Muse

Have you ever been in a gang? I have.

I knew it.

Okay.

What are we talking about here? Crips, Bloods? Both. God. Yeah, them and a lot of gangs. No warriors. Okay. Newsies.

Okay, so dig this. You're on the street and one of your gang disses you. Oh my goodness. Yeah. All right, so what do you do to get them to make it right?

Well see, in the gang world, we use something called fluffy fingers.

What is it?

That's where somebody really gets in your face. You know, you just start tickling them. Really? Yeah, and then he starts tickling you. Pretty soon you're laughing and hugging. Before you know it, you've forgotten the whole thing. Y'all can just go to church together and get an ice cream cone.

I would have never thought that gangs would be tickling each other.

Oh. It's effective.

T.

T. T.

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B. T. T. T. T. T.

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T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. T. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

You said you were going to go fondle your sweaters. No, I didn't. I said I'm going to fondue with cheddar. I was thinking about making fondue with cheddar cheese for dinner tonight. No, Gene. That is not what you said. It is what I said.

Don't watch the news because I'm a kid and apparently every time, apparently Grandpa just gives me a remote after he watched a Powerball.

No, you're going to tell a story. I don't believe that I can bear to listen to another one of your stories right now.

Well, all right. Hello. Good morning and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Too loud and too specific. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

Oh, yeah, buddy.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where when we were doing our sound check, it was gray and drab. And now it's sunny and beautiful. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. Looking at the sun dappling the hills above Rainier, Oregon, across the mighty Columbia. Here we are, folks. We've made it to episode 4,398 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

If I sound extra energetic this morning, it's because I've been eating food again. That's right. My colonoscopy is done. Come back, baby! And I'm going to tell you all about it. I'm going to spare absolutely no details.

You're a gross person.

Also, time permitting, and here's a prediction for me. Here's a Burbank lock, a stone-cold Burbank lock going into Super Bowl weekend, my friends. We probably won't have time. Time will not permit. So really what I'm promoting is a story that may come up on Monday. which is of an 11-year-old cocktail reviewer who I think makes some pretty good points. That would explain why we have so many drunk kids here. So we will talk about that on Monday. I know what we are going to do today, though, and that is talk to this young, handsome stranger from New Hampshire. He's also a soulful rocker. He's also the longest-running cobro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship. Are you sure? That's what they said on Ask Jeeves. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I certainly hope you are still on those drugs from your procedure because you said some pretty shocking things before we started recording today. Things that are not for air, that are deeply inappropriate, and I'm assuming you don't even remember it.

You're saying things you couldn't know?

Things I shouldn't understand. Yes, that's what he says. How did it go? One of your big concerns was being put under and then coming back out and then everybody around you seeing who you truly are inside.

Well, nobody was around me because they don't actually let the person picking you up into the facility physically. They're waiting outside in the parking lot like a DoorDash driver. So that was one of the things that was kind of unexpected for me.

So you were more concerned about Becca, your ride, hearing you say something while you were on drugs than just the strangers in the hospital.

Well, I started off being unconcerned about the strangers in the hospital until the doctor came up to me. The doctor who would be investigating the deepest caverns of my body and soul. You could say he might know you better than anybody. He's been places none other have. And he said, your name sounds very familiar. Are you the host of Livewire?

Mmm, that's what you want to hear.

Right before they...

right before they head into your basement with some sort of headlamp on. You really want them recognizing you from your media work.

Was he wearing a Roto-Rooter shirt?

He called in something called a Code 7. I didn't know what that meant, but just people started collecting around the... So as we sort of wrapped the show up yesterday, I was talking about how I was a little bit nervous about the how the preparation had gone because I was trying to follow the letter of the law for this thing but I the information was confusing which I was I felt validated when I got there and I was doing the intake and checking in and by the way this is just how it is and it needs to be this way but so many people made me agree both verbally and with signing digital forms that i knew i might die from this by the sixth person double checking that i knew that i could die from this i was like could i die from this but like as i was filling out the initial round of forms telling me i might die from this one of my oh i'm sorry luke i cut you off

right in the middle of your story go ahead please we've got all show we already know we're not talking about child cocktail critics i was just gonna say one of my earliest most cringy well no cringy moments go back to the beginning but I must have been already 18 years old which is embarrassing to say because I was driving at this point my cat Alex had an injured tail and my folks weren't around and I had to take him to I had to like find an emergency clinic and take him in and when we got there it's like it's the first time I've ever had to like sign the paper like be the adult in a situation right and they made me sign something that said you know if I didn't understand what it was and i asked her like they said well we have to put your cat under anesthetic to make this happen and there is a chance that he could die and i literally said to them tearfully you mean you might kill my cat i literally i was like you might kill my cat like and i stood there with the pen in my hand thinking like this can't be right i remember thinking this can't be right i can't sign this thing that just says they're allowed to kill my cat but now as an adult i'm

old enough to know that they're allowed to kill all of us um but by the way flash forward i don't know what about maybe 20 years 30 years and you'd be yelling it's not right as you're being escorted

out of a grocery store by law enforcement right exactly so from this can't be right to it's not

right yeah so you've developed more agency in your adult life the fact that i said to the security

guard you're gonna kill my cat it really added confusion that is a real cringy moment from it

Well, I mean, 18 years old is not that old, actually. To be doing a big life moment without your folks around involving your cat that you love, I don't think that that's crazy.

