Muse

Thank you for being a 10. Traveled down the road and back again. Your heart is true. You're a pal and a confidant. Hey, if you threw a party, invited everyone you knew, you would see the biggest gift would be from me, and the card attached would say, thank you for being a 10.

For your information, I got a job. Really? What kind of job? Beads. Beads? Beads. Beads? Job's not on board. Beads are very big right now. Anklets, necklaces, you name it. Bracelets. But I'll need some startup money. I'm in. But we're gonna need a lot. Beads aren't cheap. Are beads cheap? TBTL!

Actually, one thing we do here for fun is we give an extra $50 to whoever has the best comment today.

Oh, that's fun. Oh, my God. Man, I could really use that cash, Mark. I mean, that cash could really get me out of a couple of jams.

This is stuff so funny, by the way. Did the comic come up with this? Because some of this stuff, I feel like I could see somebody doing their act. If we wanted to, we could have our own business. No, I agree. If we really wanted to, we could. It's just that, do we want to do that? Do we want to have a website and a blog and be like, this is what we did today? No, it's too much work. Yeah. And too expensive.

Hmm. Sounds like a fundraising opportunity to me.

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Oh, wow. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

Things are going to start happening to me now.

It is day two of TBTL-a-thon 15. Thank you for being a 10. Got to figure out how to make money on this thing. It's simply too good. And we are once again taking our very lives in our hands. We're putting our lives on the line in terms of the temperature here. High above the Columbia River. Today is going to be the apex of the heat this week. It's going to be very, very warm. It's going to be very hot. It's going to be very uncomfortable for everybody, but just not yet here. As we do the show, things are fine. Later on in the afternoon, things will be less fine, but hopefully we'll make it through in one piece, because this is a very important week. This is the week that we remind you that TBTL only exists because of your donations. And we would love it if you could go to tbtl.net and see all the thank you gifts and maybe, you know, help us with a little cash that could get us out of a couple of jams. We are coming to you, of course, live worldwide via YouTube right now. Welcome to the Internet. Which means we can also take your phone calls at 206-414-TBTL. 206-414-8285. If you call right now, you, too, could wait up to 37 minutes to get on the air, as happened yesterday to our friend Max in Brooklyn. It might be longer than 37 minutes because we have to talk about friendship bracelets today.

Beads. Beads? Beads. Beads.

We all decamped to our respective dwellings after the TBTL Zoom last night. By the way, thank you to everyone who Zoomed in for a TBTL I Crafted My Pants night, including the 11-hour-old baby, who I'm going to be honest, didn't really add a lot to the program, kind of the strong silent type, Baby TBD, Ben's Baby TBD. we met a baby last night on the zoom that doesn't have a name yet people that's what kind of stuff happens on tbtl i crafted my pants night but anyway after that was all done uh john andrew and i decided to finally get serious about this bracelet thing and well we've got a lot to report on here on this tuesday morning so we will do that speaking of my good friend andrew the longest running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's also a soulful rocker from New Hampshire, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I'm a different person from the person you knew yesterday. I walked in here today, a bracelet. I walked out that door yesterday, never having made a bracelet in my life. I walk in here today, a bracelet maker. I cannot.

wait to compare notes with you i i actually had that thought last night i was like when you all saw me last night at about i don't know 7 30 8 p.m i was a boy i was a business boy pretending to be a bracelet man but by about two in the morning last night something fundamentally had shifted inside of me and i understood the siren song of the friendship bracelet in a very very very real and tangible way. Speaking of siren songs, look at who's over there on the hot corner. Who's over there on third base? It's TBTL employee numero uno, Mr. John Sklaroff.

I'm his best friend, also co-boss.

He may be our co-boss, and he's joining us right now. Good morning, sir.

Good morning.

How are you feeling on this Tuesday? I felt better before. I felt better, but I have felt better than right now. Did you also have a punch bowl-sized margarita like Andrew did the other night? That was Sunday. That was gearing up for the thong. I see, I see. That one did not happen last night.

No, not a really great burger, though, in Kelso.

Yeah, you guys went to the neighborhood pub that I recommended. And, you know, that's always a bit of a pressure situation when you tell someone where to go have dinner. It was okay? You guys enjoyed it?

It was good. Yeah, I told you I made an awkward joke like we were talking to the...

You literally said that. I thought you meant that kind of joking.

No, I literally made a joke that didn't make sense. It came out of my mouth, and I immediately regretted it.

You made the awkward joke to me or to somebody who worked at the tavern?

Last night, John and I belly up to the bar at the Triangle Tavern. And it's my kind of place. Good recommendation. Nice little bar, tavern. They had pull tabs. I didn't pull any tabs. But it was a place that I felt very comfortable in. My kind of place. You nailed it. And we order a couple of Coors Lights, maybe a PBR for John. Yeah. and a couple of burgers, and we're, you know, I'm chatting a little bit with the bartender, and you can tell, like, she's chatting with some regulars, but she did say right away when we walked in, all the beers on tap were not available because of the heat, it hurt, like, something, something broke, essentially, I don't know how beer works, and I was like, oh, that's no problem, bottle of Coors Light or whatever but then later on somebody else kind of came in and sat down next to me and she said yeah sorry no draft beer like our whole system is down she said except well the one thing you can get is uh cider and I don't know why I said this I just said that's how you know there's no god because all that it didn't even make sense that's exactly what happened and like

you didn't go with a cider house rules I was just kind of like you don't see this as a cider house

rules kind of pub it was more like so i have this whole theory about brazil nuts and atheism i always

think that like you you know this right i if i have known this in the past it's whiffed out of

my brain generally speaking i just think if they were a god or at least a benevolent god they wouldn't have created what is that noise is our computer going down i literally the computer that feeds the video is uh that's screaming at us right now and does it have that like a prop possible

problem yeah i might need to uh let's uh let's try this for the time being and see if that does

anything andrew is unplugging the power the power to the computer that sounds like to work but whatever the internal mechanisms of that computer are they just started grinding on each other That really grinds my gears.

There's been a yellow warning light on my battery when it's plugged in. Oh, really? And so I just unplugged the power for a second and plugged it back in. I don't know if our whole stream is going to go down.

Are we still on the internet?

Is it still happening? That's how you know there is a God. I was in the middle of a terrible story, and they were just like, all right, no, let's... Well, I mean, jokes are really difficult, I must say. So anyway, my point is, it just seemed like this thing of who at this bar really wants to drink a cider right now? Okay, but let's get back to this... We've taken away...

Let's get back to this Brazil nuts are a sign that there is no God.

I just hate Brazil nuts, and I just sort of think that if there was a God, he wouldn't have made Brazil nuts.

Of the things that I think likely disprove the notion of a benevolent God, I'm going to be honest with you. I would list Brazil nuts fairly. They'd be far down the list.

Like genocide is higher.

No, no, above genocide.

Yeah, because Brazil nuts suck, right?

I would say the Mariners' recent hitting on their homestand. Definitely top five The computer that is broadcasting Our entire program that we've worked Very hard to set up Just actually digesting itself Like a Sarlacc, I'd put that at number two So Mariner's Batting Woes Computer Issues, number two

Isn't there a movie Based on a Philip K. Dick novel called Screamers And it's about these little robots that live right under the sand And they're little balls and they go screaming Across the desert I think it might be Screamers Anyway, that's what my computer sounded like. let's hope we can keep this rig going for what was the response what was the response in the bar when you said did you say that to the person who was trying to order the cider or to the bartender

bar i said to the bar at large yes exactly and uh and by the way just for the record like i'm not trying to depict me being like way into my cups i had like i think we each had a beer yes which i don't even think i finished mine it was this was just me being an idiot like it just came out of my mouth like kind of like oh we don't have anything and it was also just like we'd been commenting about how hot it was the bartender seemed like kind of she'd had a long day you know she was very nice she was a great bartender i was i just was trying to like kind of i don't know just sort of like connect with people and i just swing and a miss and she just said oh yes well there's one she says this guy next to me there's one thing you can get from the tap and it's a cider and he was like no and i was just like that's how you know there's no god like that's and i just let it there and she just sort of looked and like huh and then like and i was like oh well that wasn't that didn't make a lot of sense for starters and also you have to set them up on your brazil nut well that's the thing you got to start that well he's expecting john to do that as my wingman he said right brazil nut that's the system spike no the whole thing you

know nothing about setting up jokes john you guys get in there you lay the groundwork hey this is you guys have you guys have brazil nuts we do well that proves there's no god and then the next and then when andrew brings it in andrew closes the deal with his cider yeah anyway so sorry to

everybody who had to listen to this i think i made a comment about you being rude to people

with celiac too so maybe that also hurt wow oh you did say yeah i am i'm so what's the word not

sad i missed this dinner engagement yeah exactly i'm so sad that i was absolutely slamming some

taco time which i was and it was delicious did you order it right did you get the uh spicy italian

bmt with extra habanero okay good and a baja blast fantastic um no i did go through the drive

through at taco time breaking we have a breaking news sounder luke because this is happening in the chat or can i just yeah tvtl breaking news sorry to cut you off ben from last night with unnamed baby has confirmed the name of the baby whoa okay jonah jonah great name don't let him

And you're a whale. Well, yeah. But, I mean, that's implied.

