Muse

I remember years ago, I'd be at the table between you and mom and we'd look down and there'd be the mayor and all the names of old New York and you'd whisper in my ear, you'd say, that aster used to be that and he ran this till he snafoo'd that and he's porkin' her and she's a s*** and it was just a very lovely time.

T-B-T-L

Bam, we're rolling. Yes, we are. Yes, we are.

Type A, I'm not. Comfortable, caring, and serious about our relationship, I am. My motto is to catch a snake, become a snake. Think like a snake and be a snake.

What did you say? I didn't say anything. Yeah, totally. No, I hear that.

Now, you're not going to read about this dimension in a book or in a magazine or in a newspaper because it doesn't exist anywhere except in my own mind.

So I'm nervous, but I'm excited at the same time. So I'm just going to start talking about what I like and hope I get some replies.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. So explain that. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

Coming to you today from the Garment District of New York City.

New York City!

And I mean, I'm like really in the Garment District. I'm looking out the window of the hotel and the other buildings that are surrounding me. By the way, unless you're a real upper crust, if you ever get a hotel room in New York, in Manhattan, What you will be staring at is another building. That's pretty much the view, unless you're on the penthouse of one of these hotels. But I'm staring at the window of another building, and it's just got all kinds of shirts in it and garments. I'm here in the garment district. I'm looking at garments. Earlier, I was down in the far, far southern tip of Manhattan. I was recording an interview down at the headquarters of the ACLU for my TV job. And I noticed something when I was down there that it seemed hectic, seemed extra hectic. There were, like, way more cars and people and security police and things. And I thought, what is going on? New York is just ridiculous these days. You can't go anywhere. And then I realized, oh, that's because what I'm looking at is the location of where, for the first time in U.S. history, a former president could be convicted of felony charges. I do it because my brain is bad. Yes, I went by the Trump trial today, or at least where the jury is deliberating, which is kind of interesting, actually, to be geographically sort of close to this pretty important moment in our nation's past, and let's be honest, our nation's future. Anyway, your future, your immediate future, it looks like this, episode 4117 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Flew out here last night, and once again, I was seated next to a very fascinating, very elderly person.

You're like the coolest person I've ever met.

I've really been on a hot streak with these super agers, so I'll talk about my new friend Lillian. Also, we've got an update on the TBTL Junior Sluggers. Can you verify? Can you give me some 411? participated in the parkside little league of east portland oregon's tournament of champions recently and we'll tell you how they have been faring also it's a thursday aka blurs day so we'll do the blurs day messages and we are going to talk to this guy the longest running cobro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships they just want you to be normal and clearly you're not he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend

hey Luke they came to pick up my garbage early today I'm noticing like every small detail of my garbage pickup now I'm more I'm more off my rocker than I've ever been with this and usually they come collect my garbage usually late afternoon around three I heard a truck pull up today so I'm looking out my basement window like a real creep as the garbage truck comes and empties my actual garbage bin this is the bin that has been accruing extra fees and fines even though i have not been putting any extra garbage in there and you're out of challenges and i'm out of challenges the city told me that if i try to you know get any more uh fees taken off of my bill or contested any more of these erroneous fees they'll open an investigation which if you tried

to ring the lung

alarm on any more junk sleep you'd be in real trouble so um here's here's my point though and

we don't have to belabor this but so i noticed the truck comes early i'm like oh that's interesting i'm like that that that woman in airplane who says huh he doesn't usually have a second cup of coffee at home and uh and also i this happened kind of two weeks in a row now i've been at my window when this particular garbage collector empties my bin and then i like kind of watch him get back in his truck and like it seems like he's spending a little extra time in the truck and i'm like is this the time it takes to put now that's interesting back into gear or is this the time i don't know if that was a sarcastic drop but i'm just gonna power through it um but i'm wondering like is this just the normal time it takes him to get the truck rolling again or is he beep beep beeping something into his computer that i'm gonna have to contest so how long did the

Did the duration of time From when he got into the truck To when the truck moved on How long I mean I know it felt like a lifetime

It felt like a lifetime Luke I'm going to say More than five Less than ten seconds I don't know Maybe ten Maybe ten at the upper reaches I know Like I hear it now too By the way This isn't complete kayfabe Like this is really Yes If I was not on the radio I were on this podcast For whatever the hell we're doing I would be telling Genevieve All of this information In my private life Like this is These are real thoughts and feelings I'm having, but I also am having the real thought and feeling that I am now like in any narrative like this, in any movie, any book, like clearly I am now the one who's who's, I don't know, acting inappropriately or certainly out of my mind on this. The tables have turned. I'm not I'm not a reasonable actor anymore, is my point.

You are starring in a Coen Brothers movie that no one is filming. No, nobody wants to see. and you've made a liar out of me Andrew or maybe not a liar but an omit her out of me today because when I was down at the ACLU offices doing the interview this morning and chatting the topic of the podcast came up as it often does because sometimes I'll say well I'm off to do my podcast now and usually the person I've been interviewing says oh what's the podcast about and I kind of have a one of my stock answers is I say it's just me and my friend talking to each other every day About complete minutia Like is his garbage man mad at him I've been sort of That's what's been cycling through lately I don't know why Because it's funny It's sort of relatable

Oh it's funny huh Glad you're enjoying this

Now that's interesting

You all think this is for your entertainment This is my mind This is my life This is where I live

But it's been kind of my shorthand And I actually believe I used it to describe How the show works to the Director of the entire Oregon State prison system on Tuesday So I've had a pretty busy week it turns out And on Tuesday we were filming at that prison And I was explaining To the head of corrections there The head of the prison system, TBTL And I said something like Well my co-host thinks His garbage man might be mad at him And I just saw this look of sort of Confusion on the face Of the director of the prisons and his media handler who had brought him out. And so I think that had me feel like that's no longer a good way to describe the show. So I didn't tell one of the analysts at the ACLU I'd been interviewing. I didn't use that to describe the show.

And here we are kicking off the show with it.

And by the way, I do think it's actually some of the more compelling content that we do. So I'm going to go back to having that be my shorthand for what the show is about. It's just a show where I talk to my friend And he wonders aloud if his garbage man is mad at him. Now, here's something else, Andrew, because I've got I know we don't like to go too deep into Trump world on this show because there's enough conversation around Trump world outside of TBTL. A lot of people like this is kind of a safe space from that. But I have had that trial on the brain because I do read about it a lot. And I happened to go past the courthouse today, which was a bizarre thing to have forgotten was happening in southern Manhattan. You know, Robert De Niro there. He was not. Actually, unfortunately, I would have.

You know why? I didn't even you saw that tidbit. Right. OK.

But I didn't even watch it because I had a feeling it was like right intention, correct intention, probably questionable execution. Yes. That was like I was like, I like where the guy's head is at. I like that he's out there advocating against Trump and for Biden. But I think we could have, you know We might have been able to pick a better messenger For the message

Yeah, exactly It's like you have somebody who has a certain You know, if you're somebody who has a certain amount Of, you know, power in culture Cultural power or whatever And you want to use that for good To make sure that this despot doesn't get back in the office office like yeah that's good you're you're out there doing it having said that it sounded like the cringiest press appearance in the world he apparently actually dropped a forget about it are you kidding me i almost texted that to you stop remembering that although here's the thing

the people who he's trying to reach are probably more inclined to be like oh good one forget about it yeah the people who understand that that's cringe are already gonna vote the way they're gonna vote like i think you and i are definitely would not are not people who would vote for donald trump so the forget about it thing is cringy but there might be some guy from staten island who's like oh yeah the guy from raging bull said forget about it and then maybe it moves

the needle i don't know that's true you know it's funny because i was reading then i was like oh my god like we don't have to worry about the people who would fetishize robert de niro we need to worry about the people who are on the ticky talkies and the the youtubies and everything i'm just kind of like that doesn't move the needle for them we need to we welcome to welcome to pod save north seattle that's uh what i'm rebranding this as i continue to fight the powers that be right outside my window but um you know that i mean that is it sort of seems like maybe let's also focus on some or focus on motivating some younger demographics as well well the thing

that happened in the trump trial the other day that i thought was quite interesting was there is a specific one of the big kind of arguments uh for the defense is that there so there was a phone call that happened where michael cohen i promise i'll try to keep this relatively short this relates to your garbage andrew okay good there is there was apparently a moment where michael cohen Called one of Trump's bodyguards Whose phone number, I think his name was Keith Schilling or something He calls this bodyguard And he has a conversation with him And then he also says the phone was handed to Donald Trump Who was right next to him And then they talked about the Stormy Daniels payment and situation And this is an important conversation for the prosecution Because it proves that Donald Trump knew what was going on with this that Donald Trump was not just like unaware of these machinations of this illegal payment. And what the defense's argument has been is that there's no way that whole conversation could have unfolded in like 90 seconds because that's just not enough time. And also supposedly, and I don't know if the prosecution concedes this or not. This is actually kind of funny. The defense says, no, this was a conversation where Michael Cohen called this Keith Schiller or shilling guy to complain about a 14 year old that was cyber bullying michael cohen oh which if true big if true yeah which just like i don't know why that footnote cracks me up but anyway

michael cohen says i mean because it's really hard to now i now i want to know now i want screenshots how did what what did this look like we don't know what the here's what we know we know

the duration of the call we don't know the contents of the call and i wish we did because is if he was saying to one of Trump's bodyguards, can you give me a ride home from the rap battle?