Yeah, but basically kind of coming face-to-face with the idea that, oh, yeah, you have to sign away certain things and say accidents can't happen in these circumstances.

Yes. So the first round of that, I was talking to the intake person, and she said, I was like, yeah, I really tried to follow the rules, but they're very confusing. She goes, yeah, we've been trying to get that fixed because we've been trying to get it all Basically sort of so that it's consistent and she said we have not yet been able to do that So she acknowledged the fact so I wasn't I felt a little better going in that I wasn't crazy This wasn't like I was these were easy to follow instructions that no one's ever had a problem with this this seems to be an issue because there's Various agencies and then various elements of Kaiser Permanente. So anyway, I get in there I'm now being taken to the back by a nurse. And she says, are you ready to do this? And I said, ready as I'll ever be. I said, are you ready? And she says, I was born for this. And I said, this is a weird thing to be born for, but okay. A lot of energy. And then she said to me, I'm not going to be the one actually doing the surgery or doing the procedure. I was like, okay. So you were born for taking my pulse and chatting me up about the history of the town of Castle Rock, Washington. So they take you into a little kind of, not even a room, it's just an area with a bed, and then it has a curtain that gets pulled. And the first thing I saw that was unnerving was a very large absorbent pad on top of the sheets of the bed I was supposed to get on, which I guess maybe would be for afterwards, depending on sort of how it went. And then they ran me through the sort of, you know, the checklist of things. She also reminded me that I could possibly pass away from this. And I said, yes, I understand. She asked me, she was one of a few people who asked me, when was your last meal? And I'm very glad that, or when was your last solid food? And I'm glad my last solid food was memorable because it was with you and Genevieve and television's Chris Hayes. Did you say that?

It was with television's Chris Hayes.

Coming off the meds, I did. And that's one of the many things I regret. But that was actually, that helped because I knew that was Tuesday night because we were at town hall. It was like a very easy thing to remember. And.

And she asked me the whole thing, and then some time went by. We were doing other stuff, and she asked me again, and she said, this is how I'm making sure that you're not lying. I was like, he's the officer. Well, the suspect's story remained consistent, so we have no choice but to release him.

Let's go over the story one more time. To butthole jail. I've already told you three times. Let's just go over it one more time.

The other thing they kept asking me, I mean, first of all, they were, I guess this kind of makes sense because of the awful world that we live in in the US where healthcare is not a right I guess somebody could be trying to steal a free colonoscopy because people I kept having to show my ID to people and tell them my name and birth date back to that Andrew yeah and what the procedure was that I was there for I told three different people that my name was Luke Burbank I told him my birthday and I told him I was there for a colonoscopy And I was sort of like, I wonder why they need to keep double-checking this. And I would be shocked if they were regularly doing colonoscopies on the wrong people, but maybe it's because they don't want, let's say that someone I know doesn't have health care, and I'm trying to just get them a free colonoscopy on Kaiser's dime? Is that why they're obsessed with my identity?

You know, I don't think so. I'm not an expert in these things, but I just think they have to be so, so, so careful. I remember when I had my surgery for my broken fingers on one of my hands, I think I maybe mentioned in my details of that that the doctor or had a time or maybe one of the nurses had to, like, take a big black marker and, like, mark which hand it was. And it was very obvious which hand it was, you know, like the one with the broken fingers, you know, the other hand's fine. And I think listeners said, yeah, they have to take every single precaution so that if you go into the procedure and anything, there's been one thing that's wrong on one piece of paperwork, and then that's how you can get into some malpractice pretty quickly. So I actually think it's just like a million and one security measures just to make sure that they don't mess anything up.

