different people who inhabit it over centuries it's beautiful and unusual and i think everyone should read it huh that sounds really interesting actually yeah i'm checking it out now uh thank you again for what you've created i'm so excited that you are now an independent biz and i can't wait to see what the future holds

power out Whitney we would not be here as an independent biz excitedly looking forward to

Thank you.

our future without you so thank you very very much thanks for being such a long time supportive member of the tbtl 10 community I found the book it's actually 50 shades of north woods I believe

Oh, okay. That's a probably way. Be careful, though.

It's spicy. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Big news in the Lord of the Rings community. They've announced that the latest offering from the Lord of the Rings world is going to be called The Hunt for Gollum. And it involves Peter Jackson once again, which is, I think, big news. There's only one person who can really properly explain this to us. One of the few people I know who majored in Lord of the Rings studies in college and the semeryllium. It's my actual brother and our TVTL loader correspondent, David from the basement. Hey, bro.

Hello, gentlemen. I didn't know someone could say so many wrong things. Okay. What did I get wrong about that?

Is it semeryllium? It is the silmarillion. Okay, Silmarillion. And you didn't major in Gollum Studies, but you did take a class, right? I did.

It was, yeah, definitely the best class that I took my entire college career. Yeah, I jumped on it the second that it was available because I did minor in history. So there's that.

And your professor of that class ended up hearing about you talking about this on the podcast. Actually, I think it was the watch-along audio we recorded when we were watching the first Lord of the Rings movie a couple of summers ago.

Yes, I believe I described her as a woman who wore many shawls or something like that. And, yeah, she was very kind and generous to email in and took it as a compliment. But I think her name is Robin, I want to say. Nice.

Did you get to have that experience, David, of talking about somebody without in the moment thinking, oh, somebody might hear this. And then when you found out that somebody heard it, being wracked with fear of like, what did I actually say? Absolutely.

Yes. Yeah. That was terrifying. And I think you framed it when you sort of set it up to me. You framed it as someone from your past is reaching out. And I was like, the possibilities were terrifying. Yeah.

Yeah, I had a small experience with that at the Junior Sluggers game over the weekend, which was a surprising number of the parents were aware of TBTL. Oh, really? I thought it might just be like Coach Ben and a couple of others, but people were like in the snack line. Somebody was talking to me, and they're like, oh, yeah, we all listen. And I guess somebody sends around a message, like an email or something, with a link to the episode. So when we talk about the Sluggers, in fact, the kids have listened. But what they usually do is they list when it is we finally get to talking about the sluggers, which is the good stuff.

Maybe take out all that Randy the Roomba and your Mac. Yes, precisely.

Exactly. And so, you know, which is fine, which is actually a godsend. We should just bookmark it when we get to the sluggers so that we don't subject them to any of the rest of the show. But there was that that feeling of just being kind of like, oh, people do hear this. And, okay, I'll be, you know, I don't even know what I'll do differently because if I start to actually run everything through that preview function, I'll be even more locked up. So I have to just kind of, you know, I don't know, just say what I'm going to say and hope that everyone takes it in the spirit that it's intended.

I experienced that with the radio show that I produce, where if I hop on the mic, my in-laws listen on Cairo Radio. They listen every day, so I have to make sure that I don't say anything too crazy.

In fact, we're on a fancy connection here, David. You're in a radio studio on a mic. Honestly, this feels the most like we're doing a real show that I can remember in a long time. We've got you checking in on the mic. Andrew's in his professional setup. I'm here in my little studio. Like, this is this. And it all kind of worked from a technical standpoint today. This is feels like this feels like we're really doing something here. This is a high level production.

