Muse

We have an amazing relationship. We both have so much in common. We both love soup and we love the outdoors. We love snow peas and talking and not talking. We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about.

This thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be. I'd say that you're all in line for some important promotions and personal citations when this thing's over with.

Let me take off my assistant skirt and put on my Barbara Streisand in the Prince of Tides ass-masking therapist pantsuit.

Do not put that on the imaginary radio show.

Hey, I've learned a lesson here, but I hope you all have too, about the vitality of shared experience. We will all remember this moment for the rest of our lives. It was dramatic, it was visual. It was stupid. It was stupid, but it was also theater. Ooh, fancy.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. These are the best Cajun chicken niblets I've ever had. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host.

1-32-33-30.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it is another absolutely beautiful day here.

Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful.

Maybe we're in, this is maybe a meteorological thing that I just didn't realize. Maybe there's a nice little stretch of weather that happens in January. It's getting colder, so maybe it's a little less rainy, but I'll take it. Other than my concern about the temperature of the various stray animals in my neighborhood and the hummingbirds, other than that, I'll take this weather. It's pretty nice. We've got a pretty nice episode of the show dialed up for you on this Tuesday. It's episode 4,385 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. in our continued attempts to not focus on what is the overriding dominant news of the day this week we look to last week and a couple of stories that we didn't get to that are totally and completely unrelated to politics and the fact that this country is burning down to the ground um a woman in tennessee is in trouble for leaving her halloween decorations up for too long you scare me raising the question what does make a halloween decoration a halloween decoration also we'll go to france for a topic today we'll go all the way to france where um there was a guy for the last 40 or 50 years who was the go-to french person for being the voice of sylvester stallone in his movies he has passed away his family is upset at the attempt to replace him with ai we will talk about that and we will talk to this guy longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships i also consider him a close and personal best friend we met on a bfs app he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good morning sir

good morning luke i know we don't i know what we want to talk about and what we don't want to talk about at least i know what we don't want to talk about maybe i don't know what we do want to talk about but whoa i'm getting into real rum spelled territory there but i am going to talk about it i want to ask i'm going to check in on my best friend that we met on an app yeah how are you thank god they started that app because we met on a bff app um you know yesterday it was inauguration day it was a it was a um rough day and it's just a really really rough day when you and i talked in the morning i don't think we let's see we talked about the tiktok aspect of everything on yesterday's show so we didn't talk too much about anything beyond that aspect of politics i think um but i think you made an illusion on the show and when we were chatting before the show you said that you were operation protect my brain was working pretty well for you or protect my feels like you were you woke up on monday morning and it sounded like you're able to sort of keep your head down listen to some jazz like scrub the hell out of your sink i think you said and By the way, I think bartender's secret is overrated. Bart, is it secret? Barkeep's secret?

Barkeep's best friend?

I think it's Barkeep's BFF app, yeah. What is it, Barkeeper's friend? Barkeeper's secret? Friend, I think, maybe, right? Barkeeper's friend? Yeah, Barkeeper's situation is... Barkeeper's, it's complicated. No, it's Barkeeper's friend, yes.

Okay, I've been hearing about that stuff. I'm not trying to change the topic, and I'm actually...

It's okay if you want to.

No, no, no, I'm happy to discuss...

Thank you.

Or try to at least take a kind of a temperature check on myself around all of this. But no, I got up on Monday morning, and it was odd, though. I must have been displacing something because, like, it's unusual for me at 6.30 in the morning to decide that is the point at which I should really get after cleaning the sink.

Sometimes it gets after you. Seriously, like, that's a whole thing that Anne and I talk about a lot. You find yourself cleaning shit at times when you had absolutely no plan on cleaning that thing. It starts with picking up a little speck of coffee grounds that you didn't notice were sort of accumulating under the coffee pot. Next thing you know, this happened to me this weekend, you are using a toothpick to clean out the crevices of a coffee pot that suddenly you didn't realize had been acquiring grime for three or four years.

as we're talking about this and i'm kind of running the sort of rewinding the tape in my head i do think that i've got some and by the way this is not my normal thing but i'm kind of here for it like i'm kind of i think anxiety cleaning might do me right like if there's something i'm going to be doing because i'm feeling overwhelmed i guess there are worse things and i've tried them in the past with bad outcomes yeah like because the other thing i did i have been found passed

out of the floor after cleaning my bathroom at midnight though just so you know it does happen

i i um i have a little um cabinet in my kitchen you know above where the coffee uh machine is where i put you know bags of coffee from broadcast coffee and the coffee filters and other little things and sometimes there will just be loose coffee grounds up there and i finally this was on sunday night i finally said enough is enough and i cleaned it all out and then i cut a square this isn't the permanent solution but i figured this would be a stop gap i measured with a tape measure and cut a piece of parchment paper to put in like i didn't never know i'd get to the age where i start lining drawers and cabinets with other kinds of paper so that next time there's coffee grounds on there i'll just take the paper out and toss it or maybe you know so i did that on sunday again that's a level of of of cleaning that i don't usually engage in or at least a level of kind of i don't know future proofing things and then yes and not thinking about it too i just

want to emphasize that because it sounds like unless i'm mischaracterizing it it wasn't like when we talk about this stuff you're not like i need to do something with my brain or whatever you just sort of find yourself just like yes like pulling in a little thread for a second right and then suddenly you can find yourself and maybe i'm exaggerating a little bit for you you know based on your experience but for me i can literally find myself like kind of five minutes into something and just be like oh wait how did how did i get here you know like i did not come into this

kitchen to put parchment paper down you know i mean some of it is i i wonder if again some of it's literally like i don't want to think about what's going on in in the united states of america right now and some of it might also be i'm not looking at tiktok because even though i i'm you know i don't follow i don't necessarily follow overly political tiktok it's it gets in there And I can't look, I said this yesterday, I can't, basically I spend a huge amount of my day consuming information from a variety of sources, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, the Oregonian, TikTok, CNN, you name it. and if suddenly those places make me feel really really upset because of what they're reporting i don't know what to do with myself i don't know how to fill my time and suddenly i'm cutting parchment paper for the coffee cabinet and then on on monday morning i'm like got the bartender's x out and i'm throwing it down as i like with a steel not a steel wool but one of those you know kind of metal sort of what do you call those metal scrubbing devices yeah is it not steel wool i think steel wool has a different consistency yeah i know you're talking about you but anyway whatever that thing is i'm i'm i'm in this stainless steel sink just really going to town on it listening to herb ellis at your recommendation and so i felt i actually i put have i put a post up on uh the ascendant social media platform and maybe the last honest social media platform at this point blue sky that said like basically i had a great monday morning i listened to some jazz music and i cleaned my sink i would recommend this and people were interacting with it and then later i deleted it because i felt like i didn't want to be smug and i didn't want to be like for people that are really really unable to look away from this and feel like maybe we don't have the luxury of looking away from this i didn't want to seem like my i was advocating for just checking out like that's the answer because i don't know what the answer is andrew i don't think checking out is the answer i don't think obsessively following each grim detail is the answer i'm kind of splitting the difference now like i'm aware of what the executive orders were like i'm aware that elon musk did what appears for all the world to be a nazi salute these are i want to correct you there two nazi salutes okay see see now that's the level of information i don't need i was able to handle one nazi salute now you because you're emit you're immersed in the

