Muse

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Mike Snifferpippets.

Mike Snifferpippets? Who?

Mike Snifferpippets who? How many Mike Snifferpippets do you know? Come on, let me in. It's cold out here. Jeez. TBTL!

Ladies and gentlemen, meatloaf cake with mashed sweet potato icing. With only 433 calories, 52 grams of protein, and only 5 kyber hydrants.

This is not your mama's podcast. This is too beautiful to live.

Are you trying to seduce me?

I'm trying to seduce you. You guys are so fun. Just relentlessly fun. I keep thinking, when are they going to stop being fun? And the answer is never.

Hey, look here. Why don't we eat us a few thousand beers and you tell me what's buzzing in the big bad city?

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's a kind of magic. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. Bumping them gums. Telling them lies. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's another absolutely gorgeous day.

It's like I'm walking on sunshine.

I don't know what the snowpack is doing right now. I don't know what the sort of environmental implications are of us having this run of weather we're having in the Pacific Northwest. I'm assuming it's not great. I'm assuming that we will eventually have to karmically pay for this. But man, is it ever helping me get through this end of January. Also, getting to talk to all of you is helping my mental health as well, because here we are at episode 4,391 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. An 11-year-old kid found this baseball card. As I started to say this out loud, I was reminded of how many times I've promoted this story and we have not gotten to it.

It's just so frustrating. I want to be in Florida getting a tan on my back.

The good news is we waited so long. I don't want to drag Andrew into this. I waited so long to talk about this story that there have actually been updates. There has been movement in the story of the 11-year-old kid who found a Paul Skeens baseball card that's worth 30 years of season tickets. from the pittsburgh pirates so we'll give you the update on that we skipped right over the boring initial phase of the news story and we're going right to the update phase uh speaking of my friend andrew walsh he is the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships um i i don't usually do this but i was recording a little bit of our pre-show chat and this is him getting kind of hyped up for uh today's episode success that you just had and making yourself come back to basics and and continue to be uncommonly consistent that drives me you know so he's uncommonly consistent he's andrew walsh and he's joining

me right now good morning my friend good morning luke i had a i had a moment of um animal empathy of almost burbankian levels yes all right i'm listening made me think of you of course i don't often go into pet stores because we get our cat food from one of those male delivery services i'm not gonna say their name here only because i'm not 100 sure i love them it seems like when we get we get the same brand of cat food from them that we get you know that we could buy in the store but for some reason our cats are always way more picky about the food we get from this male service but genevieve handles it and genevieve's the one who is it one of those It's a very big name in home delivery. Is it human-grade food? Is it one of those things where you've got to refrigerate it? No, no, no. It's basically an online store. You can buy all kinds of different stuff. There are pet supplies, all kinds of stuff. It's not Amazon, but it's almost the Amazon of pet supply stores. But anyway, it's fine. I think everybody knows what I'm talking about. But all of that is to say that's where we usually get our cat food. But I had to stop in there yesterday for some reason. And I was nearby anyway, and the cats were being picky about the food that we're getting from Chewy. So I wanted to go in there and pick up some fancy feasts to see if that might shake up the paradigm a little bit. Nothing shakes up the paradigm like fancy feasts. That's a pull quote. All of that is to say, it was kind of nice walking in there. Like, I rarely go into pet stores. And, of course, this is PetSmart. This isn't some boutique little place. It's like a giant chain or whatever. It's not Mud Bay. Although those places are really nice. But anyway, I go in. Very friendly people. I mean, there's always a thing when you walk into a store like that and they greet you right away. It's both very nice, but also, you know, it's their way of saying this is our policy of saying, like, we saw you come in sort of like I always feel like when I go into a store like that, especially in Aurora, that people assume that I'm they're keeping eyes on me because I hustle back to the.

pet food section and then suddenly I notice an employee has to start restocking right in the aisle that I was shopping in. For some reason, I always think they think I'm trying to steal and so they're trying to keep

eyes on me. Is it because of the backpack you insist upon bringing to most establishments? In this case, I did not have

no backpack, but just a tote bag that I had under my arm. I think it's just a sense of paranoia. Literally yesterday, I'm all over the place, literally yesterday evening, I was throwing darts and In the Petco, and they asked you to leave. And they asked me to leave. No, here at home, and I'm finally getting over the hump a little bit. Like, I've been playing on a level that is so difficult for me, and I've been just losing. With Darkbot, you mean? With Darkbot, yeah. And that's, you know, this little program I run on my iPad that keeps score, and then it sort of randomly generates its own points, and I play against an opponent that way, and you can sort of set the level. I've talked about it a lot on this show, and I literally, Luke, had the thought yesterday. Now I'm starting to realize this is just me. I'm having some sort of mental issues because I inputted my score and I actually won a leg and I was like, oh my God, like I nailed it. I got the 20 followed exactly by the double 20, exactly what I needed and it felt really good and I punched it in and I thought for a split second, dart bot probably thinks I'm lying. I literally, Luke, I literally had that thought. I thought, oh, this thing probably thinks I'm lying because I haven't been playing that well lately and then I just nailed exactly what I needed. I had like three darts and each dart went exactly where it needs to go. You have to videotape every single pro. Yes, but Luke, a non-existent randomized program isn't judging me. But anyway, I think DartBot thinks I'm lying. I think the people at PetSmart think I'm stealing.

It's so funny because I have, and you know, let's just call it what it is. This is a huge amount of probably white male privilege. But like, I have literally never noted someone following me in a store to make sure that I understand that they understand that I'm there and therefore don't take anything. I'm not saying it hasn't ever happened. It is the furthest thing from my mind when I go into a store.

But you do know that it's like, especially for a big chain store like that, like it is kind of a policy when they greet you at the door. Like, I think that is a bit of a security policy, right? Like intellectually, you know that. It probably is,

but I've never thought of it that way. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure there's probably a whole psychology to it of acknowledging that you know the person is in the store so then the person feels a little bit less or they just feel there's an accountability there, I guess.

It's very friendly. There's no harm, no foul in that, but it's also nice.

I assumed it was training to make the customer feel like they're welcomed in this. I literally had the opposite read on it, and I'm not saying you're wrong. I think you're right. I think that's probably – remember, David from the basement, he used to work at TJ Maxx, and he did loss prevention there for a while, and I believe at the time anyway, I think it's changed, i would guess it has changed but at the time the loss prevention tactic was him asking can i help you with that as someone would place it in their backpack right because he can't be too confident not allowed to accuse anyone of anything or physically stop them he was just allowed to ask them i believe david will hear this too yes uh i think it was do you need help with that or something that was the level of security that he was allowed to provide yeah um but anyway so i'm

in the store yesterday and they are very friendly people in fact i will say when i was leaving the store i asked they're like kind of for some reason it was a well i guess it's just a slow day maybe mid-afternoon and i was leaving and there were two people like the person who checked me out and then um like maybe her manager or something two younger people were there and um i was just like do you see any good pets today because people always bring their pets in and then they were just like oh yeah it's the best part of the job like somebody brought in their mice in a backpack the other day that was so fun i'm like oh my god so anyway i was like that's gonna be the best part of the job i really do like them there yes they harvested cinderella for some reason dashboard of a musta miata oh maybe more on that later in the show too i have another voicemail from a from a mouse victim but um okay all that is to say when i first walked in i was like i said sort of beelining it to the to the cat food but like there was a lizard in a little aquarium and i'm not i'm not into lizards terrarium sorry no it was an aquarium that was the problem it's an ex-lizard the next parrot lizard brazi sleeps with the fishes that was sort of a good joke that was so i'll go with it joke adjacent um but no no yeah he was in a terrarium and he was just sort of out like sort of basking kind of looking right at me so i stopped for a second like hey little buddy then i was like are you happy in there and then um and i was like well it's pretty the terrarium's pretty big for your size and i don't know i mean you'd probably rather be outside but also it's really cold outside now you'd rather be in your own habitat i'm sure but um you know that it started the thread of feeling like huh should you be in there i was happy to see him at first but then immediately a little bit like hmm how you doing little bud And then, like, not far from there, there were, I believe, guinea pigs. And, you know, like, round little fuzzy little guinea pigs. It looks so sad. Like, it didn't look unhealthy necessarily, although I was a little bit curious about that. I'm not trying to slander PetSmart here. I don't know what's going on with them. I don't know what their policies are on these animals. I'm guessing based on the fact that they're a huge corporate chain that they're not, like, probably earning the best grades when it comes to the animals that are under their care. But that is pure slander on my part. I have no idea what their policies are. But I definitely had a Lukian moment or a Burbankian moment. I don't know what you prefer. A Christian-y moment because that's your middle name.