Yeah.

Congratulations, Ben and wife and Jonah and Zap. Was that the first? And Roger. I wanted the other baby to be named Roger, so it would be kind of a Zap and Roger thing. But that's kind of asking a lot. I don't think we're naming young babies Roger currently.

And you set this up at the beginning of the show. But, I mean, just to kind of add a little bit of more context for this, I believe this was the first time we've ever held sort of a TBTL Zoom party where somebody is zoomed in from a hospital room.

And here's what was interesting about that. We were whispering, and Ben wasn't. Yeah. Ben was talking in a normal speaking voice. A little reckless, Ben.

We were like talking like this.

And then, you know, Andrew, I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I don't suffer from a ton of intrusive thoughts regretting things that I've said and done.

That's how you know there's no God.

God, the Cider House rules is some of John Irving's finest work. But I don't generally kind of replay things in my mind a lot But I was replaying something from last night Which was Ben zoomed in with this brand new baby Tiny hours old baby And said we actually It's interesting we haven't named the baby yet And out of the frame Who we could not see was Ben's wife We knew they were in the hospital room We knew that Ben's wife had just given birth We did not see her my i've never personally given birth my sense for the whole thing is it's pretty tiring it's almost like it's a whole thing it's right exactly and so um i and and also it's the kind of thing that could put you in an emotional state where you maybe you don't want your husband calling a podcast with the baby in tow these are all things that could have been occurring in that room and then i go off and say well what are the names that are in the running and ben starts His mouth opens And the words are almost coming out of his mouth And then he freezes And you can tell somebody across the room I'm guessing his wife Who, have I mentioned, gave birth 11 hours previous Shoots him a look that said Over my dead body You will be sharing this information with a bunch of randos online

I think he said something like Oh, we're not doing that

And I felt so embarrassed That I even asked that Like, what an ask

You should be more embarrassed that he did confirm While he couldn't say what names were in the ring He definitively said Luke and Andrew were not in the ring Yeah, that was Those were early scratches

I'm fine with that You know what, we've got enough Lukes running around Like Luke was When I was a kid, not a very popular name It was very biblical Which embarrassed me deeply You know, my family, we got the biblical names out the wazoo. Luke, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah, Elijah, Rachel. Who else we got in there? Sam, David. We had a Matthew who passed away sadly. We really had like every biblical name you could have. And so I didn't embrace the Skywalker side of Luke as a kid. I thought of the biblical side and I was kind of a bit embarrassed. And then, I don't know, maybe five, ten years ago, I feel like there was a resurgence of Luke's.

Oh, I didn't realize that.

I see. Also, you know, it's like when you buy a car, you start to notice the car. I notice whenever anyone is named Luke. How's Andrew doing? How's Andrew trending?

These days? I don't really know. You know, you and I were, we almost talked. That was one of those stories we promoted and didn't talk about on TV. That would never happen. About the popularity of names. And they had some, I think it was the Washington Post, and they had some tool built in where you could sort of like measure it. But I found the tool to be very, did you, did you yeah it wasn't that helpful it was not very helpful as i could i think that andrew if i had to guess is kind of just a steady probably a never super popular but never super unpopular again it's biblical i think i think wait is andrew biblical sure who was the andrew in the bible yeah um he was rap battle andrew you guys are not familiar oh yeah yeah yeah right rap battle

andrew well he was a saint probably saint andrew but also i thought did andrew free the israelites No, I'm sorry, that was Kevin

Andrew the Apostle Andrew the Apostle, I didn't realize that I almost said Apostle

The Apostle though, what era of Apostle?

He is a rapper from the 80s called Andrew the Apostle

Oh yeah, he used to open for third base sometimes

You want to talk about laying down verses, Luke That was a good joke

Spitting bars Versus That's how you know there isn't a God Wait, can I ask something though?

St. Andrew was an apostle of Jesus.

But St. Andrew, an apostle. Oh, apostle of Jesus. So he was around at Jesus' time. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. He was one of the 12 apostles. He was one of the 12 apostles. Yeah. I mean, there's 12 of us. Okay. And by the way, I'm really leaning into it. For the record, I'm not actually Andrew the apostle, but it is a biblical name. I didn't realize that.

It sounds newer to me. And then John is obviously an apostle, but yours is J-O-N.

Yeah. My name, I go J-O-N short for Jonathan. Ah, gotcha. So that's where that is. But J-O-H-N is, I think, right.

And how's John doing out there In the marketplace of ideas

I'm actually looking at John Prine Poster you have back there I think it's doing good

Really? I don't feel like people are naming their kids John, Andrew, or Luke at this point I think they're all being named Brayden

Yeah Or Jonah

I'm so relieved Peace and love, by the way But I'm just so relieved that Ben's kid is not a Braylin

There might be Braylins in the audience And I'm going to say salute to you Don't listen to that guy I'm your fun uncle

One of the things that Washington Post article brought up, Andrew, and listen, and a topic we don't get to is just a future conversation we can have.

When we've forgotten the article.

It's just, oh, I remember it. I remember it vividly. That's true. One of the things that they pointed out, and I actually think this is worth noting, is that I am somebody who likes to kind of maybe cast a little bit of a jaundiced eye towards newer names, like names that are not, the names that have been around for a few hundred years. Because it just sounds new and unusual to me But one of the things they pointed out is that We have stopped the convention Of everybody just being named For an ancestor It just used to be that your great-grandfather had a name So you got that name, or your great-grandmother, or your aunt We just named people after The people who had come before them And then at some point we stopped doing that And when we stopped doing that, we realized Well, we gotta come up with some new names And here we are, using new names And I like to kind of make fun of the new names But they're equally valid And there's an explanation for that So I want to just apologize To any Bradens in the audience Or Braylens Or Braxtons Or Tristons Yes You have beautiful Lakens Blakens Blakeleys Lakeleys

I want to see how far I can get this

And any of these newish cool names I salute you And I think this would be a great time For you to finally start donating

If you are under the age of 10, we have to legally say it is okay for you to find your parents' credit cards and use them, but we need the three numbers on the back.

Just hold it up on the Zoom right now or whatever exact, YouTube. Just go on camera. Please go in the comment section and just hold up the back three numbers for us. Who's the bad capitalist now, John? Hey, you guys. Can we take a moment, please? And by a moment, I mean a long-ass time to talk about bees bees bees beads beads All right

already sort of set this up last night at around eight o'clock we all went our kind of our separate ways and and and for the very first time put needle and thread to bead and started actually trying to make these friendship bracelets oh one other thing too just to kind of set this up um can we run through because if you weren't on the zoom last night you might not know this the tbtl terms that are going to be on these handmade friendship bracelets no that's right

We made the big reveal to our Zoomers.

This is why you like to, a lot goes on in these Zooms. We're doing one on Wednesday night, by the way. 5 p.m. West Coast, I believe. That's right. You can sign up for that. It was really fun last night, too. It really was. The craftiness of the tens of listeners is just so impressive.

And I really enjoyed, I spent some time, we'll probably get into this, but I spent some time separating out some beads during the Zoom. And I wasn't sure if afterwards you guys were going to say that that was kind of distracting. I hope it wasn't, because that was a lot of fun for me. I like the idea of doing something somewhat crafty during the craft zoom.