information you know it was two and now i'm not i'm not immersed in the information the reason I say that is because I've been thinking about things this morning about how and I'm sorry to steal the story from you but I was the only reason I said that was because I've been thinking you know I haven't read like an actual reporter's piece or an investigation or anything that I would consider responsible journalism about what happened on that dais and then off that dais and I will often say like hey a snapshot is a quick moment in time like you can almost tell any story depending on just like if somebody was talking and their mouth happens to be open in a certain way they can look like a fool or whatever like a photo can lie I was just sort of thinking about that this morning and I was sort of thinking like boy I know I saw that dude give the Nazi salute and I was like well you should probably read something in like the New York Times about this and I was like he did it twice like there are two photos from two different things like that's a hell of a coincidence like there's been a lot of photos of you and I taken on stage you more so I don't remember any you ever making any kind of gesture that sort of almost looks like a nazi salute a roman salute certainly not twice in the same event on inauguration day so anyway that's i interrupted your story and your flow my apologies but that's what was on my mind why i just wanted to say that just like it's not it's not a coincidence

it's just not well as much as i i'm trying to maintain healthy boundaries and get clean edges off of this the news of of our country i will tell you that i woke up at about 3 30 this morning with my heart racing having a fight with anyone who would well who was here's what I was trying to do I was trying to handle the national media coverage of Elon Musk's Nazi salute in my mind and this is what my brain was doing at 3 30 this morning in a very chill checked out I'm not this is not getting to me way it was okay he's of course doing this to provoke the response that he will naturally get from the so-called mainstream media certainly from social media platforms it is an incredibly in intentional it isn't it is not because he doesn't think that it will get a bad response I was listening to a really a great episode as always of the Ezra Klein show where our friend televisions Chris Hayes was being featured talking about his new book the sirens call and And they were talking about the attention economy, and also just attention as something that is really valuable. In fact, maybe the most valuable thing in our society these days is getting people to pay attention to you. And they were saying in a way, it's something that I think I kind of knew, but they were saying it in a much clearer way than I had thought about Ezra and Chris were, that the thing that Trump's lizard brain has figured out and that Elon Musk has very much jumped into is Democrats operate on this idea that if your choice is bad attention or no attention, go for no attention. because bad attention is bad doing a Nazi salute is bad for your brand that's bad attention and what what Trump has unfortunately connected with as an idea just because of his whatever his his deep-seated brokenness has somehow aligned with this weird survival instinct or whatever you want to call it and Elon Musk has now adopted it is no it's the volume of attention so if half Half of it is just Jamel Bowie on TikTok saying that was bad. That's still attention. It still adds into the overall amount. And I'm doing it right now, I guess, in a way. This is attention that's going towards these people. And what they've understood is that when we are in a world where everything is vying for our attention all the time, just being on people's minds is a W.

Oh, yeah. And troll. And there's a trolling aspect of it as well, like liberal tears.

and so like i woke up in the middle of the night talking to no one or you know in my mind talking to somebody who was about to go on a social media platform and decry this and what i was trying to say to them in my mind in this moment and i don't know if i even stand by this but this is how i felt at 3 30 in the morning don't play into it you know don't play into it like but then on the other hand does that does that normalize it I mean I don't know I don't listen call me naive I don't think that he's actually a Nazi I think there's a lot of problems with Elon Musk a lot of problems I think uh he's you know he may he may lap Trump as literally the worst sort of element of the worst thing that could happen to this country I would not have seen it coming but that could very well happen I don't think that he's actually

I don't think he is consciously trying to promote Nazism. What I think he's trying to do is just be as provocative as possible and own the libs as much as possible and get everyone really riled up. And when we get really riled up, I think we kind of play into his hands. I guess that's how I feel on this Tuesday morning as a person who's not paying attention to any of this or engaged.

Yeah. What do you think? Well, I, you know, just me weighing in on the aspects of that. Like, I think you've said enough on that. I don't need to get into that more than I already have. But yesterday was just such an effed up day for me. I don't know if I've ever had a day like that before where I was just so, so morose all day and getting worse as the day went on. I'm back into my Minecraft, so maybe that's something. That's great, right? I think I'm really trying to... So I woke up yesterday, and I also had that little feeling that I know you sometimes have, which is I also had a little bit of a oh today was supposed to be a holiday which it doesn't matter like you know what i mean like our schedules are pretty malleable or whatever like and so there are other days that are lighter days but i know that sometimes you have this too it kind of doesn't matter even if you like your job like oh wait everybody else is not having the same day wasn't working yesterday and genevieve wasn't working and that's sort of like me getting out of bed and then being like why isn't genevieve getting out of bed and then be like oh i'm getting out of bed genevieve it's like it's you know you know it's a government holiday or whatever i wasn't feeling bad for myself but it just had a little bit of that oh okay so i come downstairs i do the show with you i told you honestly at the end of the show even though we didn't get into the muck too much so you know it's always i feel better at the end of a show we goof we spoof we laugh we craft uh really working on something there um but anyway very few things rhyme with laugh

laugh i know we carafe we we minecraft um oof too close to a different book that was written

oh god oh good lord oh dylan musk likes to yikes you gotta like you gotta leave the tea on there dude that tea is doing a lot of work walking right up to the edge of that lava pit like we do in minecraft yeah oh no i gotta get out of minecraft we can't let it take over my tbtl references for another two years but anyway all that is to say i um i got done with the show with you i was feeling a little bit better i had some errands to run which i think errands are pretty good i was just kind of out doing my own thing i came back home genevieve um had had to kind of swap the car genevieve went to costco and i got home i'm like oh genevieve's gonna be gone and i don't usually i'm not saying i don't do this but i don't like taking naps on weekdays every now and then especially on a Monday if I was really up late on Sunday which is not unusual maybe take a nap on a Monday I hate myself for doing it though I don't I don't like it I don't like waking up from naps I don't like it's hard for me to keep the naps short which I think is key to keep it a nap and not just a second bedtime and so anyway I really don't like the feel of it but yesterday yesterday I came back from my errands and then it's like two o'clock in the afternoon I hadn't eaten all day and I was like you know I'm just gonna I'm gonna be done with my day i'm not going to take on any more responsibilities i'm just going to treat the rest of this afternoon like a holiday and if that means eating like made myself a very late breakfast of sausage and eggs at like 1 30 in the afternoon and then i just went downstairs i'm just i'm going to nap for a little bit and i did it intentionally uh and with intentionality but then that was a bad idea man oh i woke up it was probably like a 90 minute sleep away so let's

say it was like two can i ask a personal question yeah is this this is on the couch right yeah

downstairs i come downstairs i'm like maybe i'll turn on like family ties is always on for some reason on one of those free channels um i was like maybe i'll turn on the tv but i didn't i just sat down i started reading the count of monte cristo which is just that'll put you right out my friend so i get through like maybe like half of a virtual page of that next thing you know i'm snoring away but the thing is i wake up and again i think my timeline is slightly off i sleep for like 90 minutes and let's say i wake up around 3 30 or 4 something like that and i feel like shit like waking up after a nap is always tough for me i remember i think it's the comedian page weldon who like said something like she wakes up from a nap and it's like she has to like everybody has to tell her who her family is and like when she's been asleep for like a thousand years like that's what it feels like for me and so i'm in now i'm just like in a mood and now everything is sort of hitting it's not just the idea of oh the inauguration you made the mistake

You think of creating two wake-ups in the same day.