A Lukian Burbankian moment.

Exactly.

A Lukian Christian-y Burbankian moment.

Where I was just looking at that little guy and I, for a moment, I was like, oh, hey, little buddy. Like I wanted to, then I was like, this is making me too sad. I need to remove myself because I don't think this, I don't think this guinea pig is happy right now. I'm sure the listeners have thoughts on this

And they'll let us know But I wonder about that stuff Sometimes because yeah My guess is My knee jerk reaction is That like that guinea pig should not Be stuck in that small Ish little box but also I forget who it was but somebody once said Like life is what Brutish nasty and short In other words Like turn that guinea pig loose here outside the madrona hill studio it's going to get eaten in about five seconds by one of these giant feral cats yeah or a coyote or something like it it kind of sucks for them but also i wonder if the real world is in fact better for them like this gets into the questions of like the the something about the soul of a guinea pig like you know i mean like do guinea pigs have a soul do they is a guinea pig living its best life when it's warm and it's fed and it's given water and it no one is nothing is trying to kill it and the downside is you live in a you know 12 inch by 36 inch rectangle of uh you know a plexiglass maybe they like that i don't know i just don't i i haven't interviewed enough guinea pigs to know but you know it seems to us to really suck But maybe they're like, dude, compare this to the tundra. We'll take it.

Right. I mean, I think the truth is they don't have the ability to consider relativism. Right. Like, I mean, that's the funny thing here. It's like they don't know any other. This is like I feel like we're I feel like we're like we're freshmen in college getting really stoned trying to talk about the fact that like blue looks different to you than it does to me, man. how will we ever know but like i mean obviously the the the animals especially an animal at that level is not actually thinking about the alternatives because it doesn't know the alternatives and like what is happy what is sad but obviously right we as human beings know that there are proper ways to care for animals and there are improper ways and there are abusive ways you know what i mean so like we know but like the the guinea pig isn't considering it on a

philosophical level obviously but uh like a a golden retriever would if it had known another life yes if it had known another interesting so in other words if you if i see i feel like a golden retriever would have a sense that there's something better out there like if you took a golden retriever puppy yeah maybe you're right and you put it in a terrarium or aquarium and then let's just say that you you you know increase the size of it little by little so that it wasn't you know eventually like you know its physical body wasn't pressing up against the edges of this thing but it was still in limited in its movement i feel like when you walked into that petco what a demented sort of schrodinger's thing i'm doing here but i feel like if you walked into that petco and there was a golden retriever who was five years old and it was in a small pen yeah its tail would wag in a way that would indicate there's something better for it yes yes of course even if it had never experienced it you're absolutely right yeah i mean of course so we've decided

that guinea pigs don't have that in them i mean it's in well now and i don't want to go super dark here but obviously you know like i know a lot of folks who have like rescue dogs or whatever and you hear about the stories of abuse that they that they experienced as puppies and i mean it's just i mean there isn't even a word for how heartbreaking that is and disgusting that is so obviously there's always a line when an animal knows it's being mistreated in some way i'm not trying to like take all of that out of there i guess like just sort of and so maybe this has spiraled a little bit out of control and of course i mean the cool thing is our listeners don't have strong opinions about this no i find it hard to believe that i feel like absolutely there's no way

for me to step in this people are showing up at my house telling me don't use the nectar the nectar from the package for these hummingbirds because the red dye is bad for them oh yeah right yeah

Which there might be some.

some truth to that, but can you just get clear stuff?

I'm sure there is. I'm sorry. I'm letting this... I'm finishing this... This round of hummingbird feeder is going to feed these hummingbirds, and they're just going to have to deal with red dye number five. What you're doing, though, is I'll make my own.

I thought they're going into surgery, right? You're putting this red dye in them so that you can sort of trace their blood flow. Yeah, it's like a barium.

Hey, speaking of which, I've got... It's not really barium, but you know, I am... I'm finally getting that colonoscopy

next week. Oh, is it actually next week?

yeah what day next week it's a it's a busy busy week it's it's uh it's we got uh the chris hayes thing at town hall on tuesday night in seattle please come see us i know you're going to be there i know vives is going to be there my parents are going to be there they're very excited um and then i think it's not the next day but the following i'm doing the colonoscopy andrew after we do the show i'm so that'd be thursday thursday so thursday but i'm planning on doing the show per usual possibly from the bathroom here at the madrona hill studio i don't know what my body is going to be doing but i i thought it would be an entertaining content for me to report to you on thursday on the show how the previous night went for me i have not gone through this

and you've been closer to it than me so you would know better but i think at that point you'll just be fasting so probably by if you oh no i'm sorry wait wait no no thursday after the show oh yeah yeah you will be on the toilet won't you because you're going to be i'll be on the toilet starting

wednesday night yeah and i think it carries over yeah until pretty close to that i moved this appointment because i was going to be going down to salem oregon to get it because that was just the the quickest appointment i could get and they make you do this kind of like intake with a nurse um like a week before the procedure and when i told the nurse when the nurse looked at my address and then looked at where i was going she went that's pretty far like and she said you know you can take the medication you can start on it a little earlier if you want she was like they tell you to do it you know x number of hours before the procedure but you can do it a little earlier and what she was saying was like you can just colon blow yourself a little before you get in

the car so then dry when you're in there when you first told me this story off air i don't think i quite understood the connection there but like not just like oh we don't want you to have to drive that far but it's like no you're going to be your pants on the way down precisely i just wanted to Make sure that everybody got the fine point there.

Yes. There was a pause when she looked at my address, and then she said, you're going to Skyline? And then there was a long pause that was her considering if I should consider myself, you know, maybe wearing adult diapers or something. I'm not even kidding. Yeah. Like, to get down there safely. And then I moved the appointment up here. It's very close to my house now.

And our Ohio listeners need to understand here that you are not planning on going to Skyline Chili before your procedure. Skyline would be a location that you're going to.

No, although what will be in my toilet will not look unlike Skyline, surely. Right. So, yeah, that's next week, and again, I asked them, they were like, how's 9 a.m.? I was like, doesn't work for me, because I need to be broadcasting this experience to my friend Andrew right up until it actually happens.