I know.

There's a 14-year-old who said some pretty mean stuff to me.

That's what I want. I want the screen caps not of this, not affecting the trial at all. I just want the screen caps of what the cyberbullying actually looked like. Did somebody call him a poopy head? Like, what was the nature of the cyberbullying?

And I actually don't know if it was cyber or phone or IRL bullying. It was something about him being bullied by a teenager. Okay, so. But this is what But this is what the This is what Trump's attorney, or excuse me, this is what the prosecution did That was genius work He Took out his cell phone, he put the timer on And then he hit go And then he pretended to be Michael Cohen And then he called, and then he talked to the bodyguard Presumably, this is all play acted, right? He pretends to talk to the bodyguard Presumably about the teenager that was menacing Michael Cohen Then he asked to have the phone handed to Trump Then he talks to Trump about, hey, the things are handled with such and such And don't worry, we've got it under control And here's what I did, and we're all good And then he hit stop on the stopwatch And it had only been 45 seconds And it was half the amount of time that we know the call was The duration of the call So it sounds like a very, very effective kind of way of demonstrating to the jury Oh, no, they could have very much had this conversation And here, let me just show you how that could have worked in real time we need to do that with your garbage man we need to figure out how could he have how long does it take him to input some kind of to red flag you in the system is that a five second thing a ten second thing he might have been calling his girlfriend about being cyber bullied himself and then also red flagged you in the system maybe that can all happen in 15 seconds we don't know we need we need to somehow get to the bottom of this so there's a little bit of a twist here that

I've been withholding from you. Yeah. Um. Um, it's, it doesn't know that's interesting. You don't even know what it is yet. I got a note here from listener Kim. Now Kim is, um, notable in, to me, at least in the TBTL universe and, and again, the North Seattle universe, because she is what we call my neighbor, not my next door neighbor, but she lives down the street from me. I met her. Genevieve and I were walking, I think, to the Eagles for an early morning Seahawks game a couple of years ago and ran across a family walking in the opposite direction. And Kim was like, hey, are you, Andrew? I'm a big TBTL listener. I don't know if you would recall this, Luke, but I mentioned it on the show at the time. And so Kim reached out to me a week or two ago after hearing about all of my garbage, call it what it is, trauma. and uh she says it sounds like the garbage pickup at her place in the small i'm talking about this micro neighborhood i don't mean that she lives like across the main like through way like she she lives right here very near me says um i went through my bills after listening to your issues i haven't been charged anything extra the garbage people have grabbed and emptied my cans next to my house even when i didn't bring them to the curb um one time i didn't even put my cans out on purpose uh because we were out of town and so they sat on the street for a week so in other words the the the garbage collectors for kim's house are so like um helpful above and beyond above and beyond that they're going and grabbing the even what even when kim doesn't want them to grabbing the bins like up the driveway apparently and emptying them for them um they give a friendly wave to me and my kiddo as we're usually leaving the house during pickup um and they'll back out of my way uh if my garage door opens to let us out instead of making us wait for them and also here's the final bit here uh during covid i started giving holiday thank you cards to them with a small gift card attached for each collector garbage yard waste and recycling and that has continued yearly so we're greasing the wheels here i also don't understand how you just leave gift cards out in this neighborhood i will talk to kim about that i think i think kim might be joining us for a special little Week in Review video coming up here because I want to hear more about this, and I also want to investigate whether or not we definitely have the same garbage pickup.

Yeah, that's the big question. And also, did this special treatment of Kim and her family, did it predate the giving of the Festivus gifts? Right. Or was it a result of that? You know, speaking of New York City, that's a big thing out here. We've talked about this on the show before. There's a lot of tipping that goes on in New York around the holidays because it's just the way this place is constructed. You know, you might have a doorman. You might, you know, you just have a lot of, to stay alive on this island of Manhattan, you just need a lot of different services. And it's culturally the norm out here to go around and tip a lot of those folks out. It's less the case in the Northwest in my experience. Like I tipped my mail lady last year at Christmas. i just came out she was delivering the mail and i just handed her a little money in an envelope and she was it was like i looked at me like i had two heads i mean she was very appreciative by the way stellar mail service after that it wasn't like the mail service was bad before but

man that's the best 30 i've ever spent i think were you you you knew this was the plan because you had cash in an envelope so were you sort of just like you know what time she usually swings by you were waiting inside peeping out your window i think i yeah i think i thought oh i

I should you know she's been very helpful and uh and I should just you know be nice because I don't think that they pay mail carriers enough and so I had it around and I figured I'll just see her at some point coming in and dropping off the mail and that's how that went down I'm wondering if that's how Kim tipped the the garbage guys at her house she just waited until you know one morning when they were coming she just walked out with an envelope and a card or something said here you go

Mary you know happy holidays or whatever yeah maybe because this is it sounds like she did it all three like you know three different trucks come by the garbage the yard waste and recycling so um just waiting for all those trucks to come by three wise trucks it truly is the most magical season anyway so um that's where we are i didn't mean to honestly i'm not even joking like i didn't mean to go so deep into that uh but that is where we are and i think the bottom line is clearly i

am the bananas one here well as long as you let me put it this way if if months and months go by and there are no more weird charges on your bill and you're still at kind of high high alert then i think it's something you should probably address you know between you and your trusted

clergy member but you are my trusted clergy well then this is just the place for it that's what i'm

getting at um but uh but but for now i mean i actually think that your obsession around this is pretty reasonable because they were charging Thank you. you for things you didn't do which really doesn't sit right with me and then also this system we keep talking about it but this system where you're you're allowed to you know call and and and sort of challenge something and they'll take it off the bill but there's a limited number of those you get per year and there's no system for adjudicating the fact that you didn't do anything in the first place so if they just keep charging you incorrectly eventually you don't even have the ability to say that was an incorrect charge that is on its and i've been doing a lot andrew of legal thinking lately and spending a lot of time at the aclu so i've got you know i just feel like this is a huge

due process violation is that why is that why you were talking the aclu because of my personal liberties and and what's going on yes i do want to say like to your point i think that that is a very reasonable thing to say like i still since this began i have not received a clean bill of health regarding my trash bill so in other words my last two bills which i think come i think they come by monthly luke so that's probably feeding into this as well so the last two cycles both had an extra charge on them and now i've been waiting for the next one and now i've been documenting it of course i mean i have my famous blue sky andrew's garbage anxiety account where i continue to document my and you have been keeping current on that oh my goodness yes i just what did I post it's what gets you out of bed in the morning I'm a bit sheepish about it I'm trying to see what I posted last night Andrew's garbage anxiety Wednesday May 29th garbage at the curb ready for pickup no extra fees please and I've got photos of my bins out there got front-facing bins I got one from the back I got one with the lid open just so they can see like you know 360 here there's no because like the guy on the phone was like I don't know maybe somebody left like a like a like an old baby carriage or something next to your baby shoes

never worn right exactly somebody left the world's shortest story next to your garbage can yeah the

six word story oh they say that they will only pick up five word stories oh that is such a bummer so anyway yeah so but i obviously i these are the the the ravings of a lunatic i i acknowledge that but who made me the lunatic who created this monster is what i'd like to point out exactly

you've come to the dark I was born here that's right you merely visited the dark I watched that movie randomly the other night Andrew I don't know what came over me I started watching whichever Batman that is the one with Bane in it what happened was I saw a clip on TikTok and it looked interesting and so then I ended up just going well I don't know is that on like can I stream that somewhere and I could on one of my many services and then I thought well I'll just watch this until you know it's time to go to bed and then I watched the whole thing and it's like

a three-hour movie I was gonna say the only reason I think you might be lying to me is because you said you started this the other night and I think if that were the case you'd still be watching right I just remember like I like some of those movies like of that Christopher Nolan Batman series but I think each of them should be chopped in half like they were all even the one with the Joker which was so celebrated was super long it felt like two movies to me in the Bane one I just felt like okay there's some good stuff here but also i gotta go i don't even live that busy of a life but i'm like looking at my watch like seriously though there are things happening outside this

theater and i don't even think that's the newest one right is there a robert pattinson one oh yeah