Exactly. I told you off-air yesterday that when I woke up for the first time on Monday morning, I literally sort of had that feeling of waking up, oh, it's a Monday, and then sort of remembering, oh, God, it's Inauguration Day, and then picking up my phone and seeing all of these push notifications from the Times and the Post about what's going on and what Trump promises to do in the first couple of hours of his second administration or whatever. And like, I had that feeling that you have when something bad happens in your life and you go to sleep and you forget about it for a little bit. Then you wake up in the morning and you realize the new reality you're waking up into. And it was like that feeling like of a personal tragedy. That was what I woke up to originally on Monday. We did the show. Then I take this nap. And then when I wake up from the nap, it's like I really like, as you say, the ascendant social media site Blue Sky. But Blue Sky in the past few months has basically become Twitter. Not not as I mean, there are still tools built in to make it better than Twitter as far as abilities to block, you know, disrespectful conversations. stuff like that but for me it's just like all the big power players from twitter over on blue sky now so when i open up and i see any anybody from jamel hill to you know like people who follow sports and politics or my timeline is any of the jamels was any of the jamel buoy jamel hill you follow your jamels i'll follow all of the influential jamels yeah exactly that's funny i just happened to i just like started following her a couple of days ago and she's just one you

She really straddles the line, though, I think, of kind of sports and sort of politics or at least social things.

So I don't think I said that because you happen to mention your Jamel, but you just stay in your Jamel lane. I'll stay in mine. But anyway, all that is to say, the reality of everything started to hit me. And Luke, I was like, just turn off the phone, play some darts. I hadn't played darts in a while. So I listened to a movie recap podcast, played some darts, was able to forget about it for a little bit. But then I would come over and check my phone for something. And there were moments yesterday, like late afternoon, maybe early evening, where I realized I and I struck a pose. This is like me observing myself, which is kind of gross to talk about. But like I realized at one point that if a Genevieve had come downstairs and caught me in repose, she would have just seen me standing, not standing there, sitting on the edge of the couch with like one sock on and one sock off, staring at my phone. I was like, how long have I been like this? How long have I been like this? and then there were moments later on where i was like i'm not even looking at my phone i'm just

staring and i was like holy shit because it's like where do you where do i put my eyes where

do i put my eyes that's a really good way of putting it like honestly i was just kind of like and i i found myself several times yesterday feeling like i need to whoa whoa whoa what are you doing what are you doing pull up pull up pull up you know and and i was like oh okay day one

mfers day one yeah i i mean i was i was in a kind of a similar mode here uh just at a bit of a loss for like kind of like the like the lyrics of the song i just don't know what to do with myself because and and in fact becca then sent me this some story this was like you know maybe eight or nine at night eight or nine at night and showed oh hey did you hear about this crazy story it was unrelated to politics and it was it was a story about like uh in fact a um a a mother in like somewhere i believe in texas or the south who had basically there was a a high school a high school student who was she was being cyber bullied and over time it eventually turned out her own mother was doing the cyber bullying it was a sort of a munchausen by proxy of cyber bullying and And I said, oh yeah, yeah, I go, that story's from a couple years ago, right? Or something. And she goes, and she looks it up, she goes, oh yeah, it was. I don't know why it just resurfaced. And she goes something like, I go, I know, I go, the problem with, you know, your boyfriend is that all I do all day pretty much is just consume every single, and I'm not saying this like a brag, in fact, this is probably not good, but I'm clearly in the habit of consuming content all day long from kind of from dawn to dusk and that's why it's very hard to bring up a story like a mom who cyber bullied her own daughter in texas two years ago and for me to not know about it and i said but if you ever want to blow my mind tell me anything that happened in the news today that's not political it's like my first like my first you know detox uh you know my first information detox that i've had in the longest of times and clearly it's it's a something that i haven't fully mastered yet because i was just kind of wandering around the house last night like what do i watch what do i listen to i was listening to a ton of the howard stern show from like three weeks ago i considered putting on coast to coast am like on my you know dreamland radio on the sonos like i just kind of like went to bed early honestly i watched the the national championship i regretted that i last night or sorry yesterday on the show i regretted that i was probably a little a little mean to Penn State and I keep calling it O'Day Penn State and Notre Dame fans about the the ones that I know are sometimes you know less than having the greatest takes but so I walked around I watched the national championship I wrote a snarky blue sky that said all cynicism aside it's great to see Ohio State win their first national championship

then I deleted it did you delete I happened to see that one then I deleted it because I was like

whatever just doesn't know need to be negative today of all days and then i just went to bed and then I woke up at 3.30, I wouldn't call it having a panic attack, but I don't wake up at 3.30 in the morning, generally, unless it's my enlarged prostate trying to tell me something. I woke up at 3.30 in the morning to try to, with my mind, instruct everyone in the world of how to deal with Elon Musk. That's what I did.

I can't believe no marketers or advertisers have animated an enlarged prostate yet to sell some sort of medicine. Absolutely. Like a guy our age waking up.

Hey, I'm Pete the Prostate.

Hey, what are you doing? It's 3.30 in the morning. Wake up. Wake up. Yeah, exactly. I want to say.

It is only a matter of time, my friend. That is definitely going to happen, and it will be for some sort of a drug that you can take that helps you not have to pee in the middle of the night.

That's right. And Jason Manzoukas will do the voice if he's not still doing the mucus. Somebody pointed out to me recently. Oh, is he? Is he? Oh, he replaced T.J. Miller, probably. I think so. And so you have Zoukas doing the mucus. That's, I mean, honestly, it could have been him in the first place. It should have been him in the first place.