Wow. So, okay, so Thursday morning, you'll wake up, you've already been fasting on Wednesday. I'll be clean as a whistle. You'll have been spending Wednesday night on the old commode, and then by Thursday, yeah, that'll be interesting. we might have to stop down a lot like no joke if this if this nurse I can run a mic into that bathroom you know we could stop down you'd rather I didn't that was the other thing I might have to

use that mic at some point you animal the other thing is I was uh the the one of my plans related to the the previous appointment how far away it was was to go stay at Becca's the night before which is much closer to where the but like she lives in a absolutely lovely apartment that has one bathroom in it and i just thought this is not going to no this is not going to preserve the whatever's left of the mystery of this relationship it will not be preserved as you're just flying

around the room like a balloon that somebody has let the air out of precisely and then going into

this bathroom that's you know centrally located in the apartment uh you know and and doing god knows what in there i was like this is i this needs to be uh between me and my toto toilet between me and my god and my total toilet would she consider doing a house swap with you no

because she has to go to work so she can't stay out where you live couldn't there been a scenario i could have rented her an airbnb i was gonna say like you could rent yourself in another state or rent yourself an airbnb in another state just in case it gets really loud or you could have rent yourself your own airbnb near nearer to skyline or wherever you're headed yeah uh no i will be up

And the plan is I'm gonna go through this. I'm gonna walk this path alone Which is how I like it and then do the show on Thursday morning

Set of truly disgusting footprints

There was one set of footprints with a toilet paper on it

You see the little tag there coming off the back of the floor?

If Pacific Surgery in Longview, Washington has that in the bathroom, I will plot.

It sounds like you're going to be doing a lot of plot leading up to this.

And then Becca is going to pick me up from the procedure and drive me back home.

Yeah, I was going to say, is this one of those things where you must need somebody to pick you up?

You're not allowed to drive yourself, but I am actually worried about coming out of the general anesthetic, Andrew, because I don't know what I'm going to say. I feel like it's going to be actionable. Well, like legit, that's a good, like this is a life not well lived that I'm concerned about both my girlfriend and the people in the room when I am in an absolutely 100% sort of like tablo rasa. Like, does that just mean? That means blank slate. Blank slate. Like when I am just like, when I have no filter up, When I am on step nine, which step is amends, I don't want to be on that step without a lot of planning. I literally worry. The last time that I was under, that I remember anyway, the last time I was under a general anesthetic was when I broke my arm playing football in middle school. And it was such a bad break that they had to put me all the way out to reset it. and i remember coming out and i had this t-shirt that said philadelphia on it and i was obsessed with this question of if they had i think they had to cut the t-shirt off or something to get to my arm and i remember just like coming out of it and my parents were there obviously and i was like obsessed with this philadelphia t-shirt that like maybe my uncle chuck had got me or something and just obsessing over it upset and just saying crazy shit about this t-shirt because you were upset about it being cut yeah i think i was upset about it being destroyed or something anyway i had done so much less dirt at that point in my life I had like 12 years of dirt under my fingernails now I got 48 I don't know what I'm going to admit to but it's not going to be good when I broke my

fingers this is going back several years ago now yeah and that was the only time that that wasn't the only time because I also had some mouth surgery over the past like 10 years or so I think I had that twice where they they gave me uh where I had them knock me totally out because I'm just a wimp i can't deal with that that's not being a wimp but uh i remember that the surgery with my hands was the only time where i actually was like like fully under and like wearing a robe you know what i mean and like going into actually an operating room you know being kind of wheeled in there and everything and um i i mean i've told this story many times i was very nervous about the same thing that you're talking about too it was my experience you remember did did vives tell you was vives there well that's the thing i think by the time you're seeing i think by the time you're going to be seeing your you got most of the racist stuff out of your system you've already got it out of your system and i mean bad takes out of your system sort of paints me in glory but like i do remember and i think i've told you this before that i i did say to the nurse like all of a sudden i just realized i'm there i'm waking up genevieve is there the nurse is there and i'm sort of like come kind of coming to you know whatever that means i don't if waking up is the right word and I just said did I say anything weird she said oh no you just like you just apologized a lot and I was like oh god thank god I'm still that's that's me through and through still got it I she said you yelled polite car and that's not right once I've asked Becca to

show up on Friday the procedure's Thursday I've asked her to pick me up on Friday when all of

the racism is out of my system oh my god all right thank you for being a tan

all right time to thank some donors who are making tbtl possible with their voluntary financial support cannot stress how much we appreciate this folks like aaron mcnamara of westmont illinois thank you aaron westmont i don't know if i've heard of westmont illinois

You know, I've been through Eastmont, obviously. Northmont. Northmont. Beautiful, but cold.

I honestly wouldn't. I would say Southmont, hit or miss.

Southmont has gone through sort of a, kind of a, what's the word I'm looking for? Not a resurrection. That's too biblical.

Insurrection?

Well, it did. It went through an insurrection. But then since then, it's sort of, it's really like kind of come up in the world. So Southmont, but Westmont, I hear, haven't been to Westmont yet, a lot of breweries, a lot of, what do you always say, breweries run by guys wearing leather aprons. Westmont, I haven't been through because they don't let me through there because that is the classiest of all the months, they say.

Sure. And that's, I mean, a known thing. And one of the classiest things about Westmont is that Aaron is there. Thanks, Aaron. Also, Tyler Dratch is in Baltimore, Maryland.

Yeah, Baltimore, I have not spent enough time in, if any, and it is a city I sincerely, sincerely want to visit. Maybe this will be the year I really want to go see an Orioles. You want to go to an Orioles game? I really want to go to an Orioles game. I hear it's a beautiful park. That's a lovable team. Camden Yards?

I'm sure it's called the, like, Quicken Loans Yards now or something. No.

Is it still Camden? Oh, you know, I do think it has a brand in front of it. Is it techslayer.com at Camden Yards? It's something at Camden Yards now, yeah. So they've kept Camden, but added something, I think. Actually, it says Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Look at that. God, see, don't you want to go?

What a...

God.

Don't get me started with that stat you sent us last night.

Oh, about off-season spending. Don't even get me started. No, you, me, Tyler, we're going to rock our Orioles Caps. Greatest logo in baseball, I think. Absolutely, without a doubt. Thanks, Tyler.

Also, thanks to Andrew and Maeve Henderson of Ottawa, Ontario.

Nice. Now, I cannot root for the Blue Jays. Having said that, I could root for the former Expos.

Can you root for the Calgary Cannons? Yes. What do they play? Yes. They used to be in the AAA League. So the Calgary Cannons were the Mariners' farm team. Really? This is the first time I was a kid. Yeah, when I was a kid. Yeah. This is long before there were Aqua Socks and Rainier's and the like. I remember people being called up from the Calgary Cannons.

I have never heard of that before. I love that name. You can imagine the logo. There's so much fun there. Can I tell you about one of the greatest disappointments of the past couple of years? I don't know if anybody else is keeping a list of disappointments. I mean, life's been just really, really great lately. Um, but I've heard, you know, I live near, um, North Seattle college used to be called North Seattle community college. I think they dropped the community, but there's still a community college in my heart and they have, and it's a relatively big, I mean, you know it, right?

Luke, like this relatively big, I took a blues guitar class there as part of continuing education. When I was in high school, I took a blues guitar class at North, at then North Seattle community college.

And it's such a classic. I think that might, it's very brutalist. I was going to say, speaking of brutalism, that's like a really classic kind of brutalist, educational, institutional-looking building. I really like it. There's some wetlands back there. There's a beautiful bridge that goes over it to get over the highway now. Anyway, I just sort of love that little corner of this part of Seattle. And they have two non-intrusive, non-gaudy digital signs, just very basic. It'll say like North Seattle College or whatever, then a little space for a digital readout that you can switch up. And there are two of them at different entrances. And when you pass them, one of the things that it clicks through is just the simple phrase, go tree frogs, exclamation point. So that's how I learned that it's the North Seattle tree frogs. And I'm like, that is so cool. Like, I haven't taken any classes there. Genevieve actually has taken some sewing classes there. But, like, I would love to rock some cool North Seattle College tree frog merch. And I've gone to their site, and there's, like, nothing. I don't even think they have a team. I don't know why they call themselves the Tree Frogs, but I feel like if you're going to call yourself the Tree Frogs, create some cool Tree Frog merch. I would absolutely wear that hat and sort of represent the hood, you know? Like, I think that'd be so cool.