Yes, I understand that. But I guess other than liability, I was thinking to what end? And the answer is to no end, just to the end of liability pretty much, I think. but um so then about the doctor came in and uh he uh gave me the sort of details on what's going on and what the procedure he asked me what my name was i said luke burbank he said are you the guy who hosts livewire i said yes he says i i love it i think it's very funny i listen to it when i'm on call on saturdays and i said you kind of have to say that probably because i'm sitting here in a hospital gown how many minor regional celebrities come through pacific surgery in longview washington but um and then uh that was when it started to occur to me andrew that this is a kind of a i don't want to say a big deal but it was more it was sort of more medical than i think i was expecting if that makes any sense like i'm somebody's been very privileged in my life that i have had very very few medical events that have needed major intervention in fact when they were The nurse was like, how do you do with IVs? And I said, well, you know, considering it was 25 years ago the last time I had one, which was when I had my wisdom teeth out, I think fine. And she goes, we have a lot of people that pass out from these. And I was like, is it because of blood loss? She goes, no, it's a vagal response, I guess. It's just usually because of anxiety about it. And she said, and I said, I think I'm fine. And she goes, okay, but it's no problem if you do pass out. She goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I was like, oh, okay. So, anyway, at about this point, when I'm in now, I'm, you know, disrobed, I'm now in the hospital gown, I'm in a medical bed, I have an IV in, there's various doctors and medical people coming in to talk to me, it's when it kind of sets in, like, oh, this is, this is not nothing, you know, this is like, I'm going to be unconscious, there's going to be a bunch of people working on me and parts of my body that are usually between me and my God. And then I had the two most humorless nurses come out. Like, one gave nurse ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a run for her money. Like, everyone up to this point had been very friendly, very talkative. And then these two nurses just came out of the operating room, or whatever you call it, and asked me my name, what I was there for. I confirmed it yet again. and then just said, okay, and then wordlessly wheeled me in to the room where this was going to happen. And I have to say, as they wheeled me into this room with the anesthesiologist in there and all of these, you know, lights and screens and things, I had a small moment of being like, ooh, this is a lot. And I feel like, you know, because this is something that is a medical necessity for people and something that pretty much everybody should get at some point in their life.

And because there's so much, I don't know, there's so many people telling you that it's not a big deal. I think just to sort of promote it as a thing, and again, I do think it's a good thing overall, that I kind of felt sold out by everyone who said, ah, it's fine, whatever. You take a nap. You go in, you take a nap, and then you come out. Because I was like, ooh, this is a lot to be wheeled into this room with these strangers. And one of them really I'd had a parasocial relationship with because he's a listener. But I was like, this is kind of intense. I had a moment of being like, okay, burbs, just like keep it together. It'll be fine. Thousands, if not millions of people have done this. They've all survived generally. You can do this. I had to give myself a pep talk as they were wheeling me in though.

That's interesting. Yeah, I can only, it sounds very, very much like my finger surgery, like kind of all that prep. I have a question for not you, but for any like kind of, and I feel like we do have a lot in our audience of people who work in hospital or medical administration do you think that once you as a medical professional as a nurse or whatever the official title is if you if you're like kind of assisting in something like this i wonder how much once everybody's at the same sort of skill or training level temperament decides what part of the process you're going to help with you know what i mean it feels like it's not a coincidence that the really it sounds like i'm reading between the lines here the very wide lines that you're drawing for us i'm reading between the lines that the the the first person with had a lot of energy like and she was really chatty and really bubbly and then eventually as you're getting wheeled in you have the people who are like a little bit more taciturn or whatever and maybe there's a reason for that like you don't want the you don't want the taciturn people to be the first the first layer you go through right while you're you know while you're still maybe 20 minutes away or a half hour away yeah that would have been a bad start

to it yeah yeah um so the uh the anesthesiologist uh was uh was also very friendly and he had come out and sort of pre-interviewed me and then i saw him in the room obviously to figure out what jokes you're going to tell once you're in the operating room i wanted to kind of test yeah exactly i've got like a couple of anecdotes about shitting my pants at a mariner's game i could probably probably get down cut down to five i've been workshopping them at the comedy cellar i'm

tapping my blue card so luke i understand you a little accident in a mariner's game

paul schaefer as paul schaefer looks on yes yeah mariners mariners no world series

that's the worst where did norm mcdonald come from was he the previous guest i'm channeling him

it's a new side hustle right channel norm mcdonald for people love it uh anyway uh and so the anesthesiologist uh again literally asks me my name and what i am there for and i tell him and i forget exactly again it's starting to get a little foggy here but i forget exactly the thing that got us to this but he said oh i think he said like you know did you do all the prep or something and i said yeah i really tried to you know follow the rules on this and he said that's great because uh we don't want to have you back in here because we're trying to keep medical costs down and i thought who do you work for yeah right like like you know like i if he wasn't about to put a mask over my mouth that was feeding in propofol i would have been like hold on i want to tell a different story it's i got a type five on the medical have you heard of united health care have you seen the reaction like we're not feeling great about how costs are being managed generally least that i had to pay fifty dollars extra for the suitab you don't want him to like reach over and turn on the smilex gas instead of the propo right exactly you know we can't afford propo your propofol is not covered by your insurance but uh propofar is it's much less effective oh that was another thing another moment that i of of mild i don't want to call it panic but of mild nerves that I felt going in which was what I remember from getting my wisdom teeth pulled was I had some vague memories of the procedure not of being in pain but of the you know medical professionals standing over me and what I remember was I was having a dream that I was in an airport I was being wheeled through an airport in a hospital chair or in a hospital bed and I think what that was was my brain minimally consciously trying to make sense of the fact that I'm lying under this bright light and people are leaning over it for some reason that's where my brain thought that happens is in an airport and um so as i was kind of realizing the the gravity of the situation and i was like i almost wanted to say hey you know the last time they did this i don't think i got