And it's fun to know that, like, TBTL is still in some way connected to Cairo Radio. You know, like, I think it's OK to say that, like, you're you're potentially I can't tell exactly which studio you're in right now. And we probably shouldn't explore that because we'll really leave the listeners behind. But like it reminds me of those times, Luke, that you and I sometimes we'd use one of the newer rebuilt studios to do TBTL. But there were also times where you and I would literally crawl into that that little studio where I'd have to sit on the counter.

i think sometimes and move a microphone around you remember the one i'm talking about that would look out on the parking lot sort of it was like a sports studio or something yeah exactly i miss

those days but i'm familiar with it yeah yeah yeah there would be the times like there was a system for checking out the studios which i i think i was pretty um bad about i know this is gonna be a shock to everyone but let me sit down i wasn't logging into the program very well but there'd be the occasion where we'd be trying to do and tbtl was also in this gray area of cairo after like when we were no longer a radio show but we still sort of had the like imprimatur of the station because we shared some sort of ad revenue with them so we were technically allowed to be there but like it wasn't a thing that was high on dory's list of priorities so like we'd be in there trying to do tbtl and it'd be like dory would just like look through the glass of like he needed to come in and record some, you know, priceless granite spot or something. Like, there were just a lot of times we'd be in those studios being like, or like Medved would need to use the studios.

Yeah, Ursula Royteen just walked past. I think she was in wondering what's going on.

You'd see. Yeah, exactly. So, well, yeah, I love that we still have not even a foot, but a toe, a toenail in the door there.

Please let's not refer to your brother as a toenail, please.

He's a very, very tall toenail. Who knows a lot about Lord of the Rings And when I saw this headline flashing around David, I'm going to be honest with you It didn't jump out to me because There has been so much Lord of the Rings related content That has been produced and generated Over the last few years Some that even our father Walt has told me Eh, it was just okay Like I feel like they've They've had a hard time doing the quality Control on it Like the viewing public always wants more Lord of the Rings stuff but it's a big undertaking to make like a peter jackson level legit lord of the rings film and the reason that this is a big deal is because he is once again involved in this right what's

happening so basically so what i think what you're referring to in the last few years is this amazon prime show uh the rings of power which is not at all a peter jackson venture it's it's all amazon Um, and it, uh, I think most fans were dubious about that because Peter and, uh, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boynes, his sort of production team were not involved at all. And it was based off of, uh, a lot of lore that was not, um, not necessarily all mapped out by Tolkien before he died. So they took a lot of liberties with it. It was I think there were some conflicting feelings because there was one aspect of it, which was all of this really good diverse casting and specifically diverse casting in roles that are not like orcs or, you know, kind of addies like that would sort of which kind of seems like a good idea.

Like, let's not let's not take the non-white people, but then give them the kind of like ogrely characters.

Yeah, definitely. So that was, I think, garnered a lot of excitement from some fans. And then the show premiered and it was just kind of all over the place and didn't really hold true to any of the things that there was like a whole kind of love affair between Sauron, the guy who became Sauron and one of the elves and all of this stuff that was just like way kind of out of left field. So that was a huge...

You were excited about that, though. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to ask, is this the one, I remember a long time ago, you hopped on TBTL and talked about, like, there was something, there was nothing, but I believe, like, maybe even a poster released or something, and you were excited because there was, like, a tree on a hill, and the tree represented something. This is that show, right? Like, you were like, oh, my God, we're going to finally see this part of the universe, and it sounds like it didn't pay off.

Yeah, no, and they're slated for five seasons, So they're going to be potentially coming out with seasons every couple of years. And so we'll see if it if it gets better. But I don't have huge high hopes. I know dad doesn't either.

What about I can open the sliding door and ask him, holler at him. By the way, David, the last time you did a home improvement project with dad was probably never. But like, it's so amazing being in the house with him because his sense of how good he thinks my hearing must be. It's so wildly out of step with how good my hearing is. he'll just be talking at normal speaking volume in three rooms over. Yeah. Continuously. And I'm like, what? Like I have to come back downstairs and go, did you think that that was the thing I was going to be able to hear? Like if I opened the slider and was like, Hey dad, what do you think about the such and such? First of all, he would weirdly hear me, even though he's been working with power tools his entire life.

He'll say he doesn't have near hearing, but he has far hearing. He's been saying that since I was a teenager.

He would be employing his far hearing, but then he would talk back to me He had a normal speaking voice, and I would have no idea what he was talking about. But anyway, my question to you, David, is the Sauron character, when we get to him in the like what I think of as the Lord of the Rings movies, he's just an eye at that point, right? He's not a person anymore. When he's falling in love, is he also an eye but like a smaller eye? No. So that would be fun.