Yeah, I didn't realize they had sports teams there.

I don't think they do. That's why I'm very confused why it's called. But they literally, I mean, it's not an accent on two different signs, and it's been like that for years. It says, here, North Seattle College Tree Frogs. Why do they have a mascot if they don't have a... Okay, here you go. You ready for this? I think we've done this on the show before now that I think about it, because I think I've been to this page. Meet Star, the Pacific Tree Frog. North Seattle College proudly presents the new logo for our mascot, Star, the Pacific Tree Frog. This is from 2020. The frog lives right on campus and has made this land home. Oh, I see. Because of that wetland behind there, it's actually a lot of tree frogs. So maybe they're actually saying, go, tree frogs, please. This is an infestation of biblical levels

I have found I have found the thing Andrew That I will be looking at when I need to fall asleep Or when I need to feel comforted And it is notable Calgary Canons Oh nice These are people who played for the Calgary Canons And then went on to the majors Let me know This is only interesting to me Because this is prime Childhood baseball obsession for me I'm talking about Scott Bankhead I'm talking about Darren Bragg Andrew I'm talking about Yvonne Calderon I'm talking about Darnell Coles A.K.A. DC Are you remembering these names because eventually they made it up to the big these are all these are all calgary cannons who made it to

the big league and they and they came through the mariners um by definition because the calgary cannons were our triple a team but these are names that i have danny tartable these are names that have not occurred in my brain for probably 35 to 40 years and now i'm looking at them And I'm seeing names like Kevin Millar or Edwin Nunez. And I just, like, I can't explain to you the emotional feeling I'm having seeing these names. These are the guys that I was freaking—Matt Sinatra, who later became our bullpen coach. Like, these are the dudes that I was obsessed with at age, like, 12.

When you watch Mariner games, do you ever notice the bullpen security guy? No.

because when I go to the guy that's what the guy that's that's guarding the backs for foul balls

or a just like a police officer like an actual like kind of police I think he literally are

those off-duty yeah they're off-duty police officers who are allowed to wear their uniform

and there's a guy and I can picture him and I see him on TV sometimes I see him in person all the time when I'm at the ballpark because I like to go we have a route for people who haven't been to T-Mobile Park there's a Dave Berba I'm just gonna keep saying names there's an area where you can watch the pictures warming up right there's great access to the bullpen essentially and there's this one guy this is a little burbankian too although it doesn't paint you in the best life but like i'm somehow like at war with this guy but only in my mind i've never seen him do anything bad but he's always there he's always the security personnel for the bullpen area but he's not up with us he's down in the bullpen you know so and he he's just i've just created this narrative about this guy but he kind of is he's one of those guys who kind of he's a bigger guy but he just kind of like you know how a certain like either police officer or security guard can carry themselves in a certain way that's sort of like chest out a little bit you know and he just kind of has that but also he's got like probably one of the sweetest jobs in security right like if you're at all a baseball fan you're just meeting and how fun he's all of course he's always on the mariner side rarely have to use your weapon yes right exactly um but uh i just like there's something about him just like he has access to all these players he probably just thinks he's like the bees and he's by the way i have no idea i've never met this guy and i want to be very clear i've never seen him do anything that would make me dislike him you know what i mean i've never seen him take a like a during batting practice he's never taken a ball and denied it to a child or anything like this or like i just have made up a narrative about this guy and he's always there and sometimes i see him on tv and i'm like i see you i see you and i don't know why

yeah that's interesting we used to have off-duty cops that would guard dick's drive-in on late nights on fridays and saturdays when i was there and i believe this was after a university of washington basketball player tried to grab me through the glass oh yeah broke the glass of the Dick's Drive-In, maybe preceded that, or predated that, but I remember after that, we definitely had off-duty cops, and same thing, I thought, well, this is a pretty sweet gig for them. Free burgers, they get to wear their uniform, they're getting paid by the, you know, by the Spadey family, or whatever. I mean, Andrew, if I start bringing up names like Lee Guterman, we could be here all day.

Is that a donor of the day?

God, if only Lee Guterman was a donor of the day. I'll have to take, and I take this with great joy, Brad Baxendell, who's in Norfolk, Virginia. Boy, what a distribution today. Oh, yeah. Westmont, Illinois, Baltimore, Maryland, Ottawa, Ontario, Norfolk, Virginia. Virginia and Maryland kind

of representing the eastern seaboard. Exactly.

Would we call it that? Also, Mindy Lum is in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I believe. Is this back-to-back Twin Cities? Yes.

We did have Natalie from Minneapolis.

Yes. Is this back-to-back carnation washington references because that's where laurie larson is hey thanks laurie appreciate it yeah beautiful carnation washington i okay is carnation washington also the place where the carnation milk empire emanates from or are those unrelated when i was a kid i you know we had like carnation we didn't have it but i saw commercials for carnation instant breakfast do you remember

this yes i do remember yeah you remember the jingle yes no i don't no carnation instant

breakfast you're gonna love it in an instant is that the stuff that you pour into milk and you stir it up and it's almost like a vanilla or a chocolate now i pay two hundred dollars on instagram for something called huell which is exactly the same thing really oh by the way well yeah what a mistake you take muscle milk it's is it kind of like muscle milk more or less probably it's it's high protein and it's a kind of a meal replacement and i thought well on days when I don't feel like making a whole thing. By the way, I made some shishito peppers for lunch yesterday.

yesterday well wow what an interesting lunch i mean so good i bought this bag of shishito peppers at trader joe's a couple weeks ago and i was looking at them i was like i was kind of like eating one or two of them raw uh just on occasion and then i was like these are going to go bad if i don't do something with them and so i fully blistered them yesterday and then threw some tamari on there and some sesame seeds it was delicious nice i did want to say that you that

is where Carnation is from. So it was a national brand. I definitely drank those Carnation drinks.

Had like a kid on the label, right? That I don't know.

For the Carnation Instant Breakfast. We'll have to look that up. But yeah, that's the connection. If you've mentioned that before, I did not remember that.

Wow. Yeah, I always thought of Carnation as being a kind of a dairy town. And I also thought of, of course, as it being where Lori Larson is from. Yes, thank you, Lori. Thank you so much. Thank you to all of our donors. We couldn't do TVTL without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. This is one of those things, Andrew, where you actually have a little more intel than I do on this particular Top Story, which I saw last week, which was the story of an 11-year-old kid, I believe in California, right, who happened to get this extremely valuable baseball card. And I think baseball card is almost kind of misleading because really what it is, it's a patch that the pitcher for the rookie of the year, Paul Skeens, for the Pittsburgh Pirates. There's some kind of a thing that they do now with these baseball cards where they have these rookies wear a patch on their arm in their Major League debut, I believe. And then they take it right off of their arm afterwards and then they put it, it's like a swatch or something. They put it into one of these baseball cards, and they don't tell anyone which pack it's in, and these are extremely valuable, even for players that are not at the level of Paul Skeens. Paul Skeens is, like, the, you know, sort of the, how would you describe him? I mean, he's an incredibly, incredibly good pitcher for being a, or now it would be one year after his rookie season, but, like, he was the number one overall pick, I believe, and he absolutely delivered, I think, on the promise.