So there are five, as of right now, the plan is for five different messages on the, uh, friendship bracelets. And if you donate at any level, you will get one of these, that one of the three of us made. And, uh, and it will be random though. That's the thing. Cause it's just too logistically too complicated. So you'll get, uh, you might get a, a, uh, friendship bracelet that says friendo. Call it friend-o You might get a friendship bracelet that says Power out Power out Just like that You might get one that says spreadsheet

Isn't that for techno geeks With spreadsheets

Or one that says Slabjacking Slabjacking Or one that says junior slugger Slugger, sluggers

Junior slugger

as in you're a junior you are a junior slugger we couldn't afford the extra s yeah yeah if this goes well this thong we may have money for extra s's next year but not not this time around so those are the messages if you will the the little words that'll be on there and then there's the other colorful beads so i uh took on a slab jacking andrew you were kind of it was tbd uh you were going to do friendo but it was all gonna depend on your kind of wrist and hand stuff that

you've been dealing with yeah so um i mentioned that during the um zoom last night i was separating out beads what i was separating out is something that has become apparently the bane of your existence which is um we have bags of beads and i'll hold some of these up we have these bags of beads and most of them one bag per letter so you have a bunch of r's for friendo or n's for friendo however the um a bunch of the vowels are all mixed up is that just that's just because vowels are

less common they just sell them as a combo pack because of the quantity of things we need we do have some bags are specific vowels that we need more of those vowels like are we how much did we

save on that's what i was ready for this conversation i as i said as master of coin i

take this very seriously yeah maybe too seriously in this particular manner as i was as i was had my jeweler's eye out last night going like a's a's a's eyes eyes eyes eyes it turns out slab jacking has two a's i was very disappointed to learn because i have two ramekins of a's that i'm like you are my precious whereas the b's it's like can i get a word that has eight b's in it

because b's have their own bag it's just like but one one thing i did wanted so the reason i bring this up now is because you were asking me like you know i was responsible for making friendo bracelets if i'd never made a bracelet before um and we weren't sure because these are difficult to make anyway but also my fingertips are numb because of some stuff i'm dealing with whether or not i'd literally be able to make them or not and i'm not going to get into my how many bracelets i made yet but i will say i knew that if i went back to my hotel and i could not make any bracelets at all one thing i could do is continue to sort out vowels and not just is a useful which is a

useful service exactly but for you guys i spent a good hour sorting a's and i's last night so

before we get into my bracelet making i do want to show you that these i've separated these out you know these are shareable these are e's and i's for you luke and you got a's we got a's i got plenty here you want a bag of a's here's a bag of a's look at this changed my life that's what i'm saying and so i was trying to make use of my time that way that was really good use of

your time this is like this these a's might get me through yeah and i don't even need any a's i

just honestly i just need these a's to feel normal so that's so um so i did there you go problem solved hey thank you that was very helpful yeah now i can get you some i can get you some more man i need some more so i definitely separated out a lot of vowels last night that really spoke to me and i did make some bracelets we'll do a count in a little bit here but i will say this um it took me a long time to get set up in my in my uh the pre-production on these bracelets it turns out is really the worst and and also because i had i didn't watch any youtube videos how to do it i knew i kind of wanted to use these big beading needles

Thank you.

or whatever but i really did not know exactly what i was doing the folks on zoom especially carolyn who was on the zoom um gave us a lot of good advice so when i went back i sort of had an idea i was talking to genevieve on the phone and i laid out all my stuff but it probably did take me at least an hour of setup and figuring things out before i finally sat down and and got into sort of a real production mode so i don't remember what your question was well just sort of what the

experience with john what was it now john i want to also mention you had a bunch of work non bracelet related work to do in terms of just like moving people over from various levels and things and like i mean this is really as i've said you're weak to shine and by shine i mean you're weak to work really hard from early in the morning until late at night so the idea that you're also trying to do something with the beads is sort of crazy actually as an even an idea but what was it

like for you trying to set this whole deal up for yourself can i get uh fish for more sympathy here So I flew in first thing in the morning Sunday from Minnesota to Seattle, drove down to your place with Andrew. And then Sunday night, I'm like, I'm going to go to bed early because I need, it's a big week. Yeah. And after getting back to our hotel late, like, I'm like, I need a shower. I was like traveling and that gave me a second wind. So Sunday I didn't go to bed till like 1.30 West Coast time. That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. Because that's like 3.30 where you're from. So yesterday morning, wake up, we're all hyped up for day one. You crashed Well you would think I did So I like we got back from dinner 9.30 10 o'clock

I snorted an entire line of bees You were bouncing Bees You were bouncing off the ceiling

Beads Beads We do the zoom Eat dinner get back to the hotel As you said a couple hours of work then i'm like all right it's 11 30 time to start making beads and it took me about 30 40 minutes

to figure to crack the code and you were power out your word was power out and that's a big one

and are you putting a bead in between yeah yeah yeah and so it took me about 40 minutes before i

figured out before i figured out i literally in my hotel and like i joke jokes aside like i don't really need sympathy like we're doing this because people are giving us money and we're grateful for I for a moment almost Broke down in the hotel like what the hell

Are we doing let me ask you this did Either of you have a moment where You accidentally you got an entire Bracelet threaded and then you broke Yes the string and have you Yes have you ever felt More sadness recently in your Life yeah leaving out Joe Biden's debate performance Because there were a couple moments There were some dark moments of the soul For me last night I was sitting out at that like picnic table also i don't know why i thought that was a good idea but i just started out there i got home with my taco time i laid out a towel and i just like started there and then once i was locked into a system i was just like trapped out there till almost two in the morning i heard coyotes i mean far away but i was like they're attracted to beads beads beads i was like i don't know what goes on here i'm never out here at two in the morning right like is this unsafe i had a headlamp on oh yeah i saw that because i had my glasses and a freaking headlamp on but then as i took some

pretty sweet photos of my beads last night and i almost posted them i was like oh luke probably wants to embargo this so we can show off all of our stuff and then i wake up in the morning what

do i see that you've plastered instagram yeah but you know what i actually zoomed in on those i enhanced enhanced you couldn't really tell i think it was hard to tell what my word was but all that is to say there were some moments towards i kind of set a number for myself and i was like getting close and i was just getting more and more exhausted and there was a couple times where i was just trying to kind of go fast and i snapped the elastic with the full with slab jacking and the beads and they just kind of went everywhere and it was just like was that when you were tying the knot yeah and i just was like and then like i'm trying to catch a couple of them i'm looking around for like an s that's rolled down the patio like there was a couple times where i was like you know oh wow this is um this is this is challenging it was my first bracelet that

really almost broke me because you know we've been saying like oh well andrew you're off the hook on this because you know you are by the way with your hands but like i don't like being that

person i know you don't but that's what i worry for you because this was hard enough my hands were pretty cramped this morning and i'm not dealing with what you're dealing with and i

really really don't want you to be a hero on this well i but i wanted at least to do one and i like doing stuff like this i mean that's that's the sort of irony here is like i really kind of like tedious little tasks oh i was thinking of you i was like turn on the tv and just sort of zoom out or zone out i should say but i so i'm talking to genevieve on the phone and we're sort of i'm sending her photos as i'm laying out all my beads and everything beads by the way and um and i'll spare the listeners i have uh you know i'm like oh okay just like carolyn mentioned on the on the zoom last night like maybe like string several together on one long piece of string that's still attached to the spool and then you can sort of cut them and then tie them but I'd never tied them before and I wasn't I had a little instruction manual from bead world like how to how to tie it I'm like oh that's helpful but the first one I didn't leave enough I didn't know this at the time I just thought that I was incapable of doing I didn't leave enough string that and I have really fat hands and so to wrap the string around my fat hand and then try to get this little knot that was now it's probably i had everything set up by 10 and now maybe it's like 10 30 or something and i'm trying to tie my first one off and it that that moment almost broke me because i tried it a couple times then the beads all spilled off it didn't break but the beads spilled off it a couple of times and the closest thing i remember to this is when we did the could this have been the 3000th episode where we wore tuxedos and had bow ties. Yeah. And I could not learn how to tie a bow tie. Genevieve went on YouTube and learned right away how to do it and then learned how to do it in reverse. And she could do it on me. That's like Ginger Rogers backwards and in heels. And she, uh, and then she's like, and she's trying to show me in the mirror and I'd like how to do it myself. And I had forgotten this feeling that would well up in me a lot as a kid where I'm standing in front of the mirror and then all of a sudden like I'm almost emotional I'm so frustrated I almost started crying this is the bow tie story and what we ended up doing was Genevieve's like I'll come backstage on the day of and I'll just do it for you which she did I still don't know how to tie a bow tie but last night I'm like I want to do this I want to show up at least with one bracelet at least one I need to do this and so somehow I finally got that one tied off but then I started to realize string is cheap yes let's let the tails on this thing let's cut off a lot we're going to have a lot of excess string in the garbage can that is okay it's in the budget