I mean, I don't know the T.J. Miller. Let's let's go from a serious topic, Andrew, to the Me Too movement, a less serious topic to relitigate the T.J. Miller. I just don't. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Here's what's interesting about the T.J. Miller thing. I like a lot of people and people don't know T.J. Miller is a comedian. He was in I mean, he's a stand up, but he also was in Silicon Valley. I think maybe would be doing that might be the thing he would be most known for what I think of first. but um he was you know kind of really blowing up and in a lot of stuff and and and then he he was i don't want to say canceled because i still see him performing comedy on tiktok he's not canceled but he definitely uh lost some of his professional momentum because of allegations against him i don't remember what the allegations were but what i can tell you is i went from thinking tj miller is funny to now when i see his stand up pop up on my tiktok feed or something i think this guy is not funny and it's weird how that i again i don't i don't even know enough about what he is alleged to have done what the you know if he was caught in a moment of time if he was genuinely being a tremendously awful awful person what i know is the accusations are really

rough i don't remember where it ended up but the accusations are violent in okay okay good to know

but it's weird how somebody can how that just makes like the jokes no longer work for me if that makes sense like you would think a comedic premise or a joke would exist independent of the person saying the joke in a way by the way i highly doubt that you watched it but did you happen to catch dave chappelle's snl monologue no but my brain just went there as well yeah i thought it was actually very interesting and i'm please everyone hold your fire i'm not trying to weigh in on the question of if dave chappelle is or is not anti-trans or if i'm i'm not supporting dave chapelle i'm just saying i watched his monologue and i thought it was i thought it was very interesting and i thought it was very interesting how he ended it i don't know if you saw a clip of that he directed it at donald trump and he well here's what he said in oh he told everybody to be their best basically right well but but the lead yes he did but the lead that feels like a cop out to me like everyone be your best it's like no some people be way more your best than you've been being and other people you know like are doing our best you know like i i don't like that everyone be your best self i don't necessarily like that argument because it feels like we're we we've all messed up in certain ways it's no some of us are doing two nazi salutes on stage and some of us are not some of us have more room to be our best in my opinion but here's what he said that i thought was was a really interesting kind of phrasing and framing he said he went to he said i think he might have even himself dave chappelle have been in the middle East somewhere, and he said he was over there, I think it was after he quit his Comedy Central show, and he said that Jimmy Carter came over and was visiting Israel, and he wanted to go into the occupied territories. He wanted to go into basically the places where the Palestinians are living, and the, because he had written a book, I forget the name of the book, but I think the book, the way Dave Chappelle described it was, the title of the book was striking some folks in Israel as being pro-Palestine. And I think what Jimmy Carter was trying to say is people in Gaza and places like that are human beings and they should be treated as human beings. And anyway, what Dave Chappelle said was that Jimmy Carter wanted to go visit these occupied territories and these areas in Gaza. And the Israeli government said it's too unsafe for you to go there. And he said, I'm going to go there anyway. And what Dave Chappelle said was that when he saw Jimmy Carter walking around in these places with minimal security and people coming out and greeting him, he said that he got emotional. And he said, I don't know if that guy was a good president, but that's a great man. I was like, wow, that's a really powerful statement. And then he said... Basically, we need to care for displaced people whether they're in the Palisades or Palestine Which I also thought was was a was a really good framing technique And he said I'm talking to you Donald Trump because I know you watch the show He said we're all counting on you whether we voted for you or not. We're all counting on you

And I thought I've never heard it put that way. Do I think it will work? No, I don't think Unfortunately, I don't think anything probably gets through to Trump But it certainly was an interesting way to talk about it to me that I hadn't thought of it before, which is like, dude, we're counting on you because, I mean, I spend so much time just wishing him out of existence that I never think of it as like, we need you to somehow find it within yourself to not be the person that you have been for the last 78 years of your life, which, again, I think is a low probability of happening.

Well, I was thinking about another comedian last night, and I was thinking also of you and our Bell broadcast, Barry, because you're both huge fans of Gallagher 2.

I'm more of a Gallagher 2 guy myself.

Yeah, and I was listening to Gallagher 2's podcast, How You Live in Gallagher 2. No, you know, I was listening to this podcast that I think I've explained this to you on the show before, and it's so hard to explain. It's like it's like it's like, I don't know, loving your little brother, but then having to explain him on the school bus or something like there's it's just basically a movie recap podcast hosted by Scott Aukerman. Right. But it's also hosted by Sean Distin, another comedian. But Sean Distin isn't called Sean Distin. He's called Sprague the Whisperer on it. And this show is like hundreds of episodes in. It's a spinoff, of course, of Comedy Bang Bang. And Sprague the Whisperer was a character in Comedy Bang Bang. They said, oh, we should watch this movie together. It's called Scott Hasn't Seen is the new podcast because basically they watch movies that Scott Aukerman hasn't seen because he's been a movie snob his whole life. And so he's just missed all of these huge blockbusters. So anyway, it's a pretty interesting premise, but it's weird because it's like basically just a chill. It's pretty fun, chill movie recap podcast with funny people. But you have to explain that it's kind of like, yeah, well, it's sort of hosted by a guy named Sprague the Whisperer, who has a fake British accent and is supposedly magic. But that goes away pretty quickly. But their guest was Jeff Hiller of Somebody Somewhere. And I still haven't dipped into that. And again, I mean, that show was really good. And it just set up Hiller for, like, a really – I mean, he didn't do anything, like, you know, that is spectacular on the show. It's just three funny people chilling. But you just – I really like Jeff Hiller, and it was just such a good hang. Oh, my gosh.

We're trying to get him on Livewire for this spring because he wrote a book. Oh, okay.

That must be why they got him for this, too, probably.

Although the book is not coming out until the summer, which I think is part of the negotiation. We're trying to – basically, we're – let's just – why not? Let's have an editorial meeting here on the air. Anything that's not talking about Nazi Salutes is probably an improvement Yeah, we're trying to get his people to agree to have him on our show And then we will hold the interview until the book is at maximum It needs maximum promotional velocity I was going to say, yeah, they did not Livewire provides that You get that Livewire bump, you're set

They did not mention any books Now that I'm thinking about it, they definitely didn't

He's probably just a pal of theirs from, you know, the comedy I mean, he has such an interesting story, I think, too Getting to, on that show, Somebody Somewhere, with Bridget Everett which is like and i'm envious of people i'm envious of people who are sort of like this and and by that i mean people who are just doing creative stuff for the sake of being creative i think there was a period of my life where i was a little bit more that way and now it's all job it's been jobified for me i still enjoy it i still feel very lucky to do it but like this guy jeff hiller who's kind of the breakout star of somebody somewhere i would say was just a person in new york you know like waiting tables or working kind of temp jobs who would occasionally be part of these bridget everett would put these these kind of over the top burlesque shows and like you know vocal performance shows and stuff on i think maybe i don't know if it was at the public theater or joe's pub or one of these places where a lot of just kind of like downtown art stuff goes on and he was telling the story on i think maybe seth myers or something that like uh when bridget everett got this somebody somewhere show she just reached out to him was like would you consider like auditioning to be on this hbo show and he was like i won't do my jeff hiller impression because i'm not gonna do i won't do gay face here but he was just basically like he had the funniest reaction on seth myers show describing like of fucking course like what are you talking about like i'm waiting tables right now do you think i want to be on an hbo show with my friend bridget everett but it was like it's the sense i got and watching the interview was he was just a person who liked to be part of these things that were happening inside a certain art-making community, creative community in New York.

And nobody's people are not necessarily doing it to get HBO shows or to become the next Nikki Glaser. And I don't say that to be mean to Nikki Glaser, who I actually really enjoyed getting to spend some time with. But like she, by her own admission, is a very ambitious person. She's a person who has said, I would have hosted the Golden Globes for free because it's such a good career building move. I just love the idea of people just doing shit because it's fun for them and they like being creative and there is not an outcome associated with it. I admire that. I don't have that. If I ever had it, I don't have it anymore.

He was in UCB, though. Did you mention that? So that, like, way back in early 2000s. Oh, good.