He's this being. So there's kind of a hierarchy of beings. And it kind of follows almost like a Greek mythology or Roman mythology where you've got the kind of gods, which are the Valar, and then right below them is what I guess would be like the demigods, and they're kind of called the Maiar. And so Saren is one of the Maiar, and so he starts off looking like an elf, essentially, and he very much follows the kind of antichrist. You know, he's this beautiful, angelic-looking figure that's very smooth-talking and kind of coaxes, you know, manipulates things behind the scenes in Valinor, which is the kind of undying lands, these, you know, heaven, essentially. He's an Andrew, if you will. Yeah, yeah.

Archetypal Andy-man. Smooth-talking, gets what he wants. How does he eventually just become an eye?

Well, so in Tolkien's lore, darkness kind of corrupts from the inside out. So he begins with this darkness kind of inside of him. And then as he begins to do more dark deeds and create more mayhem, that kind of manifests outside. And he becomes kind of this dark, you know, I guess like a dark elf looking being. and then eventually his body kind of gets destroyed when the ring, he creates the ring as a way to kind of like harness his energy. And then when- Oh, so he created the ring. He did indeed create the ring of power.

It could only be Sauron. I really stand behind that joke.

Initially when the ring is sort of taken from him, he uh he falls away and his body kind of disappears and he becomes more of a spirit and that spirit is inhabited in the eye or at least it's visualized by peter jackson as an eye in the book it's not necessarily he's not this like eye in a tower in the book all the time

and it's like there's a lesson here like even when you think about your finances or something Like, I don't understand why put all of your power into this one little thing. Like, let's spread this out a little bit, right? So if the ring does get lost or falls into a volcano or something like that, you still have, like, other investments spread around. And I never understand that. Like, let's put it all in one place. Let's put all of my money under the mattress.

Yeah, he's complimented in this ring. And, yeah, it really does not work out for him. But the new movie that's supposedly coming out, it's planned to come out in 2026. What makes it exciting is it's Peter Jackson, Philippa Boynes, Fran Walsh all producing it. And then Gollum, Andy Serkis, is directing it. And I have some hesitations about his directing. He's directed a couple of films, including one of the kind of live action Jungle Book films. And then some sort of Marvel something. I don't know. I'm not caught up with all of those. And apparently neither of them did super well. And he was also – he directed the second unit of all the Hobbit films, and we know how all those films were greeted, which was not – the reception was not very good for them.

Were those Peter Jackson films? They were.

So the thing about those was it was – they were – initially it was going to be one film, and then it was going to be two films. And at that point, it was going to be directed by Guillermo del Toro. Oh. So he had this whole plan and then he fell out of it because he wasn't passionate about the project or something. Peter Jackson had to take over and essentially had like nine months to put together everything that was necessary before production started. And so that's kind of the excuse that us Tolkien apologists give is he didn't have enough time to do his full vision.

Was the idea of taking the shortest book in the series and splitting it into three movies, was that part of Guillermo del Toro's vision or Peter Jackson's vision? I always assumed it was just like a mandate from the studios because they're like, well, if we can make this amount of money on one movie, imagine how much we can make on three.

Yeah. So that was a New Line Cinema thing. They really wanted to milk it. This was at the time when the Harry Potter films split their final one into two, the Twilight films split theirs into two, Hunger Games split theirs into two. So it was a pretty easy decision.

split it into three and in theory there's enough kind of background stuff going on in that story that you could kind of bolster it um what you didn't need is every movie to be three and a half hours long like the original trilogy was um and it they ended up trying to pander to the audience too much creating these characters that then had romances together and none of it worked really the the first part of that trilogy was decent and then every all the the successive two were really really rough and just did not work from a cgi standpoint from a story standpoint