I was rehearsing my speech to John for this morning about like hey we're going to need to invest heavily in more beads and more string because I'm burning through it

that's right yes and also John had given us a number of beads that are supposed to be on the bracelets I was a little bit worried about them being I wildly violated that rule did you wildly

well because the first one I made I know they stretch but the first one that I made it stretched to my wrist but I thought well if someone has a larger risk than me this might be at the edge of what this thing can stretch and it had a lot of string blank space yeah okay i did not want there to be blank space it's great in a taylor swift song i was gonna say ironically not great on a friendship bracelet so i just i i i made the executive decision to really load up on the beat so how much so the the the the instructions we

were given by john was 25 total beads so for me my word was friendo which meant i needed like nine beads on either side of that friendo i know it doesn't matter because it ends up being a circle but i was doing like nine beads friendo and then nine beads so that like it would add up to 25 i ended up going up to 27 but thinking i should be going up to 30 i think i was supposed

to have eight beads and i think i went with like it's 74 beads you guys it's actually like it's like a thing you would see lenny kravitz wearing it goes around your neck seven times it's a Massive no, I probably went I think I probably added like four beads her or something and I I was I was D I was I felt okay about the room. It's not an exact science I was I want to be clear John. I wouldn't have known how to do any of this So I don't want this to sound like I'm trying to drag you know you did you've done a great job This is just the kind of thing that we had to all just like do it Yeah, and and then to learn oh it actually needs a little tweaking like I would have shown up here with one spool of thread and like eight beads and been like all right let's do it guys so like this is all working out it's just a learning curve for all of us and i don't feel attacked

i i will say i was wildly wrong on the the amount of beads is not an exact science i was wildly wrong on the string because in my brain i'm like oh it's like it stretches out your tie but i found myself in this situation that was my breaking point was tying it and the first and the first you talk about i'm breaking luke my first uh bracelet i was making which took me about 40 minutes before i finally honed it in it was like trying to tie it was too thin it broke beads went

everywhere and that was the moment there's something about the beads it's very cinematic with the beads go everywhere like a john woo film slow mo it's just like some doves flew in it's just because it's so precise there's just like it's just like very painstaking thing and then it's just like it's like you opened a fake can of of nuts of all the springs went everywhere It's just like, it's, it's very frustrating.

Yeah, definitely. So it took you 45 minutes to kind of get it dialed in. So you, you now acknowledge, even though I'm looking at a bin right over there that has tons of spools of thread, you're going to get some more for that.

I don't even want to think about going through.

of those spools of thread though because I was going pretty hard last night and I've still got I went like halfway through one spool of thread. I have an important question for you guys. Yes.

And I think I know the answer to this. Where are totals? Are you doing double knots? Because I was doing double knots. I'm doing triple knots. You're doing triple knots? Nice. I think I'm like quadruple.

But I'm not doing, I just want to warn you if you get a slab jacking bracelet be very very gentle when you put it on slab jack so because i i watched so like the first thing that happened for me last night after i kind of set up my workspace and got the first bracelet threaded was i tried to i was like how do i even tie this so i then went to youtube which wow what a world what a world of there's hundreds of videos of just australian women telling you how to tie how to tie elastic friendship bracelet and they're like they tie in these extremely complex knots they will dot it with hot glue they'll they'll they'll snip it they'll move the knot within the beads they'll it's all and i tried that and with limited success and eventually i just got to doing a triple knot and doing the kind of thing where you you sort of cinch it down so that there's not a bunch of uh you know dead space in the bracelet you want the bracelet you want the

yeah i have a i have a lucy or two some people are going to get some yeah there's there's going

to be a couple of slab jacking bracelets that let's be honest kind of suck but just but you if you get that bracelet you know you got one of the first ones imagine being the first person to get michelangelo's david before he'd really worked out the genitals that's sort of what this is it's look away children this is the early early in the artistic process um so um yeah uh i it probably took me, it probably took me an hour plus to get my vowels, um, to get my little workstation and then to figure out my system. And this is what I landed on. I don't know if this is the preferred method or not, but I would lay out 10 of the, the, the, the, um, you know, beads for slab jacking. I would lay that out 10 times. And then I had a bowl with my colorful beads and i would grab eight colorful beads and i would thread those and then i would thread the slab jacking which i never got it down where i could just do the needle through i had to

put each letter on i could do two or three at a time sometimes i don't know if being on a towel

the towel was good because things didn't roll around but it wasn't ideal for like threading the words um anyway so i do like the eight beads the slab jacking eight more beads And one end of it Was always on the spool Because I did not want to lose it And then I would snip the spool end Bring it together, tie it, pull it tight Triple knot it, pull it tight And then while holding it, take my scissors and clip that And then rotate the knot within the bracelet And that would be job done And I timed myself and the fastest I could do it Was two minutes

Oh wow, that's pretty fast But there's the setup You didn't put more than I did basically the same thing only I would set up about three or four of them on the spool and then start cutting. Oh, that made me too nervous. Um, that's, that's kind of when I got to near the end, but I, I still was nowhere near as fast as two minutes. So that was,

that was the best one I did. And by the way, there was a lot of ones where I broke the string and it was 43 minutes.

You know what I mean? You know, so a couple of things that I, one thing that I think you'd appreciate about what I was doing last night. So I'm in a hotel room, which by the way, it's a, you know, as we've described it's a it's a humble little room it's fine it does have like an air conditioning unit uh which you know on a hot night that was that was definitely an advantage that john and i had um and it has a good big desk you know how sometimes they have kind of crappy this was a good so it was like perfect for bead making but after making one or two so i have to take my glasses on and off these are progressive when i came so glasses on for the threading and glasses off for the tying gosh but then i realized what i should do is grab that other lamp across the room and bring it over so i'm now rearranging there's one lamp on the desk but it wasn't great so i bring over two lamps game changer more light and then what i would do is i put together i just had like a big pile of colored beads but then i had a small pile of f's small pile of r's you know all the way down on friendo and then just sort of went like nine colored beads and then down the line of backwards, O, D, and blah, blah, blah, blah. More colors, tie

it up. You know, my breakthrough was I didn't have to spell slabjacking backwards. I could go in the other end with the thread.

Oh, so you were doing it for...

For a while, I was doing it backwards, and I was like A, B, C, D. Okay, hold on. And I realized, why am I threading this backwards? Why am I threading the word slabjacking backwards? Why don't I thread it starting with the S? Oh, that's interesting. So I went beads, S, but I started off doing it backwards as well. But backwards was

fine for me, because I just arranged all the beads in order in little piles of FRA, and then I just started from the back end and just kind of went through. i want you to know there are maybe one or two bracelets that are going to have the b might be backwards just think of that again the upside i did by the way i want you to know i did have probably four or five times i made the decision to stop and undo what i had done and redo it

correctly which is shocking because something was facing the wrong way you mean yeah or like

i would like one maybe yeah one little funky problem i would i could live with two and it just feels like i'm sending out an inferior product so if i like lost a letter and a different letter was backwards it's like we can't send that out that's not we've moved far away from the august history of the word slab jacking well i will say so slap jacking i um when i told you i

had that moment at the very beginning where i was like i don't even know if i could make one of these and i was just like really kind of again i wasn't crying but i was very very frustrated um but then once i kind of got it down a little bit i did not want to stop i kept telling myself okay make this your last one and then as a treat sort out some more vowels i was like i'm gonna get to the and what i did was i set up a laptop in front of me and put on bojack horseman i i had bought a pack of uh of bodizafa beer and i just sat there with a can of beer and bojack horseman and and beating these things and i think i forced myself to stop around one or 130 and i could i

could have kept going i will tell you this for all the complaining i've been doing about separating the vowels there was something very zen about it i got into a mode where i would dump out a mixed bag of vowels and then i would just push it yes and i would pull aside the i needed a's and i's i'd pull aside the a's and i's and i would just keep moving and then i end up with a pile that had no a's and i's in it which was there was i found the whole so i started off listening to various magazine articles through the new york times audio app then my phone died and then i just sat there for like probably an hour and a half to two hours listening to crickets literally listening to crickets while i did this it was like a very oddly meditative thing and i i felt andrew like i don't know if i've ever felt more connected with you because i thought this is what andrew likes about this kind of stuff it's like you're doing enough that your brain is engaged but also not so much that your brain is overwhelmed it's like i felt like i was playing hex empire i felt

like i was doing a very andrew thing yes and your brain like your brain doesn't turn off it just goes into a different mode where it's just sort of process kind of sleep mode or kind of low low power mode you are processing things though in a way and and um and so that's where i so the big reveal today will be how many bracelets did we all make but it's not a competition i also want to talk though about um kind of our plans for the rest of the day because i realize it's only tuesday in the thon but it sort of feels and john you were kind of alluding to this it sort of feels like i've lived a thousand lifetimes since you picked me up on sunday and again we haven't done anything all that arduous but just like i have a lot of stress and getting these things you know set up and and the zoom last night took us until i think we maybe ended around 7 38 o'clock or something so i was sort of wondering i don't want to be anti-social today but i kind of want to get back into my bead making um and so i'm kind of wondering like today when we kind of wrap up here we have to set a bead cam later where we can we'll have a 24-hour shot of a of of the i guess it's a bracelet cam not a bead cam well there are beads on the bracelet that's right yeah um but once we do that i'm kind of like should we just kind of go our separate ways and go back to the beading