You know what? I don't think I knew that, but I'm not shocked to hear that he went through UCB. But did he have other things before this? It's possible that he was in other things I wasn't aware of. I might have the story off a little bit.

It looks like he was in, yeah, because I'm just looking at his stuff here. he was in UCB and then he had it looks like he had just hadn't made appearances on shows like 30 Rock and Ugly Betty and Kimmy Schmidt and all of that and that would have all been before well actually no maybe this maybe this is at the same time that he was doing some of these well I mean

I think the list of people who've been through UCB or Second City is probably shockingly long like I guess I don't think of that I still think of that as for the love of the game personally maybe that's just my opinion on the matter because actually this is related but not related this other thing yesterday as i was trying how do you say it sometimes you say like watching through your hands or something you being kind of like covering your eyes but still looking a little bit as i was trying to do that to the internet this i was looking at a little bit of tiktok and what seems to be popping up a bunch now are and maybe this is associated with i think there's like a 50th anniversary or something coming up of snl or did it just happen maybe i'm seeing this they're doing a thing where they have like um keenan thompson watch his own audition no for snl i'm always fascinated with the auditions for snl you know with like you know what the people did that impressed the producers enough that they got on the show but what's really interesting is they have the people now in the modern era watching the clip of what they did to try out for the show And, like, Bobby Moynihan, who I really love, it was brutal because one of his characters he does is clearly a sort of, like, a white guy who's sort of taking on what we might think of as a quote-unquote black affectation, and he's wearing, like, kind of a do-rag and stuff. And, like, Bobby Moynihan's going, no, Bobby, no. As he's watching it, I was like, nobody thought through if the characters are actually kind of casually racist or bad. But it's very interesting to watch somebody see what they did for their audition. But this is what really struck me. The number of really talented, huge stars who tried out for SNL and didn't get on, including Colbert. They have Colbert watching his audition. They have Jordan Peele watching his. Can you imagine Jordan Peele tries out for SNL and they're like, I just don't see this guy having it when it comes to sketch.

That might be a wonderful thing that ended up happening to him, though.

I can only, I mean, I guess, although here's one thing I guess I would say. The live sketch environment of SNL is different than the taped sketch environment of Key and Peele. I don't know if that means that Jordan Peele, I still feel like the person, he's just so smart and funny. I can't see him not, you know, thriving wherever they put him. But it's just wild to see this list of people. I guess my takeaway from it, and again, I'm staring down the barrel of 50 in a year and a few months, so I think my days of trying out for SNL are probably behind me, but I guess I found it, I don't know, I found it kind of shocking and also weirdly comforting that, like, there was a point where Stephen Colbert was told, no, you're not good enough for this. There was a point Jordan Peele was told, no, sketch comedy is not really your forte, bro. Like, you know, and there's a lot of other examples that are eluding me right now, but I just kind of was like, all right, like, I guess that means that you can see something could, you could be, you know, fired from something or told or not admitted to something or told that you're not good at something or this isn't for you, and it might not actually mean that that's the case. And I think we know that intellectually, but it was nice to see it in practice just to give me a little more, I don't know what, just kind of self-belief or something.

I've never been turned down before, so I don't know.

Yeah, well, that's as long as you can't get turned down if you don't leave your basement.

That's true. I leave my basement. Yes, that's fair, you do. I think Hiller might have been being a little, like, he worked a lot. It looks like he never had any recurring roles, but between 2004 and 2022, between eventually getting on somebody somewhere. It looks like he's been trying to break in for a long time. It's like a lot. And a lot of shows you've heard of, like the ones I've already mentioned, like a lot of those NBC shows, I think I already mentioned Community and those types of things, and then a bunch of stuff I haven't heard of. But it looks like he's been hacking away, not like a hack, but I mean he's been working away it looks like.

Well, then let me maybe reframe it. I guess my point wasn't that I didn't think that Jeff Hiller had ambition or like he wasn't interested in having a career and wasn't working hard at it. I guess what I mean is I just – the way that – I don't have the interview right in front of me. But the way he described it to Seth Meyers, it sounded like the stuff that he was making with his friend Bridget Everett was because he liked making with his friend Bridget Everett, you know? Sure, yeah, yeah. And, like, I just admire that. Like, I wouldn't do anything with you if you weren't getting paid. I wouldn't even be talking – I would lose your number.

Just a reminder that TV telethon is coming up this summer. It's a mere six or seven or eight months away.

If you want us – if you want this collab to continue. No, but, like, I just, like, what I would probably at my age and my life progression and my whatever, if somebody called me up and said, hey, I want to write this screenplay. Like, me and my buddy, Cotter, a.k.a. the Colonel, when we were in, when we were both unemployed, I had been laid off from KUOW and he had been laid off, I think, from the Lakeside School. We spent a whole summer just writing a screenplay together, you know, because it was like, why don't we try? We were kind of interested in this, and I've literally never even read it. Like, we've hit, like, the end. And then I seriously have not ever reengaged with it. And I don't think we thought we're going to get this on Steven Spielberg's desk because we didn't even try.

And Steven Spielberg famously has no desk. Standing meetings only. And that was the catch. That was the catch.

That was, like, they were, like, yeah. But anyway, I just remember just doing it because it was fun to be engaged in a creative process without any big plan for it. And, you know, or like, you know, I made that documentary about the Trachtenberg family slideshow players. And, yeah, I did. I submitted it to film festivals. But mostly I just wanted to see if I could do it. I thought it was a fun learning experience. I don't know what the age limit is for reengaging with that. But I would – I'll give you an example. I was, the other day I was talking to Becca, like, I want to figure out how and if I could write a talk of the town for the New Yorker. Like, I love that, if you're unfamiliar, it's the kind of beginning of the magazine, and they're just little vignettes. It's just kind of like, you know, there's a new rat czar in New York, and somebody, Tad Friend from the New Yorker, goes to the press conference where the new rat czar is explaining how she's going to, like, stop the rat problem in New York. or there's the who's the person who you know like uh replaces the life jackets on the staten island ferry or something it's just these little moments or you know barishnikov has got a new thing happening in new york and now we're going to go uh to a you know i don't know a diner with him and talk about it just moments and i love that they're just these little snapshots and

they're all can i interrupt for one second just say one thing that i find fascinating is when i go to like a thrift store or like a flea market or something sometimes you'll find old new yorkers it not not not the people the magazine and what i like about it is um you find like they've really held steady with the tone it's always third person it's always a little bit removed but like it's always riley removed right like it's all the tone of voice is always i am here but i'm not using first person and we'll just say you know a reporter was yeah an observer might notice that the the pigeons are pooping on her while she's speaking as the new that that's a little bit broad but anyway yeah i just love the tone and style of that and i love that you can pick one up from 1920 and it's still basically that tone you know and i was like i i was i think what