knocked completely out and that's by design right i think they're different drugs i think wisdom teeth because they told me when i was getting my wisdom teeth taken out like you're not totally under but you're on a level of gas that like

you're sort of conscious but you have no pain and no worries i guess that's true it's been a long

time so i forgot that the thing about that that i didn't enjoy was them saying you won't remember it but what i wanted to say was but i will experience it exactly it's it's still to this day blows my mind i would like to not experience it and not remember it i was a young man when i

had that uh like operation or that surgery that uh what's the word i'm looking for it wasn't a surgery yeah procedure and um i remember i was just brand new at my job at new hampshire public

radio i think right you had health care i had brand new health i got mine right upon being

hired at kvi and so you know i'm probably what 22 21 or 22 and anyway that was my first experience of having any kind of procedure like that done um and i remember being very concerned about that description of it as well i'm like you're knocking me out right they're like no we use this other stuff and you're but trust me you're like it's a forget me shot it's basically a forget me shot and i'm like i can't wrap my head around that and i i know i use this example all the time but i say it in earnest i just keep going back to being a little kid and watching some charlie brown cartoon where i think there's an there's like not an episode but like some special where the he finally kisses the little red-haired girl but then he passes out from excitement and then he doesn't remember it and charlie brown believe it or not has this existential crisis like was it worth finally getting the kiss if i don't remember it even if i was awake for it at the time and like honestly to this day i went through the procedure 23 years ago or whatever and i'm still like how does that work how did i how was i awake for it but i don't really remember it and i remember it was almost like being hypnotized because they were just kind of like you're awake now and i was

like i'm awake now yes becca did not have whatever that is for her wisdom teeth we were discussing on the ride home yesterday she just had like a local uh you know anesthesia oh no she was awake for her wisdom teeth she said she couldn't feel it didn't hurt but she was awake for it but it

would be yanking your head around and stuff i mean you're pulling teeth that don't want it's like pulling teeth andrew you're pulling they're not they're not wiggly those you got knock that

knock that lady out so anyway the uh the the anesthesiologist is uh reminding me that big healthcare is looking out for me and that they really don't want me back there because they don't want to have to pay for it again. I'm like, he puts the mask on over me and he's like deep breath, deep breath. I'm lying down. I'm on my side. They're untied. I have modestly tied the ribbons on my hospital gown as if all of these people are not going to stare directly into the maw that is my bunghole. But for some reason I was like I need to be modest for the period of time that I'm being wheeled into this room. And I could just feel nurture nurse ratchet untying the thing and i'm and then i andrew i take two breaths and they're waking me up i'm back in the recovery area and i remembered uh nothing and i understand why michael jackson hired a shady possible chiropractor to apply propofol to him each night before he went to sleep because it was incredible yeah i was out like a light and then they woke me up and i took a picture of myself which i later sent to you and uh it was an absolute piece of cake the procedure itself i have no memory of uh as far as the having you know kind of a weird experience with the after effects of the drugs it was minimal as you said it would be Off air, I think you told me, you were like, it's actually pretty quick, yeah.

It wears off pretty quickly.

It wore off really fast. I mean, I knew how to operate my cell phone immediately, which, by the way, I don't know if that's good. That's the deepest groove in my brain is grab the phone and take a picture. Real dawn of the dead, they return to what they know. Exactly. Children of the phone. That didn't really work. Anyway, so, yeah, they woke me up, and then I was pretty lucid pretty quick. My body was a little wiggly, which I think is also part of the don't drive yourself home thing. Although, honestly, if I would have sat in that bed for another 25 minutes, I probably could have driven myself home. But I'm sure there's a range of reactions to it.

Do you know how much 25 minutes in that bed would cost you? Well, the anesthesiologist had set up a meter.

It was ripped out of an old New York City taxi cab.

A little flag

Just staring at it the whole time Now the Bubbly nurse returned To check in on me oh by the way And she said and I She said to me with a straight face Andrew she was like it's kind of funny you know They play music in the room when they're doing The procedures they play the radio and the first Song that came on as they were doing her procedure was Like a virgin and I said Do you say that to every patient she said no I don't so So...

Apparently, that was some sort of a cosmic joke or whatever. But so here's the update, though. The doctor came back by, of course, and told me that they had removed a very small and very benign-looking polyp, something that occurs often, and they sent it out. They said there's nothing worrisome about it, but, you know, first they asked me my name and what I just had done. What's the polyp's name? Yeah, what's the polyp's birth date? And then he said, yeah, it's nothing suspicious, but you know, this is what we do, we were in there, we got it, we sent it off, and you'll hear from Kaiser if there's anything that needs more attention from this, but it's probably just fine. And in that moment, Andrew, I realized, oh, this is exactly why I got this process, this procedure, because if I had just sent in a sample of my stool, it doesn't show that kind of stuff. It's just a, I think it's a blood marker or something, you know, just indicates if some sort of levels of something are not great, but it's not going to find that little polyp, which seems like it was nothing, but could have become something, could have become a problem. And this was the whole reason, like right up until basically the moment that I woke up in that bed, I was really starting to doubt my decision to do this. i was like why because um they people i talked to somebody this week who said that oh yeah they've just been you know sending in the sample that seems fine and i was like yeah why am i not eating red dye number whatever and what you know why am i doing this to myself this is so dumb and then when he was like yeah we saw something it didn't look like anything but we we snipped it now it's gone and we'll tell you if it's a problem or whatever i was like oh i'm so stoked that's not