life i mean that's honestly if we're going to make any headway on this i think well the other thing i couldn't kind of get out of my mind last night was thinking about the number we're trying to get to by the end of the week yeah and like and just how um how tall ideally how high that mountain is everybody yeah exactly every bracelet yeah seriously every bracelet we make uh it means that we're getting a donation from someone which is of course the whole point of this week but yeah i was thinking like we we we sort of lost some time yesterday because we were just getting our feet under us and we were doing we had the zoom and everything today is probably a very uh a good day for us to try to make some real progress on the project because then tomorrow we've got another zoom yep you know we've just like the week is going to go by really really quickly i also want to say to all of the listeners who have expressed fear when they heard about this project you couldn't have been more right you just you could not have been more right this is a very ambitious thing that we're doing and we just i don't think we knew how ambitious it was going to be so all of that being said should we do a quick tally should we see where we're at well i before

we do the tally i just want to raise one more thing that i just thought of that i wanted to talk to you guys about today because we may have another slight issue in our plans maybe not maybe not you guys tell me but I don't know if you guys did the same thing I did which was kind of made yourself a pile of your bracelets that are done I eventually transferred them into like kind of a clear plastic solo cup that I took from your kitchen here Luke so I've got a little cup with my bracelets but have you guys tried yet to dump it out and like do a recount because one thing I noticed is these bracelets like each other and they love to get tangled up in each other and I'm wondering if and I love the idea of filling up this jar in front of us with bracelets but I'm wondering if we're gonna hate ourselves later because we're gonna dump out the jar and then have to untangle all that when really I think what we need are some like paper towel tubes or something to put these things on I think we'll

hear ourselves later regardless that is true i will definitely let me put it this way as of right

now i don't think we have enough bracelets for it to be a big problem once we get towards like a thousand bracelets then i think maybe we need to come up with a better system okay yes but so

so b jars on but that is just one thing that we need to think about for the future at some point

somebody john uh is going to have to untangle that's going to be a good problem and john please please be gentle I'm so not confident about the structural integrity of my slab jacking bracelets. Can I make two points on the

structural integrity? We've heard this from people and I also saw it on some YouTube videos when you do get your bracelet you're supposed to roll it, don't stretch it out, like you roll it over your hand

I would like people to just gently place their slab jacking bracelet on a shelf or somewhere else that you display you display handsome items that you're proud to have i would say that's the best way to enjoy a

slab jacking bracelet there's a second tip too and we've this we got from some listeners too that we're not doing is if you take some clear nail polish and put it on the knot it helps

preserve the knot and i would encourage listeners to do that yeah exactly so when you get yours

assuming it's still intact when you know it won't be intact assuming the bracelet's intact when you get it at home just dab a little clearer nail polish on well that was the thing that i realized

watching the videos was oh i don't have that kind of glue oh i don't have those kind of shears i don't have that setup i was like i really should have watched a video on this like last week yeah at literally like 9 30 last night sitting in my yard i was like oh there's a whole situation for

this that i have done zero prep on good on you for even watching youtube i just pulled out the sheet of paper that they gave me a bead world and looked at how they tied it and i just went to town all right all right i'm very excited for this moment i mean i think that luke i mean based on everything that you've said, I think that you probably

have the biggest call. I don't know. You've got a lot

going on there. No, no, no. This is just a bag that has a bunch of unbraided beads. John, do you

want to go first? Are we showing off some of the ones we made? We're going to count how

many we are. We're going to put them in this jar. We're going to dump them into the jar.

Just dump them in the jar.

Put it near your microphone. Okay, good. Yeah, mic the jar. And let's make sure that we can... Are we seeing this on the YouTube? I'm going to start dropping them in. Okay, here. I'm going to make John big on YouTube here. Oh, make me big on YouTube. Yeah, make me big. Okay, here we go. Make me big. Okay, there we go. All right. Oh.

Nice.

Seven? That's a very...

Eight? That's a satisfying clink.

Nine, ten? Woo! All right.

Look at that. My goal was 20. And then, like, 1.30 in the morning. That's a satisfying clink.

I want to reiterate how... Like, John had to go home and, like, write emails to listeners and then compartmentalize them a million ways. And then compartmentalize his feelings about us. Exactly. That's a lot of work. Okay. John had 10. I have one, two, three. I know what the number is, so I hope I'm not pulling out more than one. Four, seven, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Oh, just one better than Johnny Boy. Nice. It's not a contest. I actually feel a lot better. John had a lot more to do than me last night

Yes absolutely I had the least to do Of anyone and also Was on my home turf like I had I have all of these little like Stainless steel ramekins That you can use for Yeah for like a little ketchup In my wilder days I kept those in the Freezer and would put tequila In them because they make a just you know pro tip At home for the children Make a really great tequila shot glass

But because in the morning it takes so long

well exactly it just it chills it um but i had like access i had like for instance andrew you've got a lot of beads in coffee like those are john or john's a temporary styrofoam coffee cup from your hotel room so i had kind of like home field advantage i had access to like anything that i needed in terms of trying to organize and stuff and i also i uh like wanted to i thought my goal Let me put it this way My goal was to do 100 And I did not get there But like halfway Holy crud Luke My goal this morning was

to get up and do another 50, but I lost my needle. I was so delirious by the end of this that I... So this was my strategy with my needle. Every time I took my needle off of the thread, I put it in my mouth because it's like a needle you do an angioplasty with. You could thread it through.

Oh, I also did an angioplasty. Oh, well, that took up a lot of your time. You still got 11 times. I feel great, by the way. You still got 11 times on yourself. These pipes are clean. Hold that jar up. That's a handsome-looking jar. Yeah, that's beautiful. Right on your camera there.

Oh, yeah. I've got a camera. There we go.

That's beautiful.

That's all of our work right there.

So you did 50 right on? Yeah.

So we got 71. We have 71. Are we good? I mean, honestly, I think that's job done.

Nice.

71.

And the rest of you are all getting one bead. No. I'm looking forward to getting back into this and filling this jar. Look at that. That jar is almost halfway full already.

Yeah, this is exciting. This is exciting. And that jar will hold 1,500 bracelets, right?

Well, that was the funniest thing was I don't want to sound ungrateful because it was very sweet. But Becca said, oh, do you want this jar for the bracelets? And I said, yeah, but I think we're going to have to make like in the thousands. And she said, well, you could use this jar. And I said, does that look like a thing that could hold 1,000 of something? And she said, probably. Looks like it holds about 100. Yeah, but hey, honestly, 100 is just 1,000 without another zero. And also 100, it turns out, is very hard to make.

Yes, exactly.

We'll be lucky if we get to 100.

So, yeah, so I don't know if you have other vessels or whatever, but I guess do we still want to put a camera on this jar and then we fill it up?

I think we should. I don't think it's going to be quite the way we imagined it, which was like constant influx.

Yeah, because John and I are bringing ours in from the outside.

That's okay, though, because you know what? It'll still be like tomorrow when we meet up again. I think we'll look at this jar. I keep holding it up to the other camera, but here I'll hold it up on my one shot. Tomorrow, this jar will be, I bet you, totally full.

Is your watch telling you to take time to breathe?

It's telling me to stand up. Oh, okay.

Let's see if it works. I don't have one of those robo watches. It's such a low bar. Time to stand up. Then it says, it's just so patronizing. I could actually use a little standing time myself. It's so patronizing because once you do it, it'll say, congratulations.

And I'm like, okay, thank you. Simmer down.

I get excited when I, and I know I've said this to you before, but when I have the mapping software on and you can hear the voice and you and you show up at your destination and says you have arrived and it always just fills you it's just really well that you feel like you've done

something great the joke that i've always made is there is just almost never in life and p i don't know if people even use the like talking function anymore on things like ways and map quest and google maps but like i go from being totally reliant on that voice to absolutely annoyed Once you know where you're going The second I see the place In half a mile Take a right and then it's like Your destination is ahead and I'm like no shit Sherlock

Hey I'm going to give out the phone number here And open up the phone lines if anybody wants to call in It's 206 414-8285 That's 206-414-TBTL We don't have anybody on the line right now Because I'm just opening up the lines

You can give us a call right now And by the way I just want to say Thank you for being a 10 We are, of course, here for the TBTL-a-thon 15. Thank you for being a 10. And we've got some amazing thank you gifts for it, including you may get one of these limited-release friendship bracelets. That's right. More limited than we meant them to be. But anyway, we're working on it. We'll get there. John, what are some of the other thank you gifts we have for folks who are supporting TBTL this year?