i actually this is how this conversation started and again maybe this we're about to launch onto a couple weeks of either the most or least interesting tbtls because i can't talk about anything real happening because it's too depressing so then i just have to go into the memory banks What was happening was Becca and I were on a walk and I was saying how when I started off doing stuff for CBS Sunday Morning, my dream was that they would be like talk of the towns, that they would just be weird little, you know, like what we just described, but on TV. And what I learned over time was that's not really what they do. Like, if I lived in New York and I went into the broadcast center, it's called, every day, and I was like, it was my number one job and I was there to, I could kind of like push the bosses there to let me do more edgy stuff or more whatever. I could probably get some stuff on more like that. But at some point I just learned that's not really what is done here. And so I got in line with more like what is done here. and i was saying but i've always just loved that kind of format or that kind of idea of just taking something pretty low-key or banal and then just like exploring it for a short duration of time And I was like, I really want to figure out who do I know anyone at the New Yorker or like what's the submission process or like, you know, and I would like to try to get back to and not because I don't they probably pay you 200 bucks to do when it's not like I don't think I'm going to become a writer at the New Yorker. I don't even know if I can, again, I don't even know if I can do this, but like, I want to try to re, I want to try to get back into a mode where I just do stuff creatively because it's interesting to me, not because I'm getting paid by a major software concern or because like, it's my job at Livewire or even TBTL. Although this to me, believe it or not, this actually feels the most pure because it's just you and me talking. But like, I want to I don't know. I want to I want to I want to I hope anyway that my days of doing stuff creatively because it's interesting are not totally over because there was a big part of my life in my 20s and my 30s. And it sort of stopped being part of my life when my jobs became the creative stuff. And I kind of miss it.

I don't want to make any promises, but I could see, I could reach out and see if we could maybe get you like a column in The Horse's Ass. Do you know Goldie? Oh, sure. Here in Seattle. Like, maybe we start there.

That's still happening? I don't know.

Somebody brought him up the other day. I don't think I realized that he used to write for The Stranger back in the day. That was the generation of The Stranger right before I got here, I think. when I moved here is like the Lindy West era sort of or at least that's how I sort of think about it so anyway so I and I always for people who don't know Goldie is like just a local writer who's been around for a long time David Goldstein and he's been he basically writes under a like I hate even saying the name of the blog The Horse's Ass like I did that start as a column in The Stranger

you know that he had a weekend show on Cairo

oh yes that was also before my time but I've heard of that yeah I've heard of that but that is what he's mostly known for though i always thought he was mostly known as being a writer was he mostly known as

being a radio no i think that i think that the column has gone on for longer than the radio show i'm looking at wikipedia now uh he's an american blogger and former talk radio host in seattle washington from 2006 to 2008 he hosted the david goldstein show on saturdays and sundays on 710 cairo um oh and he uh first uh gained notoriety by basically calling tim iman a horse's ass oh

that's where the name came from right right right yes but like and he was part of publicola and

stuff boy i miss those days of uh i miss those days in seattle of of of there being and maybe it's you know what i don't live in seattle so i don't know is it still happening that there are there i guess you've got erica c barnett but like are there she's still writing under publicola too

in fact there's a big fight going on right now between erica's reporting on some internal strife at the stranger and then the um lex the person who runs the needling is getting involved on

twitter it's like it's a whole okay so i did uh that we can review with lex i did too yeah i had to yeah go ahead i'm clicking on this web archive and this boy this is a extremely niche thing i'm about to say maybe there's a 10 listeners who even would get why this is so perfect to me but it's like david postman writing in the seattle times david postman was a great columnist in the seattle times and wrote about politics and wrote down in uh olympia a lot and stuff and which is this was when like the seattle times really mattered like you could buy it every day and people read it and it was a thing and this is postman on politics and the headline is lefty blogger gets radio gig david goldstein of horsesass.org has gotten a regular talk show on 710 cairo blather watch has the details and congratulations to the cairo staff for giving goldstein a weekly spot just like a time when cairo was like hiring people for the weekend and blather watch was writing about it and dave postman was linking to it that was just a halcyon time in the seattle at least it was a time when i was there and and i was kind of you know well at that literal moment i was not there i was in new york city but you know i i this was the stuff that i really enjoyed i just love the

way that seattle times headline actually says what the article is about i'm looking it's a little bit less that's what you miss it is getting so i know i've brought this up before and it's just really old man yells at clouds but like it is getting so ridiculous with the seattle times web headlines like none of them say hey this is what this story is about and then you click on it for more details it's all a tease right like this person may be coming into town elon musk may have moved his arm well yeah but or like get details on elon musk's arm movement this person may be coming into town to interview for the you know offensive coordinator job or whatever it doesn't say that it's just like oh my bears oc visits you know seahawks it's everything is just kind of like you have to click to figure out like i what was the one that i think it even came up on the show it was driving me bananas like something like they extended the light rail but there's Still one. problem it's like the problem should be yeah parking or something and that's the way they all are now and i think it's i think it's such bs man it isn't it is so anti-journalistic to do

that and it's so zerg net but do you think this is a good headline andrew currently on the seattle times elon musk's raised hand gesture draws clashing interpretations is that really it Yeah. Literally from my lips to God's ears. Like what a what a headline. Yeah. Is it drawing clashing interpretations or is it? I mean, that that sort of both sides ism or whatever. I mean, that's going to be that might be what kills me in the next four years, honestly. Although, here's the thing I was watching a clip of Colbert And he had the Pod Save America people on Kind of being like, how did we get here? And boy, I'll tell ya I was talking about T.J. Miller and how all of a sudden it's like T.J. Miller went from someone who I thought was funny To being like, nothing this person says can cause me mirth Like, I was I mean, I was a power user Of the Pod Save America As you were, leading up to the election And boy, to see like You know, Jon Favreau on there And Colbert's like, well, what do we do? And Favreau's like, well, we try to get the house back in 2026. It's like, are you shitting me? That's it. We can look forward to hopefully getting the house back in two years. Like, oh, God, that feels like, that's like the Mariners signing a 36-year-old utility player. And while the Dodgers are getting rokey.

Or it's like the Mariner signing like an 18-year-old or, you know, drafting an 18-year-old. Yeah, maybe that's a better example. But not even that hot. You know what I mean? But we'll see how it plays out in 2030, you know?

Yeah, we're hoping that by 2026 he can ably back, you know, I mean, who even are – who's even left as a utility player for the Mariners? Who do we even have anymore?

Well, it's Demo. I mean, it's Dylan Moore. Demo, there you go. He's going to play every—I mean, that's the whole—this is my hilarious—

They're hoping he could help back Demo against left-handers. What?

My situation—and I think that they might go with this, because I don't see what else they have. The Mariners, I think, are going to have Dylan Moore play both first and second base this season. At the same time. It's the only thing that really makes sense. And then I said, you know, maybe get Taylor Motter back to hold down third, start charging more for beers, whammo-bammo, pocket the savings, and give the fans what they want.

You know, Andrew, is it possible that for just I'm only speaking for you and me. Is it possible baseball will be what saves us? And I don't even mean like the Mariners or.

I mean, this is a question I've been asking.

It's what Jack Donaghy says about it's what Donaghy says about Kenneth. He says, oh, no, he'll either he'll either run this company or we'll all die by his hand.

That's how that's how I feel about the Mariners. I'm looking forward to the baseball season so much, but then I'm like, why?

I mean, and again, a distraction because it's a bit of a distraction. It happens 162 times.