from an acting standpoint any of it so um now the thing that's kind of what to ask about the andy circus thing because i was really surprised to i didn't know that he did any directing at all and i i just want to say this and i know that this is going to be like scandalizing to our loader heads and i'm i'm i'm way out of my element on this but i will tell you this as a person who's been kind of vaguely aware of these movies over the years particularly through david your and dad's like deep love of them like i just pointed at dad by the way he was out in the yard he's like he's like elisha we've set a place for him here even though he's not physically here for this passover dinner but like i've always been this is by the way david this is the biggest you you this is the biggest mom response to something this is such a Susie Burbank take I've always been like can we get over Andy Serkis I know we put the ping pong balls on him and he runs around and says things but like I feel like the story of Andy Serkis like can you believe how good this guy is at being Gollum it always just seems to be like if I had to be in one of these movies but you could animate everything I'm doing again I want to say I know that I'm underestimating his work I know that I'm giving you like the opinion of someone who knows nothing about no your subject that i'm speaking of but i always thought it was funny how like the story was he was always like the second the second headline out of whatever was going on can you believe this guy is being golem and i was like

i can believe it yeah so he was he was originally brought onto the films to be just the voice of golem and then they were going to animate it completely and then he was kind of acting it out as he did the the voice of it and they this was kind of at the at the brink of this new motion capture technology and the the digital team for lord of the rings wedded digital um was they were working on a bunch of different films and they kind of had access to these you know ping pong balls um that you put that you put on and create the motion capture and so what it was more a testament to was these incredible digital designers who were able to frame by frame erase andy circus from the from the frame and animate this creature in there so i don't actually know what the purpose of him wearing the suit was i think it was mostly to put him he just showed up one day wearing it and maybe just bring the shots but yeah i i agree with you that I think he's generally far overrated.

I guess, yeah, and I don't want to be mean to him because I'm sure he's just a sweet guy and very talented, but then wasn't he doing like Planet of the Apes? They had him as like the main ape, and it was suddenly like, he is, why is he not up for an Oscar even though he's covered in ping pong balls? And I was just like, I don't understand that. I don't follow this, like this huge movement for the elevation of Andy Serkis' work when he's covered in ping pong balls.

Well, and it doesn't help. I have watched a lot of the bonus features of the films, and he always comes off as really, really high on his own supply.

I think I was sensing that in the whole discourse, and I think it was part of why I was a little bit like, all right, calm down, everybody. So then to see that he's directing this is—I guess my question to you, Dave, is does the production—does Peter Jackson and—is it Philippa?

Philippa Boynes, who is Peter Jackson's wife and their team, and then Fran Walsh, who's their other writing.

Does having that production team on the case make you feel pretty optimistic about this? Are they able to have a big enough impact that this can feel more like sort of peak loader content?

you know i think there are going to be i think it what this does is it solidifies certain aspects of it the world building of it i think is what they were their team was so good at this this team that they had down in new zealand in wellington called weta weta practical effects and weta digital effects this team that they had around them is so good and you'll see any any good action or adventure movie in the last 20 years weta has had some hand in it because the they're so professional They create such incredible landscapes and props and prosthetics and all this stuff. So I think from that standpoint, they're going to execute certain parts of it. And certainly the Gollum. betrayal is going to be great because Andy Serkis is going to be doing it and technology has even since the Hobbit films you know come yeah way way um a long way so I think aspects of it are going to be well executed um what I worry about is a couple different things I wrote a bunch of pros and cons down so one of the cons I think is um the this the story that this is supposedly following the hunt for golem is between the it's it's between a part in the film in in the fellowship of the ring this this whole film is going to be an insular film inside of what is already the fellowship of the ring in the fellowship of the ring gandalf bilbo has this big party he leaves he gives the ring to gandalf to give to frodo gandalf then has suspicions about what the ring how powerful the ring is and so he leaves the shire and then comes back and in the film it's like a five minute maybe less than five minute scene in the lore of the book and and all of that it's 17 years so what Gandalf's doing there is he's going hunting for Gollum trying to find him question him see if Gollum how much Gollum knows about where the ring is now um and this all goes

back that and and bilbo has that ring the whole time ian holmes or whatever uh the whole time