Absolutely. In addition to your friendship bracelet, you can get a TBTL pennant ding, a TBTL junior slugger hat. Thank you for being a 10. A TBTL Junior Slugger Raglan Baseball three-quarter length tee What is raglan? Thank you for being a 10 That's due to the stitching of the sleeves I learned Okay, gotcha

Starts at the collar

You could also get your dazzling donor message on there Or be thanked as a daily Thank you for being a 10 Or be thanked as a daily donor And if you have the means and feel super-duper generous You can also get the special personalized video from one of you guys Oh, that's right

Thank you for being a 10 Is it one of us or both of us?

That's for you two to decide. Yeah, I don't know. We can collab.

We can get together and knock some out. Sure. Anyway, yeah, so those are all thank you gifts for donating, but mostly you are doing it to keep TBTL going because where else are you going to hear somebody spend 25 minutes talking about a bad joke he made at the bar the night before?

Or three grown men struggling to make friendship bracelets. I was thinking about that last night. I don't want to get re-bogged down In the bracelet conversation But I was on a real journey last night Once my phone died Of just like ruminating and thinking And I was like

I have this headlamp on. It's one in the morning now. And I was like, what if my neighbor comes over? How do I explain this? They probably wouldn't. But as you guys have noted and now notice being here, I don't live in the middle of nowhere. I live in a cul-de-sac, essentially. And my neighbors all kind of can see what I'm doing. And I thought, do they think they just see me pacing around with a headlamp on, getting things, going in and out of the studio? What are they thinking is going on? And also, what if somebody with bad intentions showed up and then they just you know, my body was found the next day, slumped over a bunch of slab jacking bracelets with a headlamp on. How would we explain this scene?

CBS Sunday morning correspondent, Luke Burbank's body found. He died as he lived. Slab jacking. I had a thought yesterday as I was doing this, I was like well maybe tomorrow I can go back to the Triangle Tavern or something and just get myself a table and set up a table somewhere in a bar and start doing this and then I started thinking that's gonna require a lot of explaining and people coming over and being like why is why is this man making a bunch of friendship bracelets and it occurred to me maybe i just belong in the

in the confines of my hotel room i couldn't decide if this represented the apotheosis of my career or the nadir point like part of me was like i'm a 48 year old man i've worked in professional broadcasting for almost 30 years now and i'm making friendship bracelets at one in the morning either this means i have a very strong connection to this show and the people who like this show or i've utterly failed in my career i could and i i think it's door number one i actually i embraced it as door number one which is every person who gets one of these slab jacking bracelets and puts it on you can know that i like literally sat there threading it so that you know it could exist and i like that we have that i'm not trying to pat us on the back i just i it made me actually feel good about things as opposed to bad about things but there were a couple moments

where i almost felt bad about things how would you feel about going to this call we have a listener here great about it from the 425 okay east cider hey who are we talking with wow this is dftd

in seattle david from the basement you please text me so that i can give you your proper uh you know introductory uh audio here let's see if i can find it hold on why are you cosplaying as an as an insider here here he comes it's our friend david from the basement i've been lurking on the chat uh have you ever made a friendship bracelet bro

uh yeah i feel like at some church camp at some point we made bracelets i see it probably yeah

did you find it to be uh as difficult as we're making it sound here yeah it's the tying the

knots those knots are a real a real uh yeah those are those are difficult for sure you know i had

uh this wasn't my idea this was genevieve's idea but before i'd even um tied one of these off genevieve knew that tying was going to be the hardest part and she said well why don't you just create one huge string of these beads and then bring it for john and luke to cut and tie but that would be kind of like hey guys i did all the fun parts the loose ends though see that makes me

nervous that's why i was doing them one at a time i always wanted the left hand side of the situation to be the spool yeah so they just couldn't go anywhere um but david i don't want to talk bracelets with you i want to talk something much more important which is loader baseball which uh when i walked into the studio yesterday morning i was like nervous stressed out about the production this is obviously a huge part of our year and and the way that we're able to keep tbtl going john and andrew were laughing they were full of mirth and it was because john was reviewing your lord of the rings fantasy baseball setup um can you take us through this who do you have

playing where yeah so so i i had to i feel like i had to split it into two distinct teams one being sort of the good guys one being the bad guys so our good guys are i've coined the sluggers of the west um okay in in lord of the rings parlance the sort of fighters of of uh of men and elves and stuff are called the the men of the west so we're doing the sluggers of the west first okay can i

ask you david did you have how much of this list did you have before you ever heard us mention it on tv child how much of it did you whip up for us you know i'm not going to say that uh in the sort

of in the dark hours of of listening to the mariners uh weed away another another victory that i haven't thought about it okay uh and the fact that gandalf the white would probably be a

better manager than scott service without without question without i'd also trust him

Thank you.

I'd also trust him with the replay calls.

Yeah, absolutely. So wait a second. Are you automatically putting him at manager instead of on the mound as we did on the show the other day? Yes. Wow. Okay.

I think in his early days, I think Gandalf probably was a pretty stellar, you know, Randy Johnson style pitcher. But nowadays, you know, he's older. He's Gandalf the White.

Yeah.

He's lost a few miles on his fastball.

That's right. He's leaving it up in the zone more. Yeah, right, exactly. Okay. Well, David, then who do you – Okay, I'll let you do your lineup. Sorry.

Yeah, because I did the lineup sort of how you would see a baseball lineup, starting with who's going to start off first in the lineup, who's going to bat first. So first up at left field, Legolas Greenleaf. Now, we want Legolas to start off – he's got kind of an Ichiro aspect to him, really fast, really light on his feet. He's going to be able to expand the entire outfield if he needs it. Major contact hitter. He can lay down on a bunt if you need it. He's going to get on base.

Can we agree that the only endearing thing about this year's Mariners is their love of bunting? It genuinely fills me with joy when Luke Raley lays down a surprise. And by the way, Rojas, not Rojas, but robles the other day robles hits a home run and the next ab lays down a surprise button that is

range my friends i wanted to jump in here david so i have not looked at your list yet but when i was on the show i think this whole conversation began with me for some reason putting aragorn in center field and i think then that led us to like kind of talking about what the the lineup should be um i have since had that conversation with various people um and the number one piece feedback i've gotten from people who know the loader world is that i'm a fool for putting aragorn in center field because that should be legolas because he's so rain he's so fast he can range so much but you have legolas in left field i do so i have legolas in left field and actually

spoiler alert i do have aragorn in center field all right whoever you were talking to doesn't know their stuff aragorn can stand almost the entire field as well he's a ranger he's one of the Dunedine. He knows what he's doing.

And also the center fielder in baseball, the center fielder has priority over the other fielders. He can call everyone off on a fly ball, and you need Aragorn for that.

He's got star power. Precisely. Yes, exactly. So Aragorn is center field. He actually is batting cleanup, so he's fourth in the lineup. Going back to the lineup itself, second in the lineup is Boromir, played by Sean Bean. He's our first baseman. Yes, he is. He's got some long arms. He's sturdy. He's going to be your Kai France there, except that he can actually hit the ball. Boromir retooled his swing in the offseason. Yeah, exactly. And then next up, this is kind of a surprise. At shortstop, I have Mary, Mary Adolph Brandybump, who is played by Dominic Monaghan. You would think you don't necessarily want a hobbit at shortstop. You want a guy who can kind of get up there and catch a line drive before it gets into the outfield. Here's the thing about Mary, though. He is, without a doubt, the best Hobbit fighter that there is. He also, during the Lord of the Rings, drank what's called an Ent drought, which made him taller. So he's a lot taller than your sort of usual Hobbit. He can get the job done. I like him in that third spot. But I think he's going to be able to hit some guys in and also get on the base. If he's on the base pass, I think he's also going to be pretty speedy. Yeah, he's going to be trouble for the pitcher. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And he's going to get in their head. He's going to kind of be the, oh gosh, who was Jose Caballero? He's going to be a little bit like that, which you definitely want. He's going to be cheeky. And then next up in the lineup, like I said, Aragorn. You want him batting cleanup. up. He's your guy. Ducks on the pond for Aragorn. You love to see it. Yeah. Yeah. He's Mr. Double. He's always going to be hitting the double, getting those runs in. Next up as catcher, I think catcher is going to be the obvious choice. It's Gimli, son of a loin. Yes, of course. He's already low to the ground. Built like a fire hydrant. He's going to take the beating. Yeah, exactly. He's also, he has one of probably the most powerful swings. He's swinging that axe around all the time so he's going to be that kind of big dumper presence that you really want absolutely got a really he's he's a steadfast he's got a strong personality so he's not going to waver in the sort of middle of the season as you're losing some games he's going to be there he's going to be rock solid how is he with the pitcher

How is he with the pitchers? You know, I'll get to sort of who my starting pitcher is, but I would say he's going to be real good. He's not super communicative, but like I said, he's trying to just see it in his eyes. That's okay.