in there now yeah yeah no that you and i talked about that when we were first learning about the different options like what was it like probably a year and a half or so now this journey began because both of our doctors were encouraging i'm gonna miss it andrew i'm still on the horizon for me i gotta say i'm i and so a couple of days ago when we were talking to chris and and we heard that on yesterday's episode and you clearly were having some regrets over your decisions i was still in my head still steadfast that I was going to go this route or that I will eventually go this route because of that reason. Now, I will say I am more, I am dreading it more now after your experience of prep than I was before. I did not realize, I thought it was like, well, you stop eating the day before. It's a 24 hour fast and you got to be careful and you drink the stuff and you go to the bathroom a lot. I didn't realize it's like a full week of leading up to this and that you fasted for closer to 48 hours than 24 hours as far as the last solid food. The prep sounds way more intense than I thought. But, I mean, whatever. I'll get through it. Like we said, I like broth. I can drink broth. I can drink you under the table with broth. So maybe I'll get through it. And you have. I will say the lead-up, though, sounds much less easy than I thought it was going to be.

Here's the good news for you. There are many more foods that you eat that are on the approved list. I mean, you could just eat a cheeseburger, you know, So as long as you didn't have sesame seeds on the bun. Yeah, there's no rules. You could eat a steak every night. You could eat. The problem for me was a lot of the stuff that I eat is either high fiber. This sounds like I'm bragging. It's either high fiber or it's a seed or a nut. So if you wanted to just make yourself a big old lasagna, I don't think there would be anything in there that would actually be prohibited. You know what I mean? Or if you wanted to just eat white rice.

Rice is okay.

White rice, not brown rice. Low fiber diet, oddly enough.

Yeah, that's true.

You could eat French fries. There's a ton of stuff. There is the, you know, the day before. And also what I would say is you should get the procedure earlier than I did. I, because, Andrew, I'm a professional podcaster, I scheduled mine in the afternoon intentionally so I could be on the show with you almost crapping my pants on Thursday, which didn't really pay off. although I did almost crap my pants yesterday driving to town to do some errands later in the day because the after effects were still

the after effects after your procedure

well because I still had a lot of sutab in my system and not a lot of solid food even at that point

well this is the real question that I've been dying to ask is tell us about your first meal afterwards like how long after the procedure was it, what was it

I'm thinking about starting a podcast called My First Meal what do you think

it's actually not the worst idea the first meals after something like happens to you oh yeah um but for real like how long did you have to wait was there guidance on this about what there was no

guidance and becca my beloved girlfriend had made me a bunch of food it was super duper sweet and it was so delicious she's the best cook uh out there and uh so the first thing i ate was some like a cucumber salad that she'd made. me they just had all these diced up cucumbers and like uh little crunchy things in it and stuff and it was like honestly the best thing i've ever eaten and then she had made me a big thing of rice and veggies and some tofu and some different garnishes and sauces to put on it and uh and so i just tore through that it was without a doubt some of the best food i've ever eaten in my life you went back to her place to have it or no she brought it up here in a in a container oh okay

Oh, that's right.

Glass, you know, it's all about PFAS, Andrew. We don't mess with the plastics here.

I kind of got confused as to kind of where this place was in relation to where she lives and where you live. She schlepped. I see. Did she pack a big picnic basket?

Kind of. It was in like a Trader Joe's kind of bag, a reusable bag, and then it was in a big glass again, because we'd sooner die than put PFAS in our body in this family, Andrew. A big glass container, and then a small glass container with the other one. And when I tell you, I opened it and I just started shoveling the tofu, which sounds, you know, for people that don't eat tofu, that kind of sounds like a little bit like, really? But it was, like, fried perfectly and, like, coated in some delicious kind of sauce. It was so savory. It was so satisfying compared to what I'd been eating previously. And so I was just shoveling that in, and it was absolutely delicious, and that's what I had for my first meal.

Nice. That sounds good. You didn't have to wait. It was, like, immediate. You got back to your house.

No, there were no – they didn't say anything about, you know, wait to eat. Yeah, like as if it would shoot through you or something.

Yeah, I was wondering about that. Or just because you hadn't eaten in so long, like maybe you have to be careful about how much you eat at once. Did you find yourself thinking, oh, I'm going to plow through this whole thing, but actually your stomach had shrunken a bit? Like did you –

No, I don't – I mean for me, like you said, because I don't think a day and a half – I don't think two days is enough to do that. But what I was going to say to you is definitely schedule a procedure for earlier in the morning so that you don't – Because that was what was kind of dumb. I wasn't even done with the whole thing until like 3.30 or something. So that added an extra half a day, if not more, of not getting to eat any food, which was kind of unnecessary. But again, me suffering for my art, Andrew.