the batman yeah something in the way do you know that they i don't know if it's i don't think they use the nirvana version i think they use a slowed down version of the slowest nirvana song throughout

that movie yeah because I mean that shows you how out of step I am with uh the the pop culture landscape I think I was under the impression that the Bane one was the newest Batman movie and I was watching I was like this is pretty good but it feels dated to me really and I look like a very young Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and I'm watching it and then I think afterwards or maybe the next morning I looked it up and I was like oh that was a few movies ago 2012 it looks like here I think the dark only rises only 12 years Andrew a mere 12 years if you would have told me that the the movie where a Christian Bale plays Batman if you told me that that came out two years ago I'd be like yeah that sounds about right like that's how bad I am at keeping track of this kind of

stuff now my question for you which you won't have the answer to is how many I thought I thought that Christopher Nolan made three of these Batman movies and I thought that the Bane one was the second one let's see the Dark Knight series includes Batman Begins the Dark Knight and the Dark Knight Rises okay so I think this was the third of it it was the final of the trilogy so you were right there that's a win

alright I'll take that W you know who has seen probably none of those movies Andrew the woman that I was flying next to on the plane Thank you. last night lillian age 87 that's a great name isn't it though she um we we were talking somehow because you know one of the things i say you always want to discuss on a flight is politics and sex and religion that's it and i'd already burned through sex and religion you led with that all i had left was politics somehow so the first half it's a you know portland to new york flight So it's a pretty long flight and like the first half of the flight, I'm kind of working and keeping to myself and I don't, I don't really know if, if this person I'm sitting next to is particularly interested in chatting or not. And I'm only a little bit interested in chatting probably. And so then they come around with some snacks and I go to select some potato chips and then I realize they're barbecue flavor and then I put them back and I get some popcorn because I just, I don't think I have the, the what's the word I'm looking for a barbecue chip in our modern era in this modern this crazy go-go world is probably got too much barbecue sauce on it for me like things that are flavorful now are too flavorful for me in certain ways so I'll just say I love a barbecue chip it's like

one of the only flavored chips I'll eat having said that I do think the rules are different on an airplane I don't think I would crave a barbecue chip on an airplane it just does seem like

too much flavor grease for me yeah and i don't get me wrong like a lays a barbecue flavored potato chip tastes really good to me i can eat like three of them though they're just so there's so much coating on there so anyway i'm putting the barbecue chips back and i'm getting a popcorn instead and i must have said something about the bar whatever i said to lillian she said well she goes i eat so many chips which by the way was a shock to me because lillian Was not a woman of large carriage At age 87 She was later Her grandkids describe her as quote Spry And I think spry would perfectly Encapsulate her whole vibe But anyway she's like I eat so many potato chips Now I gotta eat low sodium potato chips Because otherwise my sodium is too high And that opened the door to a conversation Andrew about Donald Trump About the judiciary About Sandra Day O'Connor. And then Lillian mentioned, I said, well, yeah, you know, we start talking about the history of the Supreme Court, of course, which I know a very minimal amount about. But at some point she just let slip. She goes, oh, well, I was a lawyer. I went to Harvard Law School. Oh, I asked if Sandra Day O'Connor went to Harvard Law School. She said, I think she went to Stanford. She goes, I actually went to Harvard Law. I was like, really? I go, you know, what year or how long ago she goes 65 years ago this lady graduated harvard law 65 years ago she was in one of the first classes that would even allow women yeah to attend i was gonna say well it was easier for

women back then exactly at harvard law school in 65 years ago she's she um said that none of the

professors would call on any of the women in class ever god and um it was the reason that she decided to go so her um her parents uh had come over from what was then poland but what is now ukraine um they were jewish they came over escaping oppression they end up in new jersey and her dad opens a butcher shop because that's kind of what you did and she used to go and deliver like you know she used to go deliver meats and things when she was in high school like she would be i don't know driving the car around and dropping off things from her dad's butcher shop she decided to go to law school because she was at her friend's house and she looked around and she thought boy this friend's really got some money this is a nice house and she was chatting with her friend's dad and somehow in the conversation her friend's dad in passing said you should go to law school and that went into her brain and is why she went to harvard law school wow right you never know for good or for ill when you're talking to someone particularly a young person um how what you say to them could have some sort of lifelong effect that one conversation just made it seem in her mind like well that's a thing i could do i think he might have been an attorney as well maybe that's why she thought he kind of knew what he was talking about but she said that was the moment for her she had no plans to become an attorney until he said you should

probably go to law school that's so great here's what i love about that too is and again just kind of keeping in mind like the the you know the era that this is the fact that she's um a young woman at this point. And you expect a story like this to be, I went over to my friend's house and I noticed that, you know, she was pretty wealthy and, you know, I don't know, she had a gardener who was mistreated. And I looked at that mistreatment and I said, I'm going to stand up for the downtrodden, the people who don't have a voice in the society. No, she was kind of like, she looked around, she's like, that's a nice indoor pool. how can i get one of those well and actually andrew that was foreshadowing because she argued two cases in front of the supreme court lillian did and i was very fascinated by that like i mean my goodness the pressure and then we were talking about the cases and one of the cases had to do with um a question of if if somebody was responsible for somebody else's death what had happened was these two guys in upstate new york three guys had been getting super drunk together and then two of the guys robbed one of the dudes because he was so drunk they took his wallet they took like some of his clothes or something and they leave and this guy gets up and he's so inebriated but he's cold now because he doesn't have his stuff he goes to cross literally cross the road to get to where they're somewhere warm and he gets hit by a truck and he dies these two guys were indicted for murder and and and we're talking about the case and i was like you know it's not a manslaughter case it's a murder case i was about to say yeah i guess technically it's probably what's called felony murder which means if you're committing a felony which the theft would have been a felony if you're committing a felony and someone dies it becomes a murder charge it's called felony murder so it was probably that but we're talking this whole time about this case and the other case and i didn't realize she was arguing on the side of the law man she was like oh no she was like i was always the black hat i was always i go did you win your case she goes i won both of them and i realized like oh i am so enjoying talking to lillian and lillian seems like a pretty solid individual to me and i i would imagine our politics are fairly similar you know she lives in manhattan she's she seemed to be going with me on the idea that maybe the current like that the alitos probably shouldn't be flying those flags by their houses like i think she and i are on the same page but i also the entire time assumed that she oh because i told her i'm i'm doing a story about prison labor i'm going to the aclu tomorrow i assumed that she and i were going to be in complete simpatico on all that stuff and then it took me like a long time to figure out oh no no she was the one being like uh give him the gas chamber i mean not really but she was the one arguing that their conviction had been legitimate essentially

yeah that that is that is interesting so wow but i mean to appear before the supreme court Twice in your life

And she said her parents Her dad the butcher shop owner And her mom I think the homemaker Came all the way up to DC To watch her do this And she said no that never happened Parents didn't come to watch you argue Supreme court cases and her mom said To her and this was a high compliment When you were talking to those justices It was like you were just talking over the back fence That was what her mom's take on her In front of the US flipping

supreme court was it's sad because then she went on to sue her parents for um half of the income of the butcher shop if i understand it correctly yes yes and she won and she won the court ended up giving her the entire butcher shop which she then raised and um turned into a cvs yep that's

exactly what do you wait did you read her bio that's exactly i was reading your show notes here

now i don't know why i'm trying to paint her as on the wrong side of everything is the bit that

i'm going for and i think failing at it's just it's coincidental to me that like the i think maybe literally the last two flights i've been on i've been seated remember the previous one was sitting this to a guy named bert and bert was the guy who had had been the head of cardiology at ucla and i asked him when did you retire he said 45 years ago he was like 90 and totally with it and then i get seated next to lillian who's who's 87 and very with it very spry as they say and a great conversationalist and i don't know i just something going on i don't know if that's what the universe is trying to tell me with that probably nothing but uh it's a coincidence for sure well let me

ask you this and this is where um it's going to sound accusatory and i certainly don't mean it that way but did you objection but where do you objection your honor accusatory um i got an email Like that story of Bert, you were giving all these dazzling details of him. And I was even thinking like, oh, wow, all of our listeners can Google this guy. No problem. I got a couple of emails just saying, hey, did you ever find any information on this guy? Because I've been Googling around. There's so many like historical details there. And I can't find anybody that matches this. Did your curiosity get the better of you? Did you Google either one of these people? And again, I am not. I know it sounds like I'm saying, Luke, you're being lied to by octogenarians. That's not what I'm saying. I'm just kind of curious, though.

How gray would it be if that was my blind spot, if I believed anything somebody over 85 told me?

And how do you keep on getting sat next to them on the airplane?

What if none of them are real? There was this, I don't know if you grew up in a Catholic church.

Did you end up fighting either one of these people in an underground club?