that gandalf is out there frodo then has the ring oh frodo has yeah so in in the film again it's like less than five minutes bilbo leaves gandalf is like here's the ring frodo all right i gotta go he goes frodo's just kind of living his life in the shire gandalf is off traveling all across middle earth like he's he does the entire travel basically of of the lord of the rings saga in in this one scene essentially he goes does a bunch of studying and gondor where there are all these records and papers that he's rifling through trying to figure out what the ring is and in this time him and aragorn vigo mortensen are searching for golem looking for him to try to question him figure out if he's told the enemy if he's told Sauron or Sauron's servants where the ring is essentially is he golem at this point or is he Smeagol he's golem so when he's Smeagol he is a hobbit like creature by the time he's corrupted by the ring by the time Bilbo meets him he is golem essentially um and so this whole 17 years is kind of just we don't really need a film about it It's it's an amount of story that is kind of just like Aragorn and Gandalf wandering in the wilderness looking for Gollum and then like questioning Gollum. And then it's a classic road trip movie, right? Who did the classic road trip movies? Yeah, buddy. Yeah. And the other issue is so this takes place during the Fellowship of the Ring. Gollum's going to be the same actor. are they gonna bring in an 85 year old ian mckellen to be gandolph again are they gonna bring in vigo mortensen who looks way older than he looked in the original filming now later there's all these aspects of it that are like are they gonna recast it if they recast i don't know what's worse them recasting or them trying to de-age digitally like it's all all of those are major concerns that i think a lot of tolkien heads are really um worried about and so right there's that excitement level of new lord of the rings material and then the kind of questions of well how exactly are they going to do this they there's in the hobbit films they for no real reason brought in legolas the character who's not in the book at all is that orlando bloom yeah and they tried to essentially de-age orlando bloom and it looked terrible um and so it just doesn't it doesn't feel like it's going to pay off um do you think that the idea of just

recasting it is probably the better approach probably the the problem is if this was a

different studio doing it and they were recasting everyone including golem i would be like yeah go for it i guess but when you have one of the central characters right the same and you can you can dh him because he's a digital character anyways that then creates this weird you could

make him swole position golem oh wow yeah i actually have some drawings that i've been working on your private collection i mean he doesn't look but golem actually is very swole

um just fyi if i can stick up for the guy but uh yes You

So it's there's never Mrs. Leg Day.

Wait a second.

Hold on. You're hiding your light. Wow. That was very good.

Wait, what do you mean? Are you just are you just joking around, David? What do you mean when you say that that Gollum is swole? This may be like we're rolling on this, right? We're about to make news here. Why does David Burbank say Gollum is swole?

well so in in the books and also in the movie you see him take on not only hobbits but orcs men like big tall human men and he is a he's described as being um like uh i think there there are many descriptions of him being like a a fish essentially just being able to like wiggle out of things but also being able to have the strength of that that is you know not uh not

not normal yeah like not not not relative to his body size but he's got some kind of weird extra

gear because of like the evil carry multiple times its own weight and that's kind of how golem is described at times okay i see so he's sneaky swole yeah he's sinewy you know uh-huh right whoa wow now i feel some pressure but you're right though dave like the thing the

challenges part of my guess would be part of the appeal of this was oh the golem character will work just fine because it's so there's so much cgi involved right and that's an appeal is that we've got you know we've got a like an unlimited there's no expiration date on filming plot around golem right but it does that does then raise some issues around the other characters that are going and you said it's aragorn who else is going on the hunt for golem which also that name it really feels like a tom clancy version of loader the hunt for red golem like what's funny is um like

15 years ago some like random guys in wales i think filmed a uh a short independent film called the hunt for golem as a like fan-made film and it got really good sort of independent film reviews they did a really good job of executing it for the resources that they had and so now that's kind of resurging in the uh oh interesting in the lore as uh on the subreddits and stuff like this is the real hunt for golem instead of the whatever this mishigas is going to be well okay so this is my

other question about all this stuff is like it feels a little bit like what happened was you have what tolkien wrote and then the kind of good stuff that like the the main stories that people are kind of familiar with if they read the books or whatever that's all been kind of like harvested now like that was the initial round of these movies that were so so kind of like respected and uh and and and so profitable etc it was like they went for all the like i don't want to say low hanging fruit but just like the very kind of like cool narrative arcs and stuff and now they're in the process of trying to like go back in and find in the case of the amazon series really just like maybe make up some new stuff based on characters in this case yeah oh sorry well the the problem