Yeah, I'm probably taking the day off whenever it happens for me, so I'll tell you when that day is.

You're not going to do the show from the bathroom?

I might do the show from the hospital. How does that sound? From Swedish primary care. Will you make me your emergency contact? I will. Swedish emergency care.

Because I need to warn you, I will not resuscitate.

That's good. That's what I have in my plans. What if I wear one of those headsets with a microphone that you and I hate so much? You get every breath of me as they're rolling.

I'll call you up on the Dr. Tom Terwilliger Roxino party line. I feel like something like a rock and roll colon doctor who's sponsoring, who's bought ads on sports radio.

Actually, Coligard, I guess, will be working against their interests, right? Is Kologuard the alternative or is that a supplement that you take?

No, Kologuard is the cartoon box you shit in. It's got powerful, clucky the chicken energy.

Yeah, because why personify something that you're going to do that to? I'm a freak!

Human toilet here! I'll meet you I'll meet you by the baseball fields I can't get enough I don't know if we want this on socials, John

Thank you for being a 10

Alright, let's thank some donors These are the generous folks keeping TBTL in business with their 100% voluntary donations. They don't have to do this. They have chosen to do it, and it's how this show exists. Without these people, no show. No show. No show. So we are so grateful for Matthew Pevin of Franklin, Michigan.

How you loving, Frank? Matthew Pevin. Sorry, I tried to stop. There was an internal joke there where Luke made that joke off air. I was going to try to steal it. The only thing I couldn't do to ruin it was stumble on the joke. The one job I had was don't stumble while you steal this joke. Karma's a bitch, Andrew. It really certainly is. But you know who isn't? Matthew Pevin.

No, Matthew Pevin is an amazing human being. Everyone in Franklin, Michigan knows it. And now the world knows it. Thank you, Matthew. Thanks to Maurice Higgins of Lincoln, Nebraska. Cool. I wonder if Maurice and Matthew have a bit of a rivalry between the Cornhuskers and the Wolverines.

Are they both? Nebraska, Michigan. Oh, I see. Oh, oh. Football. Sure, yeah. Let me just code it in the most obvious and boring way.

You know, let me just go with the most. I'm guilty of that a lot, Andrew, in real life. It's the, if I meet someone from some.

where, and generally that's a place that has a team, I will go, oh, Nebraska fan? But I'll use my Norm MacDonald voice. Hey, Cornhuskers? Now it's, who's that becoming? David Letterman?

No, that's pretty good. That's Norm MacDonald.

It's a gap-tooth person. That was Norm Cor. Norm Cor. Okay, that's the show title. That is the show title, my friend. And we have Maurice Higgins to thank for it. And also, Kami Suzuki in Pasadena, California.

Hey. Now, what did you call? Pasadena. I haven't heard this story in a while. What's your nickname for Pasadena? Pass the Donuts. Pass the Donuts.

God, I love Pasadena. What a wonderful place. It really is. I would absolutely live in Pasadena, right down the street from Kami if I could. Thank you so much. Thanks also to Georgia Millward in Baltimore, Maryland. All right. Georgia.

Go O's.

I want you to hold space for, is it Mark Andrews, who's the tight end who dropped the two-point conversion?

Oh, sure, yeah, yeah.

Hold space for him, okay? He's going through it. He can't show his face in Baltimore right now.

And Lamar got passed over for the MVP yesterday, although I will say he's won it two times before, so I don't feel as bad. I feel like Lamar doesn't get a lot of the maybe praise that he should, and that's something that comes up on this show and other shows a lot. But when you're talking about MVP stuff, he's been celebrated as an MVP. They gave it to Josh this time. Josh Allen.

That's one of those awards that even though I follow football pretty closely, I can't ever tell you who is the most valuable because I guess I don't follow whatever the high-level stats are on that. You know what I mean? I know Josh Allen is a good quarterback for the Buffalo Bills. I know that Lamar Jackson is a good quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens. I know that Patrick Mahomes is a good quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs. This is the part of the show where I just name NFL quarterbacks. I know that Russell Wilson is a good quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Anyway, but I don't understand. Like, if you would have woken me up out of a propofol sleep and said, who are the leading, who's the likely person to win the MVP? I would have been like, I guess Mahomes. I don't even know.

yeah and obviously it wasn't care you know that's right too i really don't care about mvp awards

across the board uh-huh yeah i think i kind of feel the same way uh i guess also because i haven't had a team that's ever had a player did you hear about the like i don't know who this is but like there was i think one person didn't vote ichiro into the hall of fame yeah yeah that was a huge

thing around they figured out who it was is this is this on the record are these anonymous no it's anonymous you can come forward if you want to in fact that was like kind of the that was both a local and national story so i was getting a lot of coverage of that and it led to a lot of people writing you know like pieces or commentaries talking about how like it shouldn't be anonymous or if you are the one person you should write an essay explaining it because it really does sort of seem like a bit of a well i just want i want to be the one person who didn't vote for him

But I almost think that the fact that it's anonymous makes it a more pure process because I could see frigging Skip Bayless or somebody, somebody trying to have a hot take, right? But you can't, you don't even get to have, I mean, I guess you can have a hot take if you copped to it.