Her name was Lillian Durden. There was this crazy story that went around the Christian communities I grew up in. There's probably a version.

in the catholic world depending on how literal people were about like you know a woman tells the story of like it's a rainy night and a child comes to the door and says please my my parents are in a car accident they're in a ditch down the road and you know we went and we we helped the people we got them out of the car safely and everything and we said your your daughter came and told us and they said she died 10 years ago that was a that was a real you know that was a real heart stopper that was a real real pulse pounder i'm talking about two very opposite experiences is your heart stopping or is your pulse pounding your which one is it pounds until

it stops it's one i see at least that's that's what my doctor tells me is happening inside my chest i'm not sure but no anyway but in all seriousness so you oh i ask this only because you and i are the type of people who google things like this like i i found out a neighbor's last name a couple weeks ago i'm like oh i've always wondered about that and so i googled that person

have you done any it was alito some questions about these flags did you see i mean we i don't

want to do this but like did you see the latest quote was just something like my wife just really likes flags did you see that quote that's amazing i mean obviously it's all been pretty amazing i

mean it's all been just absolutely did you read the new york times did you read the jody canter piece yesterday no i didn't know deep diving she interviews the neighbors in question it's really A good read are they on the record now

Because they've all been kind of maintaining Oh they're super on the neighbors

The couple that was apparently really Getting into it with the Alitos Are very much on the record And it's a really well written piece It's really interesting It's interesting because at the level Of pettiness that it demonstrates Just normal neighborly pettiness Where you just kind of like You're kind of looking out your window Maybe like after you had the pink ink incident With the parking where you just start to kind of like if you're by the window you might look out the window to see like is that guy out there right now it's just a lot of that kind of stuff except well the future of democracy as we know it also kind of hangs in the balance so it's this incredibly just normal suburban neighborly shit going down but then the sort of overarching um possibilities of it is so huge yeah by the way i just i after

i said that quote i was like where did i see that i was kind of flipping through things quickly The actual quote, and this was in the letter that Alito sent to Congress, like defending himself from not recusing himself. The quote that he wrote in the letter is my wife is fond of flying flags. I am not. She was solely responsible for having the flagpoles put up. So the context of it just, you know, just reiterates what he's been saying the whole time. But there was just something about the sentence. My wife is fond of flying flags as being what is what is going to help crumble this democracy.

exactly well i did um i actually googled um bert and i he's very real and he because he has this company that makes this product which he told me about the product then i looked the product up and it's real and it's basically like a wound care product and its big innovation is the way that it delivers this super sterile product to your wound through a special gel substrate or something So he's real and then I googled Lillian this morning Also very real I found a case Turns out her first And last name is there's a fair number Of people with that name and they're a highly Accomplished group a lot of doctors A lot of other lawyers but I found a case Like from 1986 that was in front Of the New York State Supreme Court that Lillian Was arguing. That's so cool So yeah I mean I don't have a great Power out to the story other than to say It's just so interesting that I keep getting You know seated next to these I'll tell you one thing none of these people are doing on these flights drinking yeah I don't know I don't know if that's related I mean I don't think that I don't know if I can establish causality but they I did also watch Bert just absolutely hammer a cheeseburger so who knows maybe it's not about lifestyle maybe it's about just the luck of the draw but it's being you know just being in the presence of somebody like Lillian 87 years old and like literally sprung off of the flight when we got there and was power like speed walking with me up the tarmac up an incline and in like walking faster than I wanted to walk granted I was wheeling my bag but still it was like I just you know in the words of Rob Reiner's mother I'll have what she's having I just want to know what's going on with these people that they've they're living these life these these you know a life into old age and they you know they're they're beset by certain unavoidable elements of getting older but they're they're less beset by those things than a lot of the other people i know and it's just kind of it's it's i'm like what is it and can i get some of that please i didn't know

that that was rob reiner's mom i still haven't yeah the i'll have what she's having she's also

in the dark knight oh yeah you know i was she's one of bane's henchmen she's the henchman that keeps going, I'll have what

she's having luke i am gonna confess something to you because so for the past like i don't know like six or seven minutes i've been thinking i hope luke brings up the dark night again because there's one other thing that that conversation reminded me of something i wanted to tell you that is only tangentially related but there was no way for me to get back there coming off of the story and i've been sitting here and i've been sitting here thinking like oh i really kind of want to say that one thing but it'd be really awkward for me to go back and i almost i seriously was contemplating saying hey luke can you mention something about the dark knight again because it reminded me of something i want to tell you but you did it organically and i don't have to mention any of that um you mentioned seeing now to watch the dark not the dark knight which is a long action film and i don't think you and i are especially into action films and certainly super long action films and it reminded me of something i did the other night which was uncharacteristic. Now, before I get to that, I will remind you that I mentioned that on Sunday night, me and some friends went to see the new Mad Max movie called Furiosa, which is the prequel to Fury Road, which came out like 10 years ago. And I told you that I really enjoyed it. And I remember in describing my experience on Sunday night to you, I said, you know, there are a couple of nits I could pick with this new one compared to Fury Road which was like if you're into it you you just like it it was all just adrenaline and and literally road war and everything um and this one maybe I could knit you know pick some nits but um essentially still pretty good the other day I did something very unusual for me was I put on the first the first Mad or not the first Mad Max but Fury Road I went back and I watched you know the the movie that comes after this prequel I just watched now I had seen this in the theater in 2014 and I believe the Cinerama in Hollywood and I remember just loving Fury Road and I will say Luke I kind of want to rescind my comments from earlier this week I might like the I think I might like the new one better first of all and I had basically forgotten almost everything about um about Fury Road except for like the high adrenaline chasing there's actually quite a bit of corniness in fury road that i'd forgotten about and i was thinking about your conversation um or your about how i walked out of it initially how you disliked it and then you you kind of came around i think you watch again with camaro kevin you watch it sort of with a different mindset and was able to enjoy it the

mindset called a lot of vodka i didn't know that i think we watched it at his house at like you know midnight oh that's funny okay a long night of carousing so i think it was kind of you you

had mentioned that on monday but in my head i was sort of remembering that story differently as if he had taken you back to the theater which i guess is a which is a different thing but um yeah honestly like i could understand why you you might you know if you're not already into the mad max world like you have to suspend a lot of disbelief but also there was just like some corniness in the in the first one that i think was just washed over me because of the because i think i'm almost like recency bias maybe on both of these movies like when you're sitting in a theater and it's a huge screen and the audio is just booming around you and your your heart is

beating so fast that it stopped and uh your pulse pounding and then you're stopping but you're still getting popcorn in somehow yeah oh boy it's like a chicken with its head cut off you just that your human arm will continue feeding popcorn into your mouth for minutes after your heart

has stopped I literally said to my friends as we got to the theater and met them at the door I said now I need you to avert your eyes and do not look me in the eye as I order the largest popcorn

that they have I love you just like you strap into an Immortan Joe setup which feeds you popcorn the way that he gets fed

like oxygen or whatever the hell he needs absolutely but yeah I do think that there was something about maybe seeing these movies in the theater and again if you love Fury Road I'm you know as a listener I'm not trying to tell you that it's a bad movie I mean I loved it the first time but it's also just amazing how I saw that 10 years ago it doesn't feel like 10 years ago it feels like I just saw it somewhat recently and I just remember being like wow no notes it's all action and I'm not a big action fan but it's action that tells a story and I was into it the whole time and then going back and re-watching it 10 years later on my television which is you know it's a decent television we have actually a decent sound bar now so it's not like it's not like I was watching it on a tiny like little six inch tube television under my covers but which is how I used to sneak watching TV when I was a kid but anyway I just was like wow there's a lot that is not a perfect movie that is certainly the case so and I may even

like the new one even more does the prequel of like logically feed into the sequel or the regular one or are they running in to some young Sheldon type of situation.

First of all, I don't even know what the young Sheldon issue is. A lot, Andrew. I know that you've been doing some deep research on this recently, but no, I will say that was my takeaway was if there's somebody out there who has not seen either one of these movies, I would definitely watch the prequel first. I would watch the new one first and then watch this other one because I think maybe one of the reasons I didn't remember a lot of it is it kind of has to, it almost feels like, It's actually a perfect prequel into a sequel sort of handoff. Honestly, I was really impressed with it. And I thought, boy, yeah, if I was going to advise anybody on watching these two movies, I'd say watch Furiosa first and then it'll hand off exactly like it's a really good seamless without being corny handoff.