See, I'm very myopic when it comes to the rest of the league. It's stories like these that end up bringing players delight for me. So before the story, I don't think I would have been able to tell you who Paul Skeens was, but you absolutely are right about the patch. Because they kept on, like at the beginning of the story, they kept describing, it's the 2024 Topps Chrome update rookie debut patch. Like that's how we're talking about baseball cards now, which is a little bit. And when I read patch there, I thought we were into some sort of weird, like, you know how you can get, like, if you play a game. i think it started with video games and then like with actual board games now even like our birds game like you can get like an extent an expansion pack like we bought the birds game that has a whole bunch of different in-app purchases yeah basically but then we literally have two other boxes that are like the european bird so i was like are we like patching out it was like a computer term to me like are we patching out the the rookie cards like what are the 2024 tops chrome update quarter inch to quarter inch debut patch mini to mini rca xlr i was like what are we doing i didn't realize until i got further into the story that it's literally that patch as you described that they sort of like wrap it around the baseball card and then people are just buying these cards now in such a different way than i can relate to it's more like when you sent me the story i wasn't familiar with it but as i was reading i was like baseball cards if i have one take on this it's baseball cards equals pull tabs like people are treating baseball cards like pull tabs now like really high high card breaks what is that card well that's when like it's it was a

thing during the pandemic i think some of our listeners actually or at least one of our listeners was into this you basically open packs of sports cards uh sort of um on like a live stream oh yeah and youtube yeah yeah all of that stuff and i think that's called card breaking or something Oh, I didn't know that breaking open the pack.

Sometimes they're wearing gloves, even, and they're opening it so carefully. And I knew that I knew things had changed. Remember, like you and I were not to pat ourselves on the back, but you and I were sort of early on the story before we realized what was going on. Because years ago, I think it was right before the pandemic. I told you that I always just sort of buy a sort of like ceremonial, just dumb pack of tops baseball cards, just a random pack. And I used to get them at the Bartel drugs that was near my house. So I'd be like buying a six pack, be like, OK, I'll take one pack of those baseball cards because I was getting excited for the season. And then like one year they just weren't around. And then I actually started seeking them out. Do you remember? And I went to a Target. Yeah. And the Target didn't have it. But then another Target had them all like kind of behind glass. And I but with a sign that said they were all out. And then that's when you and I started to realize. And then I do believe the news cycle sort of caught up with it after we realized. this IRL that the game really changed like almost overnight I think the pandemic played into it a little bit as far as like people putting their energy into other things but like almost overnight you could no longer just get a random pack of Topps baseball cards just to like spark a little joy in your afternoon you would get like people are just buying boxes of these things putting on white gloves and hoping that they get a 2024 tops chrome update patch xlr like uh like my father and his father before him exactly so i at first was a little bit turned off i'm just like this is kind of this is kind of gross gambling essentially yeah but this is a really cute story about this 11 year old kid and you're right he's in la who um who who found this thing and it's a pretty

adorable story so uh basically when it was uh announced that somebody had grabbed the golden ticket as it were and this paul skein's one is gonna like again of all of these rookie things like they're all worth a lot but this is the like primo one because he's he's phenomenal and uh they were trying the pittsburgh pirates were trying to get this patch back from the kid and they offered him if i read right and this makes no sense because the kid lives in california so this This wouldn't even be useful to him, but they offered him 30 years' worth of season tickets behind home plate.

Two tickets behind home plate, 30 years.

And a chance to play a softball game on the field. And Paul Skeens' girlfriend is her own kind of whole thing. Her name is Livvy Dunn. She is a, like, mega, mega popular influencer, also happens to be a gymnast at LSU. and she offered to let the kid watch a game from her luxury suite and the kid turned all of it down but then you told me this morning that this is being auctioned off for charity maybe?

Yeah, and I just wonder how much the organizations involved sort of help steer this. It's so interesting. I take this story that sort of ends up having kind of a heartwarming conclusion. By the way, just to give people a sense of the value of these cards, I guess an Anthony Volpe card, like kind of the equivalent in 2023 went for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that's you know a lot of i don't know about you luke but that's a lot of money to 11 year old right um yeah and so like and so but the team i think it's the the team wants to get the card back into skein's hands right like or do they want it for the team itself or for i'm guessing they were trying to well actually i don't know i don't know what their intention because i i thought it i thought it was like paul skeins and his girlfriend want this card for you know because it's his patch which is also really sort of an interesting like we didn't grow up with like right junior trying to get his card back from you you know what i mean exactly interesting interesting phenomenon

that was for me to sell to james demuth so i'd have money for the pl affair well that's right

did you it wasn't a rookie you didn't have a it was a yeah it was a it was an upper deck it was

an autographed upper deck rookie it was such a valuable card oh my god don't look it up my dude

don't look it up but then um i keep on seeing you know you mentioned that we had this story on the show sheet uh for a while and i keep like i do find it interesting and i don't know if i'm coming down hard on one side or the other but it's just it is really fascinating to me how different baseball card collecting has become and it seems a little a little less interesting but it's cute that this kid um that this kid ends up finding it and then i looked up an update on the story today and I saw that it says the one-of-one debut patch card will be auctioned off for charity. Now, I want to make clear, I'm actually reading this from MLB.com, which is sort of a news source, but more of a public relations news source if you look at it that way. But it says that they're going to—

Do we know the kid's name? Is that published anywhere? Oh, that's a good question. I'm looking at this Topps thing you sent me. The 11-year-old collector who pulled the Paul Skeen's one-of-one debut patch card just shared his journal entries but i'm yet to see the kid's name that's a good point maybe they're

protecting the kid's name i mean honestly if i were the parent i would protect the kid's name you know what i mean you probably don't want that out there but also like does this mean

the kid did they strong arm the kid into giving it to charity because

out of here with that shit well i don't know i mean who knows what happened in the background it's just like it's funny when something like this like there are so many this sounds like a cute outcome but i also just wonder about the machinations behind the scene and how much control But it does say that the charity, I was immediately interested, like, what is the charity? And it sounds like they're going to auction this thing off. And it's going to go to, originally the article said the victims of the fires in L.A. And it's like, oh, wow, and this kid is an L.A. kid. Like, that's really good that he's doing this. But, I mean, I don't know. I guess full proceeds are going to go to this organization that I believe the MLB helped create called Wait For It, Luke, L.A. Strong. I don't know how they came up with that. You

um but uh anyway i'm not trying to be flip about the obvious tragedy and all the loss there it's just the the sometimes i just get a little bit cynical about like well okay now what is la strong where is that money actually going and it sounds like la strong was originally kind of created by mlb they were auctioning off like dodgers and angels like gear and raising money um and that goes directly to the american red cross and the la fire department foundation so i don't the red cross i guess that that goes to the actual victims and then the fire department foundation i think those foundations by the way are private organizations that you know advocate on behalf of fire fighters which is a good thing but i feel like it's a little misleading to say all the profits are going to victims of the fires i'm not exactly sure and i don't know kind of what you know if the kid gets anything out of this at all i'm sure a lot of attention and a lot of i'm sure people are giving him all kinds of merch of his favorite team i don't even know who he roots for i'm assuming the dodgers um and then i don't know if they're going to be good this year um they only

spent a gajillion dollars that they're gonna have to pay off 1.45 billion dollars 30 while the