Yeah, yeah, you can identify yourself. You can tell, there's no code of secrecy, but you can remain anonymous if you don't tell people what you want to say.

Well, I still, I guess I still think that there's, believe it or not, I think there's, you would think less honor to making a vote for a Hall of Fame candidate and anonymizing it, but I guess I feel like it's almost more pure to me still because it's not an attention grab. You're not trying to get attention for doing, you're not trying to, you're not trying to troll in a way that gets back to you. Now, you could also say that that's like leaving a shitty comment on the internet and using a burner account. So there's two ways to look at it. But I guess it's like the way that I choose to look at it is this person wasn't just trying to get their name in the paper by being the one holdout on each.

Because they could have. They could have stood up. They could have said, I am that person.

Yeah, exactly. I am Spartacus. I am Scott Rosen. I am. That was my joke, Andrew. I did that joke when we were stopped down and you stole it from me.

We knew we were going to get on this MVP conversation.

You and me and Scott Rosen of Seattle-Washington are owed an apology right now.

I apologize to both of you. Scott Rosen of Seattle-Washington, thank you for being a donor. I apologize. I also apologize for openly speculating as to whether or not you are related to Josh Rosen, who was also a quarterback in the draft class of Baker. And did not.

You notice I didn't name him when I was naming QBs.

Yeah, because it was Baker and Lamar and another big name all in the same draft class, right?

Was that maybe Goff?

Might have been Goff or Darnold, one of those.

Was Jared Goof in that? Was Sam... darnold out for mono boy that was a crazy thing i mean that was a crazy that the crash out of sam darnold just yeah why you know wild to see like anyway this is we have a problem see see your doctor if you have the medical condition called recurring sports talk if you're if you're mild to moderate recurring if you're having flare-ups of recurring sports talk it's just like kevin Fisher in Alexandria, Virginia is just patiently waiting to be thanked for donating to the show. Thank you, Kevin. And then we just had a major flare-up of sports talk. I was about to start going into how Luka Doncic lost $100 million by the Mavs trading him. What? Really?

Well, we probably don't have to get in the details of that just because of his contract?

And because of the tax structure of California for Texas.

I don't know why

that's so funny. Which, for some reason, that's the part that really would... I mean, the guys the guy's wealth wealthy beyond belief he'll be fine but the idea that a team could just be like yeah we don't we don't see this in our future or we want Anthony Davis or whatever it is the Mavs are thinking and they're just like so anyway that's going to be about a hundred million less part of it's because he can't sign a supermax with the Lakers for some reason uh and uh I don't know if they already have somebody under that uh particular title or whatever so literally he's going to make less money at the Lakers than he would have if Dallas re-signed him but also the

tax structure of california see that bodes well for a um nba team coming to seattle no income tax here you would think you'd be able to attract a lot of good talent that way it's sort of the

opposite of somebody coming to play at uh at the mariners stadium where you know that you're you're going to have your worst offensive year like you have to build that in pay me more because

where they put lead in the middle of the balls yeah that's just something we do here in seattle

We've woven an elaborate sort of hammock-style thing about 50 feet above the field. So if you hit a fly ball that goes over 50 feet, it just bounces right back down. We have giant fans.

We have just giant fans up in the sky that blow down during games.

We thought the hammock would be fun for the kids, for the junior Mariners. So just try to hit around it. Oh, and by the way, no second baseman. If you hit it to second base, it's an out. There's a ghost runner on second. There's no second baseman. and Mrs. Vandenberg's yard is an out. I know it looks like left field, but if you hit it over that fence, it's out because we don't want to go get the ball out of her yard, okay?

DePoto is right now honestly signing a ghost. That's the sad thing about that. He's actually in a graveyard trying to summon up ghost players because they're really affordable.

But not any of the good ghost players.

No, not even players who've played before.

We're not getting DiMaggio.

No.

We're not getting Roberto Clemente. I'm kidding. I'm trying to think.

I can't riff on this because I wouldn't know any non-classic names. Well, I didn't want to off.

I was going to say Ryan Court, but he's still with us.

Yeah, I think, hopefully. We hope you're doing well. Also, thank you to Ryan Court for not listening to the show today.

Yes, for all the free mentions. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Well, Andrew, this is why you play the game. because you do not know who is going to win the game or what stories we're going to actually get to. Because I said at the beginning of the show quite confidently we are not getting to this Shirley Temple King story, and yet here we are.

So you don't want to hear about my socks, huh? Wait a minute. Andrew. That's fine. Just do your damn top story.