I did that story about the end of the TV show Young Sheldon and I thought literally the most interesting part of the whole thing was the fact that CBS was taking arguably its most popular comedy off the air at the height of its powers because they had basically like the worlds were colliding. The problem is they had this show The Big Bang Theory And there's a guy named Sheldon Cooper who's like the star of it And he's always telling stories About his childhood and about his life Before you know he gets on the show And like there's a point that his father dies Which is a big part of his kind of origin story There was all this stuff That the young Sheldon producers Were now coming up against Where they were like we can't They were making the kids be the same age for like Multiple seasons they were trying to Bart and Lisa Simpson But it wasn't working anymore because everyone's humans and they're aging i just thought this to me just from a practical standpoint is what's interesting about this story and i was working with our friend john goodwin and i i got a line or two in about that it wasn't really the thrust of the piece but it was what interested me and then a week later a new york times article comes out so why did they take young sheldon off the air and it's all about how they had these basically timeline problems and it led to them having to take off this tremendously popular sitcom which like never happens if you have like a sitcom That's just printing money You don't take it off the air Unless the creators are like We just can't Sorry, this had a limited lifespan And we've now exhausted that

But honestly, I haven't been following this Wasn't there like But aren't they starting another project Like Medium Sheldon They are

They're spinning off A couple of the other characters from the show That are not young, medium, or old Sheldon I also wanted to call him Old Sheldon in the article and they took that out in my cbs pictures i was hurt by because i thought that was funny but um yeah there's another show that's going to be coming uh along that involves characters from the but the the sheldon timeline is now all done where we've he may pop in and out but we've seen we've seen mostly what we're going to see from him as far as the star of the show but i just thought it was funny how that little detail was basically the only thing i wanted to talk about and then the new york times just wrote an entire article about it i was like well um tip of the cap game recognized game i think what we've learned here is you should write for the new york times are you are you listening arthur sulzberger jr 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 rattle, dazzle

Let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the incredible, generous folks who are dazzling TVTL with their donation of dough. Couldn't do the show without folks like Linder Peacock. Linda's in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and says, It's like Linda, but with a Boston accent.

Linder. I met Linder not in Portsmouth.

Linder, hardly knew her.

Not in New England at all, but I remember meeting Linder in Austin, Texas when we did our show there.

That was such a fun show. That was a fun trip, man.

I was, you know, I think Shaky Graves is playing one of the big festivals around here. Oh, the Thing Festival. Veeves is going to go. She's like, oh, Shaky Graves is playing. I'm like, oh, you mean one-time TBTL opener in Austin, Texas? And I was, dude, I think I really impressed her.

Same thing. Becca was, like, playing some, I don't know, Spotify algorithm, or I don't know what she was playing, but it was like, I go this sounds like shaky grave She goes it sure is And I was like fun fact And then she just put on the headphones that she stole from me And walked into the other room Which I'm sure is exactly what Genevieve did to you

Wait did she let out a big sigh She did

Yep you know the move Lender says I'm reading John's Last call for submissions email And I haven't been so super served since Well it was surely a TBTL Situation I can't remember regardless John's suggestions of what to write are so for me four of the seven topics were happening had just happened or about to happen soon so we'll explain this um our our friend and colleague tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff uh you know it's been sent out an email to kind of um encourage folks who are donating in a dazzling amount of dough to get their message in if they care to and to make it a little easier he had i think in the email um proposed some suggested

things to write about yes now this happened a while back because we tried to get all the dazzling donor submissions in um kind of all at once so that we can then place them throughout the show in the coming months and so that's why you'll start to hear some people saying I'm sorry I'm so late with this when we're like in the middle of reading dazzling donor messages because it's sort of they they've received two or three emails from John saying hey just a gentle reminder um you know you're dazzling us so please if you want to be in the spotlight take the spotlight it is yours you have earned it now I had not read these emails what we're about to share here Luke is very revealing to me and sheds light on a question that has been lingering around this segment for a while. I went back and found the email that John sent out. This is, again, like the kind of the follow up email that John sent to Dazzling Donor saying, hey, you know, you still haven't received your Dazzling Donor message. So, you know, a little reminder, please send it in if you don't. And now I'm going to quote, if you can't think of what to write, here are a few suggestions now i see that john wrote here's a few suggestions which i'm just noticing now is actually a grammatical error it should be here are a few suggestions but i would never call that out on the air um give luke advice on any one of his various house projects shout out your friends in the community teach andrew how to find otis miller's revolver in horse commander three i don't think i ever did that uh plug your business or favorite non-profit mention your begrudging 10.5 or 10 and a half by name in the message that they have to listen to that day's episode now here's where we get to it send in a thanks john message so luke continues to believe that i'm manipulating the messages after submit after they're submitted i'm really

not by the way and so luke believes i would say accurately that you're you got your thumb on that

scale exactly and i will just read the last one here because it'll make sense for linder's message share loving messages directed towards bingo bubbles professor bananas my dogs or the dart bot which is funny but uh anyway so that's why we're getting so many messages that mention john specifically is because john was saying you know kind of nudging a little bit to say you know you could you could mention me in your messages so it's all coming together the piece now i will tell

i'll tell you this john admitted this to me offline when we were on one of our tbtb business meetings i think this is when it happened i wasn't i was asking about it you were yet to log on oh i was tardy the show poster had not logged on yet so john and i were just chopping it up and i think he he said i just want to let you know there is a line in the email that does say if you want

to mention me you can can i ask you um a question here yes was i really tardy to this meeting or are you and john having business meetings without i'm fine if you are i just want to know imagine

a world andrew in which i'm having even one extra meeting even one extra meeting john let's just

let's just touch base let's just see what's going on um okay i promise you we are not meeting uh

without your knowledge and again the i feel i feel confident saying that and i feel like you can believe me because you know i mean listen the fact that we have i mean you and john do have other meetings important meetings all the time uh without me but this weekly meeting we have that's the gathering of the tbtb brain trust if i remember right i think i shot an email to you saying you know we should probably just have that on the books and you said i absolutely agree um and i was talking to genevieve about it and she and i can't remember if it was you or genevieve but somebody said yeah right like luke's ever gonna agree to another meeting it was me it was

amazing i think i even offer you an apology that i didn't need to offer you because you weren't in the room when i basically laughed at the idea of putting a regular meeting i remember talking to genevieve i mean and this happened in very short order like this was i don't know maybe we were a couple of months a month or two into our kind of independence as we call it since we started our new company and genevieve saying well what did like some she asked me a question we're talking about something work related and she said well what did you what did you say in your weekly catch-up or i what is the what is the like there's some industry word for like a meeting like a regular meeting on the calendar where you just kind of all touch base or whatever and i'm like our weekly meeting what do you mean she's like well don't you guys don't the you all work in different states like don't you like get together once a week to check in on things and i I laughed out loud. I said, do you think that Luke Burbank wants to just have a regular weekly meeting on the calendar?

Does that sound like the Luke Burbank, you know? And then, I mean, I think within 24, but certainly 48 hours, I got an email from you that just said, hey, I've been thinking. I think we should have a weekly check-in meeting just to, like, kind of keep us all on the same page. I think I apologize to you. I think I wrote in a response, I apologize. Genevieve suggested this, and I laughed at the idea of you participating in something like this. So thank you for being the adult in the room.

Genevieve reached out to me behind your back just to own you, and I've been having this meeting every Wednesday for the last eight months just to really commit to the bit.

Hey, I know we want to get back to thinking, Linder, but I do want to say in all seriousness, because I was razzing John here and I was making fun of his grammar or whatever. John does an amazing job of honestly reaching out to listeners and handling all of this stuff, and I really do appreciate it. I know that he listens to the show. I don't want to tease too hard, as Genevieve says.

No, because we made some joke about being at war with him the other day, and then I saw on Instagram there was a post about it. So we've got to be careful that we are so, so grateful and appreciative of both our donors and TBTL employee numero uno, Mr. John Sklaras. Linder says, I was actively restraining myself from sending Luke's dad some tools and fasteners because I sell tools and fasteners. I geek out about them. I wonder what tools and fasteners Linda's talking about. Yeah. I was checking for Blur's Days and whether this week or next week was the right week to send in my message to the friendos. My 11 was asking me why he doesn't get a Blur's Day shout out, but doesn't listen because he thinks you guys sound exactly alike. Head explode emoji. And I have an almost 20-year-old cat on my lap while my foot is asleep, but I dare not get up because weasel is comfy, rather and pod pets or top of mind so thanks john for the assignment suggestions uh aligning with my life my experiences and my love of all things tbtl i love this community me too thank you linder thank you linder and tell your 11 he doesn't get a blursday shout out because he doesn't listen to the show yeah and our voices do not sound the same or do they how about we both do an imitation of

each other right now and then see if we sound or do we just move on and hope. That's a feelings herder right there. This was the final episode of TVTL. Maestro? On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle. Everybody rattle, dattle.

Hey, look who it is. It's Steve Masamoto of Kenmore. Steve writes, home of the Savage Moose, Washington. What a night. A night that will live in infamy. That was quite the trip.

In my head, the bartender was giving Camaro Kev stitches at the bar. That wasn't the case. I think he had a splinter or something from trying to escape the marina that we had to break out of.