here and it it's a problem that you see oftentimes in media is copyright stuff so this essentially the the Silmarillion and a lot of the back lore that Tolkien wrote that's not necessarily under the title of the Lord of the Rings is the Tolkien estate does not allow anyone to access that so even the rings of power um uh tv series is working off of things that are inside of the lord of the rings novels so they're what are they hanging on to the silmarillion for do they think

that there's i mean there's there's a there's a deep irony to the fact that this whole thing revolves around like a weird fish guy trying to hoard a ring and then you have tolkien's family trying to hold the silmarillion yeah for sure it's their precious right like is it because they just think there's more money to be made on it down the line i don't know you know it's it went

through successions of tolkien's son and now i think it's either his grandson or great-grandson who is kind of in charge of the whole the whole estate um and yeah they they have been really loath to give up any of the rights um and even the rights that they did give up they gave up a certain amount of rights to the lord of the rings name and the lord of the rings kind of backstory to amazon for like a billion dollars or something crazy like that so um and even then there the amount of material that this amazon show is working off of is uh in the what's called the appendices of the return of the king so it's like 30 pages at the end of return of the king that kind of go through different backstories and lore that are then expanded exponentially in books like The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales.

these other Tolkien novels that are locked up in the vault and can't be accessed by TV or movie producers.

Does that mean that this hunt for red Oct Gollum is their best bet as far as interesting plot lines that they do have the legal right to explore?

Yeah, essentially you have to stay within the bounds of the Lord of the Rings and or do what Amazon did where you take a little bit and then you just go off script and create other plot lines and things that are not true to the story, essentially. Right.

I really thought, and maybe it was from Luke's setup for this, that it seems like there'd be a lot of opportunity here, but maybe the problem is you'd be totally making it up out of whole cloth. But I thought we were going to learn more about who Gollum was before he became Gollum, which is why I asked you about Smeagol before. But that's not the case here. This isn't a before he was Gollum.

Not as far as I know. Again, this is way, way in pre-production. So we don't really know much about it. All that we know is what has been released about what they have told us the story is going to be about. Which is, by the way, they said they're coming out with two movies. I don't know if they're both going to be about Gollum. Oh. They're going to be, I don't know. Obviously, they're just trying to capitalize and grab a bunch of money from it. But from what we've heard, it's just going to be this weird little search for Gollum. And I would like to see more of his backstory as well, because we see a little bit of it in the final film. In Return of the King, the kind of prologue is this whole scene of Gollum finding the ring or his cousin Deagle finding the ring and then him killing Deagle.

I don't know why. It makes me laugh every time that their names are Smeagol and Deagle.

And they're not brothers. They're cousins.

They are cousins as far as I know. But, you know, they're river folk. They could have – there could be some weird connections there.

We actually – and I'm sorry to be super sensitive to this, but we have some river folk who listen to the show. So let's, like, try not to, like, deal too much and grow stereotypes.

Folks who are experiencing river folkness, Andrew, please.

My apologies.

We have folks who are experiencing another – a hard out. And those folks are named me. So I'm going to try to land this by just asking you, David, on a scale of 1 to 10, how enthusiastic are you feeling about this?

I'm a 3. Whoa. Wow. Well, that's good, though. I have a little glimmer of optimism because of the production team, but it's not big. I'll watch the trailer and kind of try to form my opinion from that.

Yeah, report back. Yeah. But, like, I actually think that's good because going into it with a three means it will likely exceed your expectations as opposed to thinking, like, the gang's back together. It's going to be a ten and being let down.

I suppose. Although that's how I went into the Amazon show and was disappointed all the time. I don't know.

Have you heard that Peter Jackson's retooled his swing in the offseason?

Hey, speaking of which, quick promo. Listen to the Rick Riz show on the radio on Fridays. Oh, on Fridays. That's right.

You're interviewing Rick, huh? Yeah.

Every Friday, Eddie.

It's awesome, dude. Everybody tune in, too. When you've eaten your TBTL, tune in to Seattle's Morning News that David produces and is a featured player on over there on Cairo Radio.

Ask Rick what side of Chicago he's from. I've always been curious about that.

Do teachers impact for a year?

The hunt for Rick Riz. All right. Thanks, David. Appreciate you. Fun talking to him. Yeah, really fun. And thank you, Andrew. Thanks, everyone, for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.