mayors were spending 33 million they're the smart they're just like oh the world is ending let's just promise all this money to people that will never have to pay because the world is burning um uh anyway probably poor choice of words on my part there um but anyway now they're also sharing supposedly and this is where i'm such an a-hole the actual handwritten journal you don't believe this diary i'm i'm i just read it while we were talking yeah i've scanned it what do you my pants

andrew they're across the room they've been charmed right off of me good okay so this this pass the smell test to you okay well i i mean i don't know i mean it almost seems too good to be true like first of all this 11 year old kid is keeping a diary well that's sort of the thing and

it's written that's handwritten in pencil and it's interesting and it's very sweet i only scanned it as well as somebody can i read it to you yeah you read it i think the very last line i got to the very last line and i was like what a kid right now but anyway or well you know what a kid right that i truly believe this kid wrote this but i'm just wondering if somebody said hey why don't you write down your story this is what i think i think somebody said to the kid why don't you document this write down this story yeah and and then he so in in this three page little handwritten essay which is so so cute and i truly believe he wrote it i think they knew why don't you write this down and then we can take photos of it and then we can share it i think somebody encouraged him to write this that it wasn't just like dear diary on when you know like just some random wednesday i'm going to i'm gonna update this story because he sort of tells the entire story in past tense yeah that's

a i think you're onto something because i just don't know what 11 year olds are keeping like diaries certainly like 11 year old boys it just seems a little i i didn't at age 11 maybe maybe it's a thing but this it's also it's so flipping charming um so here i'll just read this it was november 13th 2024 and tops had released 2024 chrome update it was a 200 which was a lot but considering the players and rookies it was fair i started begging my mom for it for christmas parenthetically dad was at work and my mom was leaving soon me and my mom left for school and i knew people would raise the prices so i went into full beg mode my mom said she'd get it parenthetically victory but her work was so busy she forgot to get it when my parents got home i was super sad but they said the prices would drop at black friday fast forward to black friday all caps the prices did not drop infinite rage all caps the prices did not drop hyphen infinite rage One sec. So, and now the box was like $3.50. They said I would have to get something else. I said, okay, but they could tell I was sad. Very, very, very sad. When I was at school, they found a hobby box for, I don't know what that is, for $320. By the way, if you know a kid wrote this because he's got the dollar sign in the wrong place. Yeah, it's after. I did that like a month ago, Andrew.

I guess that sort of makes sense. $320. Dollars, right? You read it in a order.

Unless I am very, very careful with it, I am prone to doing this very same thing. They found a hobby box for $320, which is still a ton, but since they are awesome, they got the box. They told me when I got home from school and I was so excited, four D's and two exclamation points. Fast forward to Christmas. First, I woke up at like 4 a.m. and woke my brother. Whoops. We waited till 6.30 a.m. and we woke up our parents. The first present we opened was the hobby box and my brother got a big Lego. I opened three packs and got some cool cards.

Then we passed around some more presents. I opened two more packs, and on the second pack, I got the Paul Skeen's redemption card. I quote, I quote, hey, Dad, I pulled the Paul Skeen's redemption card, end quote. He was like, quote, no, you didn't, end quote. Then I showed him the card.

I do want to point out, change of pen here. Oh, yeah, good point. It was all pencil, and now suddenly, like, he ran out of that pencil. I mean, I'm not going for anything other than this is what it was like when we were writing with pen and paper. You know what I mean? That pen probably got, pencil got too small or whatever. You can tell he's got a different writing instrument here. It's all very cute.

Me, my brother, and my dad were like, OMG, four exclamation points. Parenthetically, my mom was very excited, too, but she never collected cards, so she didn't know what it meant. Then my brain pooped, and I started bouncing all over the place. And my dad was, let's go. And I was so excited. But first we went to one of our grandparents' house and hung out with them and our uncles and aunties. I am 11 years old, so pulling this card is a dream come true.

Okay, so that is absolutely charming.

That last part is what has you wondering?

The whole thing is super charming, and I regret almost saying that I'm dubious about the origins of this. I do believe that this kid wrote this. But like I said, the reason I don't think this was just something he was writing for his own diary as it's being presented to us. And I just am always dubious of when things are this big and adults are involved, especially in the social media age, like so much stuff is bullshit. Like, I'm sure they knew this would be a sensation if we took a photo of this and put it online, like write out your story. I don't think if the kid were just keeping a daily journal as this is being presented to us, he would end it by saying his age. like i am 11 years old so this is so pulling this card is a dream come true this is an essay that he wrote to tell the world about his experience which is fine but just yes just tell us that

yeah don't describe it as a journal uh describe it as a as an essay you're right that's that you're exactly right um yeah because no 11 year old kid would write i am 11 years old so this is a big

deal if this is a journal that you're keeping every day like you don't have to you're not stating your age every day or whatever you know like you're just writing it to yourself do you think

that the pittsburgh pirates were actually legitimately trying to offer him this because the money on this you know two tickets behind home plate for 30 years i mean honestly they should have taken it and just resold them you know you know the irony of this you mean the family should have taken the tickets and resold them yeah the pittsburgh pirates have a proud history of making deals into the future that will cost them handsomely including their contract with bobby bonia which they famously deferred i think bobby bonia only recently stopped getting a million dollars a year from the pittsburgh pirates have they learned nothing don't people wish everybody a happy bobby bonia day like in 25 years think about two like what if the what if the pirates and i wish this for them because i love the pittsburgh pirates i love the city of pittsburgh but what if the pittsburgh pirates uh you know become like a juggernaut two tickets behind home plate season tickets that's a you know i don't know what that costs i'm guessing it's in the twenty thousand dollar range wait bonia's mets by the way oh not pirates right it was never the

pirates all i'm seeing here my entire theory has fallen apart bonia day is july 1st the day that

the new york mets pay for the pirates have learned nothing from the mets that's what you meant to say because bobby the reason is because bobby bonia was a pittsburgh pirate for many years back in the day, but yeah, you're totally right. The lame contract, I guess, is with the Mets. But I think of Bobby Bonilla as forever a pirate for me, because when I used to get Sports Illustrated as a kid, which I subscribed to without my parents approving it, because I wanted a football phone, and I wanted a humorous sports video starring Jonathan Winters, and I wanted half off the cover price, and I got all of those things, Andrew. But there was a cover, famously, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I think it was, now I know I've been wrong about this with the lebron james thing so i'm probably wrong about this too but i think it was like the the pittsburgh pirates had a general manager named sid thrift and he was very famous for getting really good players um but not overpaying and at one time the pirates had uh barry bonds bobby bonia and andy van slike and i want to say they were all on the cover of sports illustrated and it said thrift shop that's pretty good is my is my again i've been i've been loud wrong about this before but uh the pittsburgh pirates were weirdly on my radar when i was a kid

but anyway apparently he still will continue to get that july 1st is bobby bonita day and um and it will be through 2035 by the way so oh m more years but but but back to the question for

the pirates like honestly 30 years of season tickets behind home plate is i wonder what the street value of that is well they could also put strings attached though that's the thing like i my sinister

around this is not about the kid it's just about major league baseball like just the way that they

why would you be cynical about major league baseball yeah right i mean just the way they

operate is just like they there were stories about people like wasn't it one of show hayes a significant home run ball of his um was caught by a woman and like they in the stadium and i don't think i don't know if this was at home in la or not but like wherever it might have even been when he was still an angel it doesn't really matter but whatever stadium she was at they sort of like it was described as like she described it as like they sort of separated her from her husband and like sort of like took her in a room by herself and really tried to get the ball back and like tried to get her to like in the moment take all these deals and like prom you know saying you know just like sounds like cop behavior frankly like just like i just don't trust these organizations so when um you know when they say we'll give you these two tickets i'll bet you There's a no sale clause or something around that. I could be wrong.