He's just using hand signals, and if you're the pitcher, you're not waving. Hand signals, body language. You're not waving Gimli off. You're throwing the pitch that he's telling you to throw.

Imagine standing on the mound and seeing him coming towards you like he needs to have a he needs to have a conference on the mound. That would that would put me in my place, certainly. Yeah, true, true. You don't want to get to that point after Gimli.

So this is kind of I wanted to stick to the members of the sort of quote unquote fellowship. Thank you. But you can't you can't build out an entire lineup with just nine people. You've got to have more folks. So I actually have in right field. um Boromir's brother Faramir who in my eyes is is sort of the unsung hero of the entire Lord of

the Rings trilogy I love it it's kind of like Robbie and Sandy Alomar playing on the same team

we see we see brothers playing baseball on the same team yeah absolutely and he's he's uh similar to Aragorn he's kind of more of a ranger he can like you know like the name would suggest he can kind of range around there in the outfield, cover right field, got a really great arm. He can throw it all the way into third. You know, hit that. Won't even have to get the cutoff guy. Oh, like the Mariners will miss the cutoff? Yeah.

But he'll be doing it on purpose.

Right, right. Exactly. And Faramir is loyal. He's always going to be loyal to the team. He's never going to jump off and, you know, head to the Yankees.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

um sorry john yeah sorry john you're outvoted here sort of the the regular yeah the line um next up next up moving on at third base i mentioned third base uh is going to be our own samwise gamji you know i find sam to be sort of that uh eugenio suarez presence or maybe a david right a lot of the nets back in the day you know i think samwise is going to be a really good he's got a great arm to throw it across the infield there i mean he carried he carried frodo up the

freaking mount doom like this is the guy you want playing the hot corner yes definitely uh next up

at dh gotta have our designated hitter the pitchers don't hit in this league the pitchers

don't hit in middle earth no way no we even in middle earth like we gotta speed this game up We're not getting enough offense.

No, we got rid of that shit in the second age. We're in the third age. We've got a designated hitter. It's Eowyn. She's daughter of Eowyn. She's the one who, in the movies, she kills the Witch King. She is honestly the best warrior that you can have.

Is that played by Liv Tyler?

no she her she's played by a uh an australian actress named miranda otto okay um but that was she was my crush growing up you know some people were in the sort of arwen realm i was more in the eowyn realm she's a lady of rohan strong fierce um she's a great dh uh quite as much quite as much for power but but she's gonna drive in some runs i think she's uh she's gonna be a good spot there and then rounding it all out at second base um you've got to have jorge polanco no i guess that's gotta be that's gotta be pippin uh the other hobbit yes you know second base is kind of a throwaway well it's where you put a really good fielder that doesn't have a particularly

strong arm so you want him fielding second base but he's not under pressure to throw it all the way across the field like you would if you're at third or short that double play chemistry with

yes very good point john great that was sort of yeah that was sort of my thought process him mary sam all in the end field it's like good old tinkers to ever chance yeah yeah and boromir kind of looks after all of them as the first baseman which uh which seems right in that role um and then i also did have a pinch hitter you always need a pinch hitter yeah bottom of the ninth you need your pinch hitter coming in and uh and that of course is going to be Smeagol uh because he's chaos ball he's got that ficeness yeah and and if you guys recall at the end of the trilogy uh it's really Gollum who ends up destroying the ring but it's Smeagol not Gollum right to come in in the clutch so this is Smeagol so that gets to the other side I think we're probably not gonna have time to go probably not but I will say Smeagol is a first pitch

swinger like when you put Smeagol in and the pinch hitting

situation he is he's aggressive at the plate he is if you throw him a fastball first pitch he's

gonna he is gonna rock that we really we really can't get into the other side of this but were you just intimating that we have smiegel on one team and golem on the other i love it that's

exactly right oh my is gonna be the pinch hitter the pinch hitter of the uh who i call the mount Doom Bombers. That's the team Manus by Sauron. And yeah, you guys probably wouldn't recognize any of the names on this team anyways. Who's the pitcher?

Who's the pitchers in this game? As George Brent once famously said.

Starting pitcher for the Sluggers of the West, for the good guys, is obviously Frodo. Oh, nice. Sure. Crafty. So here's the thing about Frodo, not to have too much shade his way, but he doesn't really have a great skill set. I think he's your pitcher, he's your leader. Everyone's got to get behind him, but he's not going to be able to. He can't bat. He's not a great fighter. He's like Castillo.

He's basically Castillo. He gives up some runs early, but then he steadies himself, and then he'll give you seven innings, and he'll give you seven innings of three-run ball.

He takes it a long way.

Yeah, absolutely. He'll keep you in the game.

in uh yeah exactly exactly and that then brings in our closer worried about height though can i

just say though are you not worried about height out there like a halfling i don't want to be

prejudiced yeah i think you know you definitely have a point there i think the i would worry more about height and fielding as opposed to pitching yeah and so that's why i didn't you notice i didn't put any hobbits out in the outfield sure they're just gonna get lost out there yeah tripping the grass you don't want them out there you I honestly see him more as a Marco

Gonzalez then like more of a is he is he like or like uh like a Jamie Moyer like David already

said like you know not a physically imposing guy but he's got a couple pitches what he does is he really his change-up is so good that it really speeds up his fastball so that's the scouting

report on Frodo okay sorry to interrupt you yes well no that's that sort of brings me to our

closer who's Bilbo who I think even more so back in his day I think Bilbo was a really really intense like he was a flamethrower back in his day now he's sort of aged out a little bit he still has a couple but he doesn't have the four pitches anymore he has a couple of pitches

you know his out pitch his out pitch is whatever happens when Frodo tried to take the ring from him and he goes completely demonic on him he goes that's the guy we want to see that's your out

pitch yeah and and so that that is your sluggers of the west oh i love it um and then yeah like i said the mount doom bombers a bunch of orcs a bunch of ring race yeah uh all of that i mean

just the idea that you the idea that you might have smeagol trying to you might have smeagol trying to hold Gollum on base. Look out LeBron and Bronny. There's a new family duo making the sports scene.

I also like that you've basically taken your fantasies for what Felix Hernandez should have done and put them all into Frodo. That's what I'm hearing there. That he actually adjusted with age and then went into the bullpen.

David, my big question to you, though, is have you run this by Rick Riz on your Friday segment on Cairo Radio?

No, you know, Rick is, I think Rick's a little more into probably the C.S. Lewis world.

He's a Voyage of the Dawn Treader guy.

He's like, South Side of Narnia. If any of the savvy tens out there want to try to do some AI program to make Rick Riz call a game of the Middle Earth League baseball, that would be incredible.

what I think would be amazing would be to turn AI loose on the project of creating, I don't know how the scoring works, but basically creating a loader fantasy league where, because John and Andrew are really into fantasy baseball and they're constantly comparing notes on how their teams did like to just somehow make this into a thing that the tens could play along with. Like people can pick their characters. And I mean, again, I don't know how any of that works. I'll let the computer sort it out, but I could see I'm just based on the comments. people seem to be very engaged with this content david oh good oh that that's what i was hoping

as i was writing this all up uh and oh oh just just another spoiler from the mount doom bombers the closer obviously has to be smiled uh-huh yeah that real flamethrower there i like the

idea though of like smaug like taking off from the mound and then is it aragorn in center just like finds the one little weak spot and hits him and then throws up the no fly zone

yeah

find the weak spot yeah yeah you know all out that's yeah there you go well hey david i just

wanted to say thank you for calling and thank you for your incredibly well-considered argument for which loader character should be at which position and also thanks for supporting the show and congratulations to you and alicia man that's uh really i'm really really stoked for you our family

is growing yeah thank you guys so much um yeah i just you know i i have been a donator in the past And I took a couple of years off for different reasons, but I can't stress how much this show means to me and how much every single day. When I listen to the show, it makes me feel connected to my brother. It makes me feel connected to the tens and to friends out there. So I really love everything that you guys do, and I'll be tuning in to the feed every day. Thanks, Dave. We appreciate you and love you.