Yeah, some kind of. I mean, that was. Has our tea just dropped that much in the last five years or whenever that. That seemed like a fairly reasonable night. plan and you couldn't you couldn't pay me to do that now like it would just be such madness we sent we you know run this boat this kind of only half works boat all the way up from the u district for the montlake cut or whatever it is the ship canal all the way up to kenmore we park it i guess sort of illegally on a dock because we don't really have we haven't reserved a spot i think

you're wrong about that you reserved a spot but they said it was only open certain hours and we didn't know what that meant like how are you going to keep us from docking up and then we dock up and we realized oh you can tie the boat up for the night and it was reserved but we couldn't get out there they locked up all no in and out privileges exactly except by waterway so if we wanted to go into the town or go to the savage moose we had to scale these fences so we're doing

that i feel i don't know if there was barbed wire but i feel like there was in my in my mind then we end up at this bar that's walking distance that's why we went to it the savage moose uh alcohol was alcoholed uh minor surgery was was performed on Camaro Kev there was of course the famous moment where somebody was playing some terrible music in the jukebox and so you and Kevin embarked upon the project of walking playing music that was slightly less terrible but still in the general vibe and then even less terrible and then he and before we knew it we had like the there was good music playing in the bar it was it was one hell of a night and Steve might have driven right past the bar that night he's in kenmore and he says i've had my tbtl 10 car license plate for 15 plus years i like to think when i drive around the city and people honk at me it's not because i'm a bad driver by inadvertently cutting them off or failing to yield the right of way it's because

they are fellow tens and just saying hi it's how i cope peace steve i totally support that

coping mechanism can i ask you a question luke do you like um do you like movies about gladiators

fried pickles i i do like fried did we have did we have fried pickles at the savage i don't

remember eating at the savage moose but i'm on their like website or i'm in the google review page for them right now i'm just looking at the offerings and you know they're just like they're they're bar offerings it's nothing it doesn't look like anything necessarily to write home about but um i am seeing some deep fried pickles here which is something that i did not have i love pickles i'm a big fan of pickles but i don't think i had any deep fried pickles until pretty late into adulthood and uh and now i'm a pretty big fan of them i really like them see i would this

is my thing with deep fried pickles they are something that considering how much i love the individual components involved i love pickles and i love things that are deep fried you would think that it'd be like i'm a 10 on pickles i'm a 10 on things that are deep fried if you put them together i've got a 20 but i feel like you put them together and for me i get like a 17 i understand

that i'm that way with some foods like i have like you know i'm definitely that way with sweet and salty stuff like i have no desire to have like chocolate on my pretzel or we went to the cinerama the other day and they have that option to get like chocolate covered um popcorn and i do not like that at all like so i understand that sometimes the the components don't add up and i do think it's a you know it's a strange consistency and you're eating something hot that is usually cold it's like it's like fried but wet yeah it's true it is but but again don't

get me wrong i will absolutely go to town on some deep fried pickles but i'm still i'm a i'm a cheese stick man like my father and his father before him you give me a good or even a bad mozzarella stick at the bar and i'm uh i'm i'm pretty excited about that yeah um god i just

you know what i want is one of those and i haven't had one of these in probably over a decade but i i have this overwhelming urge to go to one of those like i don't even know which one it would be if i wanted a big sampler plate which chain restaurant would i go to where it's all fried Is it Applebee's that has that or Friday's?

And you know what's crazy, Andrew? I think they both have it, but I feel like it's Applebee's that you and I have ended up at a couple times on, like, TBTL-a-thon trips, and I've ordered whatever that is. It's got every fried product, and then it's got, like, a couple of chips and, like, a queso dip as well. It's just, like – and, you know, this morning I jumped in the lift to go down to southern Manhattan, and we were worming our way through Times Square. And it's like the Applebee's in Times Square Which in a certain way Is just I mean why on earth would you come to New York City And then go to the Applebee's I'm talking about myself here I'm not talking about somebody who's visiting from another country or whatever Because hey do your thing But I looked at that Applebee's and I thought That's the most ridiculous thing ever And then I thought but god it's been good when Andrew and I have been there Like could I find myself Is there a universe in which I would go to the Applebee's in Times Square I don't think I will But like it didn't it didn't seem as like it was a it was a zero percent chance before when I looked at it

this morning it became a non-zero chance you know I'm looking at the sampler from Applebee's and I do remember you getting this this is and I do remember this from our trips however this isn't the one that I was seeing in my mind I feel like in college I remember me and my friend Andrea a couple of times it was like this weird moment where I was kind of like oh yeah I'm I'm old enough to drink we can go to applebee's and get one of those crazy like drinks it was sort of it was this weird moment that i'm i don't even have to get into and now here i am trying to get into it but like there was this moment in young adulthood where i could see my life sort of merging together growing up like we were a family unlike your family were like our parents would take us out to dinner and stuff but it was often in these kinds of like um very suburban shane restaurant kind of places, right? Your Applebee's. A lot of Hospitaliano. A lot of Hospitaliano. So I had that experience as a young person. Then as a as a young adult, I'm in college. I'm now old enough to drink. And so, you know, I'm going to the college bars or whatever. But then I just remember for some reason, my friend Andrea maybe said, well, do you want to go to Applebee's or something? It wasn't Applebee's, though. It might have been TGI Fridays. I don't know what it was. And I was like, yeah, I guess we can just go to Applebee's. I think I had a Long Island iced tea for the first time there and we had i ordered a long island iced tea and then the two of us ate some mountain of fried stuff like i'm looking at the applebee's one and like you said that comes with chips and uh chips and dip and like uh chicken wings chips and i love chips and dip

i just figured out who that was by the way i always thought that was richard simmons it's not it's stop the insanity susan powder is

I

I didn't somebody sent that into me like forever ago, and I'm looking to see if I can find it now. I didn't know that that was Susan Powder.

She's the woman who famously had the very kind of short hair that was dyed bleach blonde. And she did the Stop the Insanity videos, which were some sort of diet program or something. I just saw it pop up on TikTok and it was like I had seen a ghost because I had no idea. I always was picturing like Richard Simmons when I would hear the audio of I love chips and dips.

It's a bummer that I have this new computer now, and I think Windows 11 has, like, it searches for things differently. Oh, wait, wait, maybe I got it right here. Let's find out. Come on.

Chips and dips, chips and dips. I love chips and dips.

I can hear it now. I can almost hear the studio sound now, like, that it would make sense.

Well, she's walking around. No, she's walking around a grocery store. Oh. And to be honest with you, the source material makes me so nervous Because I have, not that frequently, but at times in my life I've been in on a production where the plan is for me to be somewhere And then make some magic happen Like, okay, Susan, we're going to get you in the grocery store And I'm sure this was all in service of the larger diet message Like, hey, don't eat this stuff or whatever But you can tell if you watch the original video She's just going through a grocery store And she's just like analyzing everything but in a way that she's like being very excited about it but like it's all riffing and it's like you can just see her struggling to find a way to riff about like refried beans or something she's just going through the store doing it gives me so much anxiety to watch because i just i've been in a version of that before and it i i do very poorly in those situations when it's like we're just going to walk around the store and then just why don't you just give us your thoughts give us your reactions susan about these various you know processed foods that's that's how you

end up getting asparagus for your crudités who was the politician who was uh it was oh it was

dr oz right do you remember that exactly the aspiring politician and thank god he did yes yes exactly if that kept him out of there thank goodness he did and thank goodness for steve masamoto of kenmore washington for his support thanks steve we couldn't do this without you All right, it's time for this week in kids' baseball. We've got an update on how the TBTL Junior Sluggers have been doing. They're in the postseason tournament. We talked to Coach Ben last week on the show. That was really fun. And I have to tell you, Andrew, this is an epic tome, this message that I received from Coach Ben last night. First I thought that he had just written like a sentence or two And I thought oh wow that's unusually brief And then I realized no I needed to hit on the bottom of the text message And then it expands to be about eight pages I think

Now I gotta say Coach Ben's got me right where he wants me I almost mentioned on yesterday's show Like Luke wasn't the first game of the postseason on Tuesday Like do we have an update But I was like well if we had an update You would let us know you're not sitting on these things So I just let patience be a virtue here.