I don't know if it matters to them, but like no sale clause, meaning couldn't you see them

saying, hey, you're going to sign this contract. We're going to get this card back. You're going to get this 30 year deal of these two seats. Oh, you can't resell them, transfer the tickets, because first of all, you could transfer it to some bozos who are going to be on TV right behind home plate. Like, I'll bet you there's a lot of control over whatever they were offering this kid.

You know, I hadn't even thought of that, but you're probably right that that there wouldn't just be because otherwise I mean yeah you could resell those I think for like a lot of money like you talked about that other card being worth $150,000 I think it'd be arguable that seats behind home plate for 30 seasons would be more than $150,000 in value yeah yeah so anyway no offense Libby Dunn no offense Libby Dunn I know that you're a very popular influencer but I promise who doesn't care about watching a game with you an 11 year old from LA right yeah unless they have

like those little hot dog things in the suite that would be pretty cool yeah exactly like he would just be the kid would be like do you guys have minecraft yeah right right anyway um so anyway i am glad it's going to charity so it sounds like they're going to do this option through

fan graphics as you go to la strong well i mean good for this kid for doing this that's very generous of him i would not have gone for this when i was his age i mean he's living in la so

he's seeing he's seeing the destruction so close you know what i mean it must be no i mean and

again good on him yeah it's that's an amazingly generous thing to do as a little kid i don't think i would have that kind of i don't think i have that kind of generosity now and i don't think i would have had it at age 11 i would have been like i mean i'd been like okay i'll sell it

for like three hundred thousand dollars and give half of it to jerry exactly like exactly here i

once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all right uh that uh v-mail regarding jock and gus gus yes that's right uh again don't have to

set the whole thing up but we were talking and now apparently we're in a trend of talking about mice getting into cars either the engine block area or the filter area sometimes they can even crawl through and end up in your um glove compartment i've heard and they can cause incredible damage we played a voicemail from listener i want to say abby yesterday or the day before but i'm not great with remembering things uh about like her car like getting two thousand dollars worth of damage because a mouse or mice chewed on the wiring and all the wiring so i have not heard this entire voicemail i usually vet these things um i've only heard the beginning of this story before you dialed up today, and so I'm interested in hearing how it ends.

Hi, Luke and Andrew. Are we telling stories about mice getting into cars? I wanted to share one about the summer of 2022 when I could not get my car out of park. I YouTubed it, grabbed the screwdriver, opened up the middle console, figured out how to get my car in a drive and take it to the dealership where they assessed it and told me that it was the battery, even though I told them it was a solenoid so they said it's that with a stick a couple days to get some parts i would have to leave the car there um over the weekend so over the weekend um some mice got into the car so they called me monday um while it was on the dealership lot called me monday and said oh it appears as if some rodents have been living in your car and i said not before i got there um They destroyed fabric and seats and caused $5,000 worth of damage, of which I had to make an insurance claim and pay the deductible. This went on for about six weeks because they ordered the wrong parts to fix the mouth damage. And after all of this, they told me, remember, it was a battery. And they felt like the ABS control module was draining the battery. After all of that, they changed that out and said, oh, we can't eat.

get your car out of park so we've decided that it's the solenoid so it's going to be about another month so that entire summer i did not have my car and it really made me mad but um yeah so that was a time that my car had five thousand dollars worth of mouth damage i would not recommend it

oh my yeah that is holy smoke i am mad on your behalf dear listener the solenoid that was i

believe once uh Camaro Kev was having trouble getting his Camaro started and a guy came over to him in the like shucks lot and said something to the effect of oh it's your solenoid you got to hit it with a stick which I think would like the solenoid I my dad was always talking about solenoids when I was a kid did you did you grow up with a lot of solenoid talk no I remember that

story about Camaro Kev I think I've heard of a you know I think as a kid I maybe would have identified that as a car part but i don't even really know what it does but your your story there makes me think about the vibe of doing a minor car repair in the parking lot of the car yes i live kind of by an o'reilly's auto parts and so like i'm trying to think like i had to roll in there because weirdly our license plate i don't know what happened i was going over a lot of bumps or something because our license plate screws just sort of like rattled out or something like that so i think i had to go there is that one and then oh often uh windshield wipers i'll be one time i was changing those into different o'reilly's and uh i was having a hell of a time with it on my old scion i couldn't get and then like an employee who was showing up to work got out of his car saw me struggling with the changing my wiper blades and he came over and helped me do it That's Napa know-how, buddy. That is Napa know-how.

They have it right on the sign. We will change your wipers for you.

Oh, really? Yeah, the one in my town. Oh, really? Yeah. So anyway, I just think that that's sort of a – it can sort of be a depressing feeling, but it's sort of a universal feeling of making kind of minor repairs on your car because you just went into the shop to buy whatever you need, and then you're going to make – right now we have a warning on our car, and I don't know if I can get pulled over for this, But we have a warning on our car that I've never gotten before, which is check your license plate light bulb. Apparently our license plate light bulb. I think you can get pulled over for that. Yeah, I better be careful with that. I mean, they're fake plates anyway. I stole them off of some old car.

Honestly, the less light, the better.

Exactly. So anyway, that's just sort of a vibe. As you were describing that story of the dude coming over and saying, you've got to whack that with a stick. Is that with a stick? It is sort of a strange, scrappy community of those of us who are making minor repairs.

I mean, I was never capable of doing those kinds of fixes, but I would definitely, you know, with my dad, there was a place Action Auto Parts on Aurora that was next to what used to be the Chubby and Tubby. And we'd go up to Action Auto Parts and get stuff for my car, and my dad would help me, you know, put it on or fix it or whatever. But now, of course, my car is a 2021 or something, and it's just basically a computer that drives. I couldn't fix old cars, but I certainly couldn't fix this car. But now the new problem, Andrew, is I own the car, right? I am the owner of the car. Like, I had it on a lease, and then when the lease came due, I just bought it. Because at the time, it was that weird moment where there was, like, equity in a car. Do you remember hearing about that? like you know everybody says like oh buying a new car is like the worst purchase you can make you drive it off the lot it loses half its value like there was a moment during the pandemic because of like it was like a lack of chips or something yeah yeah yeah there was like if you had a car it was going up in value which is like a totally insane thing somehow i had equity in my mazda cx5 but um now the problem is i have been i am so overdue on bringing it in for service you know a little thing comes on that says it's time for your like you know 45 000 mile checkup or whatever i've prepaid for this by the way like i prepaid the the whatever you know the the service on it for i don't know a few more years because there's something about like having to just pay 500 when you bring it in that just like crushes my soul so i'd rather just pay like five thousand dollars in advance but never have to pay it when i take it in um which is a dumb idea because like i could crash like the car could drive off a cliff or something and then all that would be wasted money but anyway that's what i did but i am now like three thousand miles late on bringing it in because it's all the way down in portland i keep having things going on i keep not feeling like going and spending an entire day at ron tonkin uh and now i feel like they're gonna yell at me when i bring it in because i'm so overdue on the service even though i own the car they're not gonna yell at you but i know that no they're nice they're so nice they're not gonna yell at me but i i literally am like i'm in so much trouble right now yeah you're like that's my you have to

Every time I start my car, I'm like, dude, I'm in so much trouble. You're going to be like, okay, you're going to go in and be like, so I just woke up from a coma. And I wasn't able to drive my... See this beard? I wasn't able to bring it in. And then somebody was using my car while I was out of it.

Would you like to have the tires rotated, Mr. Van Winkle?