And everyone go listen to the actual famous Burbank on the actual radio on Cairo, Cairo's Morning News over there, because that's where you can find it. Yeah, all right. Thanks, Davey. Congrats, Davey. All right, later, guys. Bye. Yeah, I can't remember if I mentioned this on air or off air, but after we had that little conversation about, like, loader baseball, I would say within 20 seconds I got a text from David saying, Oh, I believe that. I've got a team, and I was like, I couldn't be less shocked.

Before the show was even posted. He sensed a disturbance out there. I'll open up the phone lines again if you want me to do that. In the meantime, encouraging everybody.

And honestly, we're going to keep today's show relatively compact because we've got bracelets to make, my friends.

We really do. Yeah, I'm worried about one thing here. Just one thing? Well, I'm worried about all kinds of things. I'm going to take a phone call here, and maybe that's how we'll close out today. But I do want to say, I'm already worried about this jar of bracelets that we've been holding up for the camera. Is there already a loose n in there? That's probably me. I don't think it's nothing broke

I don't think anything well. No, I don't think anything broke I just why is there a loose end in there loose ends. Yeah I don't think I don't think we had a break it. I think that we just had a okay

Maybe I didn't activate the call and I'll get to the Hey there who we got on the line

Oh, hi, hi. This is Michelle

hey mcshell in mcnessota edina i know the more that people try to explain to me how to say it the harder of a time i have hey mcshell how are you by the way thanks for the donation this year that was insanely generous of you oh well you're welcome and i want to tell you all first of all

I don't pronounce Edina right either because I'm from Kansas, right? I'm not a Minnesotan. So I'm going to give you a free pass on this list because you're not from here. So I'm calling to tell you my story of trying to donate to my local public television station, a big, very well-funded organization. And it failed me last year, and I had to mail him a check. and guess what it did again this year it failed me again but the tbtl works go john sklaroff and go go john number one employee i just want to say you know they got a lot of it support over there and we have john yes and john is doing a great job i want to tell you

something michelle what this show lacks in pronouncing the city where you live and your name honestly at one point and content we make up for in very very functional donation pathways and that's because we need the money to stay doing this as a job well so does everybody else

but they can't seem to make their their forms work anyway have an excellent son i hope it doesn't get too hot i did send you a text message saying if you don't have ac you can always get you know those giant blocks of ice and put them in front of put a fan behind it and blow cool air well i'll

tell you something michelle uh i um purchased two of these i guess they're called swamp coolers you know they're basically they're like a kind of a thing that you put some ice although it's the kind of refreezable ice and then water in this container and then it's supposed to blow cold air from the cold water and i set one up yesterday as things were starting to get really toasty in here and again the weirdest thing about being here this week is like right now it's completely comfortable in here and then by about three or four this afternoon and particularly this afternoon it will be like almost unsafe to be in here but I got one of those swamp coolers I got it out of the box I set it up I put the ice in there I turned it on it made at

absolutely no difference totally and completely ineffective and i am going to be returning it um and so uh i think we're just going to have to today is going to be the worst of it but i think we'll get through it but yeah i think sitting on a giant block of ice like a kid on the bowery in the 1910s is going to be a better approach well but but you put a fan behind it and blow it on you

we had a house in saint paul with no air conditioning and had a fourth of july party

once and this is how i learned this wow so you actually did this you set up what did you put the

ice on how did it not melt everywhere it you put it in a pan of some sort you know like a roasting pan or you know just something big that'll catch the water and you know you can also go over if you're hot and don't cool racks and put them on your head because that'll be very chilly chill

drinks in the melt it works great okay well this is good to know i'm ideally by next year um we'll actually have a kind of functioning slight hvac system here i mentioned this recently that we were going to talk about on yesterday's show and we didn't get to it but i'm glad you bring it up michelle which is people have been suggesting on the stents page that i get something called a mini split which is kind of the new thing that people are using it's ductless it's uh you know it draws during the summertime it draws the hot air out of the room and makes it nice and cool and in the wintertime it does the reverse they're very energy efficient they're so effective that in vermont the i think it's the coal industry is trying to start a basically like a lobbying campaign to tell people that they don't work even though they do because that's and they're also much more environmentally friendly i have one of these i bought it i'm waiting for my dad to help me install it and i think there's something about it that intimidates him which is really weird because he's so good at this stuff and he always figures it out but like we've been sitting on this thing forever and i think it has to do with the hole that we have to drill through the house so this is the my dad hates drilling large holes i mean i don't know if anyone likes it but he particularly hates it and so we keep putting it off and he's like yeah it's going to be a real bear to drill that hole through the house and i'm like well can i do it and he goes no i've got it so that's the whole dynamic between us is there will be something he doesn't want to do so we will stall on a project and then i will say well how about i just do the part that's just not technical but just like leaning on this big hole cutter for a period of time and then he'll go like no no i i'll do it it's what i do and then we just make no progress because he doesn't want to do it but he doesn't

let me do it will you tell i hate to tell you this but he doesn't trust you but we have faith

in walt okay michelle when you're right you're right and it's very it's like andrew talking to about the headroom on the shot when my dad is trying to go you might want to do this it always means if you don't do it this way it's going to be a complete disaster dude like i do not think he trusts me with a lot of this and he is right to not trust me because i mess all of it up when left to my own devices it's not good but all that is to say hopefully by next year i don't know if we're going to be doing the thon here next year but by next year next time it's really really hot in the next summer i should have a little bit of a better system in place so when are you going to

announce your special show oh great question friday i was thinking a friday announce yeah

friday that cool with you mcshel what's the um do you have any like uh like theaters that i don't know hold i think the capacity is like seven to ten thousand in edina what's the what's the situation in edina no okay you'd have to go to minneapolis oh minneapolis i don't know overrated

st paul come on overrated st paul st paul yeah all right yeah friday we'll do that big announcement

thanks for reminding us you're doing a lot of really useful production today with your call thank you how are the levels yeah yeah thank you very much we appreciate you and my one one last

thing is i think you should get john a post office box so we can send him fan mail too

that's a great idea because and then i should get one because andrew's getting all the cool stuff

do you guys know how much that uh post office box is i do because you sent me oh that's right 500 a year I think it's like 497 Yeah they're kind of expensive Just send me the stuff You want to send to John I'll go through it I'll redact anything That I don't think is appropriate for him And then I'll send it on

Michelle it's very kind of you to say but not necessary

I love no one suggesting I get a P.O. box Because everyone knows I'll never check it

That's right Just like your email

I'm getting a little better with my email Michelle If you email me, Luke at tbtl.net, I will, there's definitely a 50% chance I'll see it.

Okay. All right. And Santa Claus is coming soon. Power out. That's right. Thank you. Bye, Michelle. We appreciate you. Love you.

Thank you for all your help. All right. Should we go ahead and wrap it up? I think it's been an eventful show. We got into the bracelets.

We got a real deep dive on Loader Baseball.

So let me get this straight and see if we can tell the listeners where they can find our progress report. We're going to wrap up the show now. Is our plan still to set up a little camera on this jar somewhere in your studio here where people can tune in at any point and just look at it? And we'll try to keep that. And I've never set up a 24-hour stream before, especially across several days. And so I'm not 100% sure that we'll be able to pull this off. But that will be the plan, a 24-7 cam on this jar. And I will put that up at tbtl.net at the top of the page when we get that set, hopefully later on today.

Yes, bracelet jar coming your way, hopefully.

Great. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page with that. And that's where you folks can find that, at tbtl.net. What else can you do At tbtl.net

Oh John any ideas You could donate Oh yeah That would be amazing That would be so great Thank you to everyone Who has donated And to those of you Who are letting it ride Like if you feel good About your donation amount And you want to just Keep doing that That is also amazing And we will be reaching out To you about getting you Your thank you gift You don't have to do anything If you want to just stay At the level you're at If you want to maybe Go up a little bit You know Inflation and the like That wouldn't be

The worst Andrew's been even funnier this year than it was last year, and maybe I want to support that kind

of humor. Yeah, absolutely. tbtl.net is the place to do that, and again, thank you so much for watching this. Thanks for being part of tbtl, and thanks for letting this continue to be a job for three people, insane as it is. As mystifying it is to my male lady who just drove by with a look in her eye. This is our thing. This is our job, and it's only because of all of you who are watching this and listening to it. So thank you very, very much. All right, we're gonna be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. So please do join us for that or tune in on YouTube at 10 a.m. West Coast time. In the meantime, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. And go men of the West. Please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.