I would never hoard my junior sluggers info. So here we go. This is from Coach Ben. This dot, dot, dot was a tough one. On Tuesday evening, your TBTL little sluggers took on the Golden Tigers again, third time in a row, in this first round of the Tournament of Champions, our league's version of the playoffs. It rained all day Tuesday, and it was up in the air as to whether the game was going to happen, but about an hour before game time, the clouds parted and the sun came out. It felt like a positive omen, like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the Lord appears in the clouds and blesses the Knights. I arrived at the field absolutely convinced we were going to win. I was extra confident because I've added more schtick to our team hype. we've been doing player walk up excuse me we've been doing player walk up music for a few weeks now and I've long wanted to add the player names to their introductions you know we were supposed to do that Andrew but I got the feeling you were a little bit like you were not in love with that idea of us riffing the player announcements on the air did I read that right or did I over

I would have been game for it I know there was one day that I think the day that we had scheduled we had it scheduled for I was under the weather and I wasn't in any condition to summon up that kind of energy I remember just thinking, I hope it just happens on a day that Genevieve isn't working from home if I was really going to give it. But I was I was locked in. I was ready to do it.

Well, let's see. My first choice for announcers fell through. This is all Ben. So I had to lower myself into the dark web of A.I. deep fakes for an alternative. Just so you know, Luke and Andrew, you've been replaced as team announcers by Joe Biden and Taylor Swift. oh audio samples available upon request yes ben this is me requesting those anyway before i share the game highlights let me explain one thing about tournament rules up to this point in the season coaches have had a lot of discretion about game rules if a kid needed an extra swinger to to feel like they had a good at bat that wasn't a problem the goal was to help kids learn and enjoy the game now i noticed this andrew when i was watching the game with becca and she asked me how many strikes do they get and i go i'm not really sure because it seems to be kind of on a um you know need to know basis like it seemed like some so it was it was one of those things where the attempt was to create a good experience for the player um if at all possible without making the game completely ridiculous well this is ben again those incident those innocent halcyon days are over once you get to tournament ball per instructions from the league we now have to enforce a rigid three strikes and you're out policy i mean it is in the song andrew as i think about it so i mean there is some precedent for it um and in in the case of hitter v how many strikes you get if we look at the case law the precedent of the song is it's one two three strikes you're out yeah um so this also includes by the way called strikes for a lot of players both those on the Little Sluggers and other teams, this is a difficult change. Big kid baseball comes at you fast, both literally and figuratively.

That's interesting that we start implementing the idea of sort of a strike zone, not as you graduate from one league to the next, but suddenly in the playoffs.

As you reach the postseason. It's almost as if some people are fine with the postseason going a little more quickly. Yeah. that's me not ben that's just my that's just my take back to ben's message the impact of this rule change impacted both teams on tuesday as hits and runs were hard to come by that being said the sluggers faced adversity with aplomb side note we need to bring aplomb back into common usage go ahead and name this episode you drop aplomb on me that's pretty good ben although you know honestly it's a sacred it's a sacred art and science picking the show title so you know be careful this is only andrew and i are at the level of wizardry where we're able to suggest and pick

show titles we go into a little um we go into a conclave and we light a fire you gotta look at what color the smoke is that's exactly what i was going for there i couldn't think of the word

conclave um uh although you drop a plum on me is pretty funny maybe we will use it our players had solid if not altogether successful at bats they weren't swinging at garbage unfortunately they also didn't swing at many pitches that ended up being called strikes Andrew this is where the plot thickens and who you may ask was calling these strikes our very own assistant coach Greg had the dubious responsibility quote it sucks ringing up your own players he reported my own kid is giving me crap about calling him out on a ball at his knees end quote

wait a second though so does each team have their coach call balls and strikes or is our coach calling balls and strikes for both teams and if so this should end here and just say and we won

a million runs to zero there was just a team of crying nine-year-olds called the golden tigers who were called out on strikes no matter where the ball was um i think if i remember right from the game that i went to it kind of alternates so i think maybe um your may who knows maybe greg was was the umpire for the whole game maybe it alternated i mean the idea is it's all done in very very good faith right like whether it's a whatever team the coach is from i noted that they were really trying to give all of the kids involved on both teams all the benefit of the doubt and so um but yeah the idea that you would have to like so for instance they didn't call a lot of third strikes the game that i watch i think they tried to kind of like let a kid at least take a cut at the ball at least have a swinging third strike or maybe you know get the bat on the ball like just call ringing a kid up is you know kind of the that's the last that's the last resort that's the thing you kind of don't want to do i think yeah but if you get three strikes and you're trying to kind of be a little bit more official i guess you got to do it while the little sluggers struggled at the plate they played the best defensive ball we've seen all year this was good fundamental baseball getting grounders making good throws to first having good field awareness atlas made an awesome play at first scooping up a ball and beating out the runner to the plate Ollie was masterful backing up our infielders.

Jaden, Tommy, and Nico were also solid in the dirt. The score was 0-0 through two and a half innings. In the bottom of the third, Andreas was on the mound and absolutely smoked pitches past the Tigers' hitters. You could have given them five strikes per at-bat. They couldn't make contact with what he was throwing yesterday. So we entered the fourth, which is our ninth inning, knotted up at zero. That answers another question that Becca had. How many innings do they play? To which I said, I'm not really sure. I've been focusing on the nachos.

And the amount of cheese they're in.

So we're in effectively the ninth inning now of the game, if you're scoring at home. And it's 0-0. It's a pitcher's duel. It's a defensive struggle. Yes. After a leadoff single hit by Kuyper, the Sluggers went down in order. So they stranded. If you take a minute step back, they get a leadoff hitter, a leadoff runner, and then they stranded that runner. What are they, the Mariners? The Sluggers went down in order, given everyone's challenges on offense and with another ace pitcher Amin taking the mound I was sure we'd cruise through this inning and go into extras I'll admit I was already thinking about how we'd shuffle players around in the next inning alas the moment you take your eye off the ball is when you get beamed in the forehead Amin recorded a quick strikeout before giving up a couple of cheap squibbler ground ball hits he got another strikeout and I thought damage was contained but then after playing great defense all day we bobbled routine ground balls at first that could have been the third out now the tigers had the bases loaded two outs bottom of the fourth what happened next i experienced in slow motion a mean throws one of the best pitches i've seen all year i can see the back spin on the ball as it moves towards home plate it's a beautiful thing the batter slaps his bat towards the ball Ichiro Suzuki style just trying to make contact and somehow miraculously unbelievably he does make contact it's the best hit ball all day I see the ball sail past Amin on the mound and just over the reach of Jaden at second base who is our shortest player Fox in right field runs forward to make the play but by the time he reaches the ball it has landed on the edge of the outfield grass and with that the golden tigers had a walk off win beating your tbtl little sluggers one to zero this one hurts bad real bad the sluggers were playing real baseball all day and deserved a better outcome than this i was near tears truly kyper the viper won his second hustle pin in as many games for notching a couple of hits and some great play at second base. Armani was also recognized for hyping up the team from the bench and his energetic play in the field. We play our next, parenthetically, possibly final game this Saturday. Wish us luck. Coach Ben out.

I was going to ask about that because I thought that Ben said when he was on the show on Monday, which, by the way, I was kind of proud of that show title too, which I don't know if you saw it. I called it Can We Speak to the Manager, Which I probably Should I change it to We want to speak to the manager Well it doesn't matter But I thought he had said that it was two Loss eliminations So I thought we might have another shot here And we do

Which I think is probably part of why they're cracking down on the rules

Yeah and they're four inning games now They're just four innings

They may have always been four inning games I'm not exactly sure about that part of it But yeah it sounds like it's I mean, 1-0 is a tight, tight game. I am a fan of a 1-0 game. You know, I think that that's Major League Baseball. I think that the problem is they have too many 1-0 games. I think a 1-0 baseball game is a testament to both teams.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah, well, certainly. Yeah, I mean, from a pitching perspective, absolutely. And I enjoy those, too. I mean, you kind of have to if you're going to watch the Mariners. They had to, especially the last couple of years.

You're going to develop an appetite for low-scoring affairs.

Exactly. This year, I don't really kind of know what the pattern is so much, but I know the last two seasons have sort of the personality of the team has been like they play a lot of one-run games and they win a lot of one-run games.

There are 11 and 4 in one-run games this year, which is very surprising.

It's surprising, but why is that surprising?

I don't know, because we've had such offensive struggles. Yeah. And our bullpen has not been very good, so it feels like I would think we're doing much worse in one-run games, but as of right now, we're 11-4.

Yeah, and by the way, in the middle of a pretty fun series right now.

Yeah, they are, and it couldn't be beaten up on a better team

as far as I'm concerned, that's for sure. Go Junior Sluggers, though, yes.