And, you know, I always look forward to the baseball season, the changing of the seasons that goes along with it, the listening to spring training while you're doing some sort of home project because the weather is turning. There's just all kinds of stuff tied up. But this is the first year, and I've always been a gleefully naive, optimistic Mariners fan in the offseason. like when much more knowledgeable people are in friends of ours and you know mariners reporters and podcasters are wringing their hands about lack of action in the off season i'm always like whatever it's all gonna work out because luck plays a huge role in the game and this time i'm just like looking like they're doing nothing like the the mariners are literally like when you talk about ghost runners i think they're actually thinking about getting ghosts to run the bases Like, I don't know where to actually steal the bases. But not even good ghosts. No, no, like Smokey.

They're like, do you want Lou Gehrig? No, we want Rich Amaral.

I don't know who Rich Amaral is.

He was a very forgettable Mariner utility player in the 90s.

I hope he was just a bully you went to school with. I don't know. Like, they're doing. And so this is the first year, too, that I'm like, Mariners, I need this more than ever.

But did you read Mike Vorrell's column on why, despite the ownership just actively flipping us off, the Mariners are still going to be competitive? Because we're still going to have the best pitching staff in baseball.

Well, if they keep Castillo.

Only Castillo is getting old, but Castillo was actually kind of bunk last year anyway half the time.

Castillo is also a pro—what do you think the chance—we should just move on. Castillo probably also won't be here next year. They need something at third base, and they will probably end up trading him off. they got to do something they they have too many pitchers and and not enough people playing you

know but like if they we have what we do have though are a bunch of pitchers who are entering their prime who are still there like our staff had i think the best dra and the best the the lowest dra as a staff and the highest number of quality starts maybe in the american league or maybe in mlb and as long as you have that maddeningly you're always going to be kind of hanging around because you're just going to like you're going to shut enough other teams down so like as long as that's intact it it will just torture us more because they because we're wasting it we're absolutely wasting the peak

with the exception of castillo these guys are on really cheap contracts right now because of their age and that ends after this season i believe and we're absolutely king felixing these this entire stat this entire pitching staff it's ridiculous anyway so yeah even but andrew even having this

conversation guess what i haven't thought about for the last 40 seconds nazi salutes also it just so happens that on this day as i mentioned at the top of the show it is absolutely gorgeous it's blue sky the grass is green because it's not summertime i'm watching um you know boats make their way up and down the columbia i just had a delivery of a um this big kind of trellis that i'm going to install this big metal square trellis on the side of my house i have star jasmine starts i was

literally going to ask you are you going to star jasmine that's literally my favorite smell in the

world i uh mine as well and i just ordered from a company called fast growing trees.com i don't No, slow-growing trees just wasn't able to compete in the marketplace.

That's so funny. When you said you got those trellises, I said, are you going to grow star? I was going to ask if you're going to grow star jasmine. I have. Did I ever tell you about how we used to go to the same place in Florida, I think for vacation when I was a kid. Oh, yeah. Like three years in a row, we would load up the van in Ohio, and the family of four would drive all the way. I think we'd stop at some friends in Alabama, which is mostly to Florida, of course. But wherever this is, I think it was Siesta Key, and you would start to smell that you were getting close to Siesta Key because you'd start to smell the star jasmine and i believe wherever we stayed there was like an archway made of it and we would drive under it and we would roll down the windows and like nobody in my family remembers that except for me so it might have just been a dream but i'm pretty sure that like no that's a that's a pretty solid memory and i did not know that it grew in the pacific northwest until like some neighbors in my old neighborhood had it and i was blown away i was

like rolling around like a cat in catnip well me too every time becca and i are on a walk down in portland if we walk by star jasmine or daphne i don't know daphne daphne just like also kind of stops you in your tracks so like i just got these two big metal kind of they're not great you know what they're actually made for they're made for blocking off industrial equipment in a factory environment in other words if you worked on a factory floor but there was something that had a big spinning gear or wheel and they wanted to make sure nobody got too close to it this would be the gates that would build around it but they come in panels and then there's you know like an opening so you can go work on it but nobody's gonna like drive their forklift into it or like fall down and tumble into the like the moving machinery that's what these things are made for but i am going to screw them onto the side of my house in a grid pattern and then put big like commercial planters beneath and fill that with good soil and fertilizer and these star jasmine I have four 30-pound buckets of star jasmine showing up here from FastGrowingTrees.com that I'm going to kind of let live here in the Madrona Hill studio until we get past the freezing temperatures, and then I'm going to put it out there. My point is I look towards a day, Andrew, where it's a nice Saturday, and the star jasmine is blooming, and the Mariners are maybe having an unusual – more than four runs and we're texting about it and i'm like you know the my my life doesn't feel the way my life feels right now because when i last night i had a moment you were talking about kind of just sitting with like one sock in your hand i really had a moment where i was like you know great societies fall all the time you just never think you're going to be in it when it happens and i thought maybe this is it maybe this is the society falling and like it's so what is it i think hemingway famously said like you know going bankrupt happens very slowly and then all at once like it's like the end of democracy maybe happens very slowly and then all at once like the fact that you just have these executive orders going out and that you have nazi salutes happening at an inauguration and that you have it's like holy shit am i am i seeing what i think i'm seeing which is the end of american democracy like am i really going to be the guy who and one of the people i should say who lives through that like i did not see that for my life so that was sort of a low moment for me last night but then when i think about star jasmine and the mariners i you know and i feel a little better yeah sure i mean we might not

have freedom but we'll always have jp Hey, let's thank some donors who are making TBTL happen five days a week.

Come rain, come shine, come mariners, come political events that make us feel sad. we're here every day talking to you because of fine folks like ryan johnson who's in arlington

washington ryan thank you for donating as always now ryan johnson is also the name of a famous director right i believe so as watching you know how stand-up comedians were just just derail this right away you know how stand-up comedians when they put their stuff on tiktok and instagram often are doing their crowd work because they don't want to just like put their jokes out there you must have noticed that as you're scrolling a lot of crowd work um stuff from the comedians well i was watching one guy sort of uh doing some crowd work and not realizing he was talking to a very famous director like somebody he called somebody and said what's your name sir and this is a director who's famous for directing huge big budget action movies i want to say but

You're not talking about the director, Rian Johnson, now.

I am not. Rian, this name just reminded me of it. But anyway, and then he's like halfway through, he's like kind of making fun of this audience member for being reticent until he realizes, oh, this audience member is being reticent because he's super, super famous. And then it kind of comes out in the bit. Anyway, that didn't really have a great power out. Well, Rian Johnson, by the way, directed that movie, Brick. And, yes, in some of the Star Wars movies later and stuff.

But that was his, I think he might have even gone to college with an ex of mine. Oh, really? And so he was kind of on my radar because at that point, I think he had mostly done Brick, but yeah, then he did Looper and the Star Wars movie, one of them, and then Knives Out. And he happens to be married, Andrew, to Karina Longworth, one-time colleague of ours at Infinite Guest.

Oh, really? They're married? Oh, I had no idea.

Remember, that was like the one-hit show on Infinite Guest when we joined. It's like a Hollywood kind of history show or something.