So there, you're covered. But you're right. Like this idea of... Well, here, I'll give you another example right now of being yelled at by people who essentially work for us who are not going to yell at us. But being afraid of it. So I've had I don't know how many jobs in public radio and then even some temporary jobs. When I first moved out to out to Washington, I was doing work for K.O.W., which is tied into the university. So even though I was just like making an hourly wage there, I was still somehow putting some money into some sort of public retirement plan for me. And so my point is I'm trying to tell this story and not make it sound like I've just got like tons of money all over the place. But I have little bits of retirement savings with all these different plans, right? Whether it was a TIA CREF over here and a good old TIA CREF, you know, Prudential over here. I don't know what they are, but people who are running the various 401ks or whatever that I was plugged into. 401ks, that's not right. What is the public radio? What is the nonprofit version?

Roth, maybe?

Well, that's different. But anyway.

It's not a 401k?

Maybe it is. But anyway, I thought 401ks were for profits, and there's another one for 501c3.

I don't know, I cached all of those. I cached mine out to buy, speaking of cars. No, literally, I cached my KUOW 401k out to buy a Subaru Outback on eBay.

Oh, and what age were you again?

I was probably like 23, 24.

Yeah, so probably not.

And it showed up from Stormville, New York, and one day later the engine blew up. Oh, my God.

I remember that story. Anyway, I'm getting lost in the details of this. All of that is to say we now have a financial advisor who's been helping us with stuff over the past several years and kind of consolidating. And we're finally to the point where we're now, like, talking about let's consolidate this stuff, you know? And so it's a very complicated process, especially when you've had money sitting with one company for a really long time. They don't want to give up that money. You know what I mean? And, like, so there are various hoops you have to go through, and we're trying to kind of get it all into one kind of big savings plan now. And so my job has been to, because I'm such a baby, with my financial advisor on the phone, calling some of these places and saying, I'm Andrew, and I'm here with my financial advisor. Like, let's go through the process of freeing up this money. And in the year of our Lord, 2025, they're still writing checks for some pretty large sums of money. Isn't that weird? Yes. and we're going to mail you this check. I'm like, you're going to mail it to me? I mean, why would we not just do digital transfers of this stuff? And I was successfully, because if nothing else, I'm not great with money, but I'm tidy. I don't like loose ends. I like clean cuts, right? And so this, I've always felt like, oh, again, my time at Cairo Radio, I've been dragging around like just a couple of years of a whatever 401k. Deseret. Deseret, you know, retirement plan. And so little by little.

Bonneville International.

We're trying to consolidate all this stuff. And it is a bit of a process. I did one of them successfully. I was able to do it all online. You have to get the stuff notarized, but you now have online notaries. I don't know if you've messed around in the online notary world, Luke. It's pretty surreal. You're, like, immediately Zooming with some stranger who's just, like. Oh, shit.

No, I mean, I've done lots of DocuSign, but never with, like, a person.

Live, yeah. Observing it. Yeah, it's interesting. But anyway, there was one that about, I'm going to say about six months ago, me and our financial advisor, John, who reminded me somewhat recently that I outed him for sending us emails when we were first working together. He was sending emails using like a silly font. Do you remember this? He was sending emails using like Comic Sans, I think maybe just like casual Comic Sans in our, in our communication. And I talked about that on TBTL, but he was getting to know me so he listened to tbtl and he heard me complaining about the font he used in his emails and he's changed that he's like that was actually really good advice i kind of didn't realize how i was coming off in my this is when we were at 8 p.m this was yeah i was living in like two apartments ago or whatever so this was like probably five years five or more years ago now like it was one of those moments just like i heard you talking about me on the show i am changing my font he's such a good guy i don't think you'll hear this it's buried way deep in a wednesday wednesday episode of tbtl but um all that is to say he and i got on the phone with i think prudential or something we went through this whole half hour process of talking to some customer service person there who then put us to another customer service and made us like sale you know like kind of give all of the proper passwords and free up this money and hear what the process is going to be and all i needed to do was go online and do this then they were going to send me a check and And then I was supposed to mail that check to my financial.

advisor with but first get it notarized but i could drive up to someplace in linwood where prudential has an office or something like that and they have notaries there and it just wasn't all a digital transfer so i dragged my feet on it a little bit and then about three months after that phone call i got a note from prudential or whatever the bank in this particular case is that said this has expired like you're out of time on this there was a time and you they have to be careful with the money right and also they don't want to give it up so all of that everything we did on this phone call to free up this money i didn't follow up with what it would take to

because you didn't want to drive the check to linwood it was just like just the whole thing

gave you a bad feeling it didn't give me a bad feeling it actually kind of gave me a good feeling of getting it done but it was right before the holidays and things just got like really busy did you not trust yourself driving past goldie's with it yes that's exact that's exactly what it actually Goldie's wasn't the problem it was when I got to the Aurora Borealis your favorite erstwhile drift on in rest in power you've never been in there since it was the Aurora Borealis

no I've never been in there since it stopped being the drift on in not out of any particular you know I don't know principle if it's not a casino I miss me with that

oh I thought it was still a card room but anyway it doesn't matter all of that is to say I just didn't get it done it was just like a lot of ins and outs And it wasn't like I had a bad feeling. It was just me being lazy. And all of that is to say today in about three and a half hours, we have a meeting on the books with John to follow up on all of this stuff and then get the ball rolling on some more of these transfers. And I have this pit in my stomach. Like, I've got to tell him I didn't do that. Like, I didn't do any of it. And we're back at square zero on this thing where I now got to get back on the phone. I'm not going to do it with him this time, but I got to get back on the phone and just start the entire process over again. And I am dreading having this conversation. And he is, by the way, the sweetest guy in the world. This is my money. I can do whatever I want with it. You know what I mean? Like, he's not going to be, I want it. It's my money, and I want it now. That's how I start and end every meeting with him. No, like, I know I'm not in trouble. I'm just embarrassed and frustrated and annoyed, and I don't want to, like, I'm just so lazy about this stuff.

I'm taking this car to Ron Tonkin, and every single day, I put more miles on this car between me and the 45,000-mile check-in that we were supposed to do, and they're very nice to me, and they have free coffee, which is not terrible, but it's classically that thing where the longer it goes on, the more embarrassed I am about it, the less I want to bring it in.

Exactly. Now, the good news is Genevieve has had some very, very busy time for Genevieve right now in the communications office because the current president is retiring and they're getting ready to hire a new president. And that'll be a huge. So anyway, Genevieve's work is about as busy and hectic as it could possibly be right now. And so she had something pop up on her calendar that may prevent us from having this meeting this afternoon, which gets me out of a non-existent jam. But when she said that, she's like, oh, I wish she's like, I just don't know if I can make this meeting. I'm like, call you. Send the email. Cancel the meeting. And we can't put you through this, Genevieve. We can't.

I will not allow you to feel this anxiety about this, Genevieve. I don't want you to stress about this, baby. Listen, I have an obvious plan. You take my car into Ron Tompkins, and I will take that check up to Linwood and double it.

Yeah, I'm trusting you with that check as you drive up north. Sure. You know, fine, you can do that, but you can only take the five. I'm not letting you take Aurora. Right through the danger zone, right, exactly.

I cannot be trusted on Aurora Avenue with a check for thousands of dollars. That has historically not ended well for me. All right. All right. Well, listen, I think that's going to wrap things up for today's episode of the show. But I've got some amazing news. We are going to be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. So please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. And please remember, my parents just pulled up in their new Prius. Yes, I am. I wasn't expecting them right now, but I was like, who goes there? It's Walton Seuss. Anyway, we'll see you all tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.