And they're playing on Saturday, and I'll tell you this, I am flying back on Saturday, and I'm not sure what time their game is, but it might be the case.

that i'm landing at portland international airport which is like a hop skip and a jump from where these games are played and i might be able to get over there i might be able to go directly from the airport maybe i can get a police escort yep and go right to the game and hype the kids up and give the junior sluggers the emotional because obviously they're all just like is luke gonna watch the game when's luke gonna be here we need we need that that patented luke energy and also um make sure you order your nachos before he gets here because he's gonna ask for extra cheese we're gonna need that extra cheese these are all conversations that are happening i um

i don't want to get your in your head about this and i don't even know actually if it's true but i've heard rumors that in the clubhouse the little sluggers have like a cardboard cut out of you and um every time they win a game they're removing one of your what uh pardon me I think I said oh wow oh yeah and I believe they're removing kind of virtual major league style thing of you yeah because there's there's an understanding that you as as the co-owner of the team is trying to tank the team so you can move it to a different city that's my understanding of how things that's how you are viewed amongst the clubhouse right now by the way and this is

when if you're a junior slugger you can stop listening now one of the great and this tells you that i lived a pretty i had a pretty happy childhood because one of the great disappointments of my childhood was when they did finally get all of that leopard print dress situation off of the owner of the team in major league and she still had some amount of coverage on it was that kirsty alley by the way it was not oh actually you know you know what you know what i i don't know that for a fact i don't i said that i think you'd remember i didn't i did not grow up with that

movie the way you did i mean i think i saw it at some point maybe in college but i which is crazy

to me because you grew up in Cleveland wasn't a sports kid although I do remember like watching

Brown's like comedies yeah well you know what no you know this is probably more of a reference to is just well like when that when that movie came out I was way too young for it by my parents eyes like I wasn't even allowed to watch like certain fresh TV shows like Chips or Dukes of Hazzard and so like the idea of me being allowed to watch Major League when it was sort of like kind of knew would have been way out of the question. And then by the time I was watching, you know, R-rated movies, I don't think that's R even, but when I was watching those movies, I think I was probably a teenager and didn't care about sports comedies from the 80s.

I only cared about sports comedies from the 80s in that era. And by the way, the woman who plays the owner is named Margaret Witten.

Okay.

Margaret Witten played the woman who, like, inherits the team. She's the gold digger who gets her hands on the Cleveland Indians, then called the Cleveland Indians, and decides that she wants them to lose so she can move them somewhere else. But they refuse to lose. Ooh, that could be a slogan for the TBTL Junior Sluggers.

Refuse to lose. Refuse to lose. I think we can come up with something catchier. Who was Renee Russo in this? I'm saying that she was in the cast.

I think she's like Tom Barringer's girlfriend. Tom Barringer is kind of playing like a—he's sort of like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, or not Field of Dreams, in Bull Durham. He's kind of like Kevin Costner in Bull Durham. He's just kind of like Tom Berenger is this like broke down old catcher who's really at the end of his career. And he's I think he's been up and down, you know, between the minors and the majors and may or may not have some kind of a drinking problem. It's just kind of and I think I think Rene Russo is his girlfriend.

The Susan Sarandon to precisely Berenger or however that works. I get confused between Tom Berenger and Tom Skerritt, which doesn't make sense. They're not alike at all, but they both have the first name.

If they had a kid, he'd be named Tom Skerringer.

Are you ready for some Blursdays, Luke? I want to make sure you're ready for this. Mm-hmm. Okay, great. Thank you, Barbaro. Happy Blursday to Nancy from Megan. Do you remember the birthday we spent visiting Aurora Village in Shoreline, where Costco now lives? We went to pay and save for free Mr. Yuck stickers than Frederick and Nelson's for free frango shakes. Party on. Oh, wow. What's a frango shake?

That is, Andrew, the most Seattle memory that's ever Seattle.

What is a frango shake?

So frangos are these chocolates that they used to sell. You had Nordstrom and you had Frederick and Nelson's. They were kind of the, or maybe Frederick and Nelson, kind of the high-end department store, high-end clothing place. And Frederick and Nelson had these things called frangos, these chocolates that were very delicious. And I think often around the holidays you would buy them. But it was just kind of a big tradition in Seattle and very specific to Seattle.

That's interesting that you did that kind of minor correction there to Nelson, because Google is also underlining that and saying, don't you mean Frederick and Nelson, not Nelsons? And I'm not saying that to beat up on Nancy the way or the beat up on Megan the way I beat up on our dear friend John Sklaroff earlier. But that is the Seattle gotcha thing, right? Like so many things that outsiders put an S on here in Seattle. Nordstrom. Nordstrom. Pike Place, not Pike's Place. And now we have Frederick and Nelson's or Frederick and Nelson. That is interesting. But that sounds like a beautiful memory.

And I actually I pay and save and the Mr. Yuck stickers. You had Mr. Yuck stickers, though.

I don't think so. I mean, if they were, you know what that is? I do now. I've learned about them since I've been here. There were stickers that you would put on like the toxic, you know, chemicals or the toxic household items underneath the sink. Right. So that kids knew.

Yeah, it's like a neon green guy who looks like he's about to throw up. And you were supposed to put it on, you know, things to warn kids not to eat them or whatever. But the problem is they would give you so many of them. And you were the kid, by the way, in question, who was both telling yourself, don't drink that Drano. Yeah. By putting a Mr. Yuck sticker on it. But you already knew that because you put the Mr. Yuck sticker on it. Yeah. And then you had extras. And then you'd put them on, like, your telephone. And then you'd be like, don't eat this telephone. Yeah. And just go around putting it on things that nobody would ever eat. Like your skateboard. That was the fun part.

Nice. Well, happy Blur's Day to Nancy. Love that memory.

Mm-hmm.

Chad, the rookie 10 here, wishing the biggest and best 51st Blur's Day to my Jen. I'm so grateful for all the love she has shared with me, our three fives, and the young ballet students she gives so much to. And while she may still be a ten and a half, she understands why 40 minutes of you guys breaking down the Root Sports Comcast issue would twist my ear. She often says, so they do this every day? Yes, they do. Just like I'll love you every day. So explain that. Happy Blur's Day, Jen. Happy Blur's Day to Howard and Albuquerque from Julie. Thank you for being a friend-o. the advice, the memes, the puppy picks, the well-timed mockery. That's the key to mockery. It must be well-timed.

It's such a timing thing. It really is. May the coming

year bring you lots of great things that you can enjoy remembering when you're 90. Happy Blurs Day, Howard. Jay says, I'd like to wish a happy blurs to my mama and TBTL daddy, Leanne. By the time you hear this, we should be sipping champagne and enjoying your birthday present, your new Beach House. Whoa. I hope you love the Crabbin. I think it's a cabin. They're calling the Crabbin. I hope you love the Crabbin and making memories here for years to come. You deserve the entire world and more, but all I can afford is a small place with no dishwasher and an unfinished kitchen, and I hope that's okay. Yeah, I think giving somebody a cabin for their birthday is pretty good. It's pretty good. It's no Mr. Yuck sticker, but I would take it. Happy Blur's Day, Leanne. And congrats all around. And finally, happy 15th Blur's Day to Chloe from Mom, Dad, and Dashiell. Her dad was able to get her a shout-out this morning on her favorite real radio station, WXPN, in Philadelphia that they listen to and drive to school. But a Blur's Day on her Blur's Day from the Cobros would make her day even more special. Now, here's where things could get bananas. So WXPN is a really cool radio station in Philly. Apparently, Chloe got a Blur's Day message on WXPN as well. Now, I have a friend, Brian Saworek, who works at WXPN and sometimes is on air. Is there any chance that my dear friend from college, the person who got me my first job in public radio and turned me on to public radio, all told, the person whom I owe almost everything, Is there a chance that my buddy Schwa is the person who wished Chloe That's Schwa? That is Schwa That is Schwa That was his nickname Anyway, yeah, that would be amazing I need to reach out to him

Yeah, this is knowable

This is knowable I'll reach out, I'll let you know I don't think he's like a production manager or something I don't think that he does. I don't think he still has a morning radio shift there, but I could check in with him and see. Anyway, happy Blur's Day, Chloe. Absolutely.

Well, I guess, probably, we should wrap things up here on this Thursday. Are the Mariners playing right now? Today's a day game, isn't it?

Is it a day game? I did not realize that. I'm so confused as what day it is. It's Thursday, right? I always thought Wednesdays were day games.

Yeah, we've been doing some funky recordings. Funky little recordings because of my schedule uh this week but tomorrow will be a normal friday i'll be here in new york still but we will get together at the usual time and we will do the show and it's going to be amazing

so mariner's do join us for that mariner's game does start in about an hour here luke just so you

know i wonder if i can find a place that's broadcasting that here in new york city that's

right because you're you're staying there you have more reporting to do tomorrow yes yes so i um

Yeah, maybe it would be kind of fun to watch the Mariners play the Astros in Manhattan. That could be kind of fun. See if I can locate a spot where that's happening. All right. All of you, please locate a spot to listen to TBTL tomorrow because we're going to be back here with more Imaginary Radio. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. You know what? Chin up, little sluggers. You'll get them next time. You'll get them on Saturday. That's right. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

And control the zone.

Chips and dips, chips and dips. I love chips and dips. Power out.