And so many people told me how great it was, and I don't want to yuck anybody's yums. I'm glad. I mean, it was a very successful show, and people loved it, and I'm glad of it. I had such trouble breaking into the sort of rhythm of her presentation.

There was almost zero discussion of Mariners off-season.

That's very true. Like, we offer little sticky points like that in the show to bring people in, exactly.

Yeah, that's kind of the sweet treat. And then we dole out the vegetables, too. But mostly it's the treats, like, you know, Ryan Court references. That's what Megan Yoho loves. Megan Yoho in Charlotte, North Carolina, just cannot get enough of our Ryan Court antics. Thank you, Megan. Although, thank you, Megan. Thanks to Elena R. Flores in Los Angeles, California.

That's our friend, Elena. Thank you, Elena, for donating and being part of the fam.

I don't hold it against you that the Dodgers picked up yet another international star. We don't hold that against you, even though you're in Los Angeles, California.

Yeah, I sort of do a little. I don't know Elena's feelings. I like to think that deep, deep down, Elena's a Mariners fan.

Yes, I think that's a safe bet. If Elena's listening to this, she likes things that are punishing to the listener, to the viewer, which is really the experience of being a Mariners fan. Julie Higgins knows all about it because she's in Portland, Oregon, and also loves TBTL. Thanks, Julie, for supporting the show. Maybe I'll see Julie tonight at the legendary sports bra, sports bar. Actually, it's sold out, so if you don't have tickets, don't actually come. But we're doing a live wire speakeasy down there tonight. It'll be very fun. See some folks there. Josh Doolin, probably not coming in from Dayton, Ohio. That's a bit of a trek.

Maybe.

I wonder if Josh is amped about the Ohio State Buckeyes winning. I wonder if Josh appreciated me taking down my Blue Sky post about snarkily, you know, congratulating Ohio State for winning yet another national championship.

He might root for the University of Dayton. What is their mascot? He's a flyer. How do you know all of those? That's like your Stu Gatsby thing.

Well, the Dayton Flyers actually often have a really competitive college basketball team.

Oh, interesting.

So that would be the way that I would know about them. Josh probably knows all about the Dayton Flyers. And then Max Lance, also in Los Angeles, California, also not responsible personally for the Dodgers cementing their status as probably the World Series victor for the next, I don't know, 15 seasons now? Is that what we're looking at? I think so.

Yeah, all the payments are deferred.

Max, instead of going to Dodgers games, Max is donating his money to TB.

ETL. And we are so, so thankful. Thank you to all of our donors for making this show possible.

We couldn't do this without you. Here I go once again with the email every week. I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female. Well, Andrew, if we keep moving the top stories

that are from last week and France to tomorrow and then tomorrow and then tomorrow, we will manage to avoid talking about the grim realities of this country maybe for the next four years what are the chances that four years from now we're still promoting halloween decorations in

tennessee i love it i hope they're still up four years from now too i'm rooting for that woman we'll talk about that tomorrow okay by the way i was just getting some tape ready i was going to play a voicemail here uh from angela but i realized i don't know why this is just standing out to me now i still have our bees bead drop bees bees bees beads beads beads beads beads beads that was a really fun time really i also have this for some reason um all right sorry about that i just happened to see that uh that audio in my folder and i thought i should play it for you yeah that was fun and i feel like we broke our listeners brains because i don't think they can hear the words bees beads or anything that even sounds close to those words anymore without just like barking it out

like job i don't and that wasn't like part of the my personal sort of arrested development canon until we did that segment and you were talking about how you and genevieve i think would always say that to each other and now of course it is but i but i'm yeah i was a late adopter to that

but but i love it do you know that that was one of i find it so funny because i don't even remember that i didn't originally remember that moment from the show but years and years and years ago that was one of the first like animated gifs that i saw aside from like a dancing banana or something like that right and it was just dancing baby right and i just remember like having that gif i saw it somewhere and i downloaded it to my desktop and i would just open it and i swear this was maybe a was that show on when i was at new hampshire public radio maybe not quite that long ago but i remember like people would come by and i would just make them watch them and i don't think even i don't yeah it did have audio so it was like i love it like this i love it like this

is the town gif everyone gather around and enjoy the town the town gif i do sort of miss i feel

like there was a lot more like when i was at new hampshire public radio i mean everything was different the world was different i was different i was younger i mean i worked in the building but there really was a such a community i remember like people coming over to my cubicle because like we'd all watch this together I had like you know how like in an office place you collect weird things and then people come over like we had these two huge books or maybe it was just one huge book of like astrology like that would drill down specifically on the day you were born some huge book and that ends up on my desk so people would come over and be like all right let's let's see what Laura Colbert's you know astrological signs are telling her about her life or whatever and And just like it was, I do sort of miss, I miss the vibes. I mean, it will never go back for a whole bunch of different reasons. I'm not allowed to go into workplaces anymore because I eat all the cake. But anyway, okay. A couple of days ago on the show, we were talking about ex-professional athletes, specifically football players, I think, who found themselves in TV sitcoms. We were talking about Euchre, of course. And you had mentioned Dick Butkiss. And I think you were trying to figure out.

I thought I was grouping him in with ex-pro athletes who had sitcoms, and in fact, he didn't, weirdly enough. Or at least that's what it seemed like from a cursory search.

Because I think at one point you suggested, oh, maybe he was in Webster, but it was somebody else who was in Webster.

Well, no, I knew that Webster was a guy named Alex Karras. Okay, so that was that.

I remember Webster coming up, and then Angela sent in this.

Hi, this is Angela from Ohio. I just wanted to call and say Luke was right. You guys were talking about different sports figures featuring in late 80s sitcoms, and he thought Dick Butkus was in one, but couldn't remember which one. It's My Two Dads. That did run in the late 80s. He wasn't the dad. He was the cafe owner, but still an integral part of that cast. So Dick Butkus and My Two Dads. So Luke was right. Thanks so much. Appreciate all you guys, too.

It was a Dick Butkus vehicle, you might say. So there you go. Thank you. I appreciate that. Three solid examples right there from from that general era of former professional players.

Well, I mean, I have to say, too, and I don't want to I don't I don't like to make fun of people's names, but I always just thought if your last name is Buttkiss and you go with Dick instead of Richard or Rick, it is going to toughen you up. You are going to become an all pro like I think linebacker is what I think Dick Buttkiss was. I mean even when I was a kid kid i was like there's no way this guy's name is dick butt kiss like this is this is a too much for one person to bear but uh he he bore it and uh was a very very successful football player and then the maybe the third wheel on my two dads and then there was that famous song a boy named butt kiss and that was all about getting toughened up how do you do i'm the third guy from my two dads Alright, thanks Angela I appreciate you getting That was 100% not the show I was thinking of But I'll take any kind of moderate He was in the mix, yeah Yeah, he was kind of in the mix Alright everybody, thank you for listening Today, we will be right back here tomorrow With more imaginary radio for you We already know what the top stories are We're not going to get to, so join us for that In the meantime, have as good of a Tuesday As can be had In these turbulent times take care of yourselves and each other and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

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