I want you all to know, I sensed that Andrew was going to try to steal a joke from me today is why I was very rude to him in the pre-show meeting. And I cut you off so rudely. Let's go back to it. Do you have the harp music? Get the harp music. No, honestly, I'm more interested in this than Cocktail Kid. Can you get the harp music?

Harp music, we can get harp music, but we need to talk a little bit. Oh, I can get you a harp music. Oh, I can get you a harp music. With nail polish. Let's see here. Come on.

It was about, I don't know, 40 or so minutes ago in a studio just like this one When I dialed up on the Riverside program and found out that our account had been deactivated because of Andrew's mean, mean feedback. Now, I looked into the Riverside camera and I saw Andrew's studio, but no Andrew. And I assumed it was because, as you've mentioned before, sometimes just dialing up, it's like you mentally entering a bookstore.

Sometimes you just you feel like you're in a room by yourself, which prompts you to need to use the restroom, even if that is a virtual room.

Sometimes nature calls you, and I assumed that that's what had happened, and I was here primping and getting pretty for the broadcast, and then you came back and sat down and then mentioned in passing that the reason you had been absent from your post was because you were changing a sock, which I thought was hilarious because, like, A, we can't see your sock.

socks uh and uh and and be it would seem like the kind of thing that you might not get to at all in the whole day you might just at that night when you take the sock off think okay i'm gonna toss this one or something but it was so uncomfortable that you decided this i can't

have this sock on for doing this podcast well i mean i i can gut it out and i have um it was just that like i was there i'm putting so here's here's the deal this is a lot of detail but i come in here i dial up and then i put on my socks while i was waiting for you to dial up and i have these As we've described many times

You come in barefoot?

I walk into my studio, I'm carrying a pair of slip-on Shoes and a pair of Argyle socks And I sit down

I was running a little bit late today This is big news Is it because your clothing is downstairs?

Yeah, I'm very close to where all of my clothes are They're right outside this door And where your shower is I have lockers in my bathroom Where I keep all of my clothes like that I have a closet around the corner where I keep my pants and shirts that I hang up and everything. So it's all right down here. This is like, and today I was running very late. It was so hard to get out of bed this morning. And so I took a shower and I wanted to make a new intro for today's show. And so I was mad at myself for not allowing enough time to do that. And I raced in here thinking maybe I could still, I had like four minutes before 10. I was like, maybe I could still do this. Maybe Luke's still unconscious. Maybe Luke is still just saying hateful, hateful things under the influence of medical drugs. anyway so um yeah so anyway so i came in here carrying my shoes are sober thoughts andrew that's all i'm saying i've never heard that before i heard an expression the other day that i really wanted to remember and i already forgot it anyway um so yeah i don't have a camaro look it up google it folks it's a good google i don't have a camaro yes google david sedaris i don't have a camaro so anyway um yes i come in here at like what two minutes before 10 or something we dial up a tent so i'm carrying my shoes and socks like you said you can't see it if there's any if you and i were doing this in person i'm not walking in here barefoot but like you can't see that i'm i like to keep these guys undercover as much as possible um so anyway yeah that was what i was doing today but then i put on my my socks and i realized one of them as a hole in the heel now here's some here's something about me um is i wear exclusively argyle socks i mean except for at the gym i guess i'm gonna wear like white socks or something but like i I wear, for years and years and years now, I wear argyle socks.

I didn't know that about you.

Yeah. It's funny. You don't look at my feet enough, probably.

You've asked me not to. And I've offered you vast sums of money to see them.

Meet me at the baseball diamond. I'm Cologard. You can look at my feet. I like it nasty.

And so anyway, for years and years now, and so I now, Well, unfortunately, I buy it at the big online store that I shouldn't be using, but I've sort of locked in to these packs of Argyle socks that do me well. And I just kind of, when the socks eventually start to wear down a little bit, I'll buy a new pack of these things, right? So I have a bunch of Argyle socks that are like, maybe let's say, can you put on the poll, can you use the word varietals when talking about socks? I was going to say, maybe I buy a pack, and maybe there's, I don't know, between four to six different color combinations. I need to know more about the terroir of these socks. So they're all Argyle, but different color combinations or whatever, and they come in these bags, and of course, yes, I have my favorites. But when I just buy a new bag to replace the old one, I'm always buying the same brand, so I actually have kind of a system now. First of all, sock storage. Let's start here. This is a new thing for me. Back in the day when I was folding my socks, I would do that thing where you just line them up together and then you fold the neck of the socks down, right? The top of the socks down over each other. And that's how you keep them together. At a certain point in recent years, I stopped doing that because I felt like it was stretching the elastic too much. So I started doing these things where I was just taking the two socks and then tying them in a knot to keep them together. Really? Yeah. Very not satisfying, though. And keep in mind, I keep my socks not in a drawer, but in a little square locker that opens up. And then I would open up my locker, and I'd have all these just socks tied together, just kind of shoved in there. I didn't like that. So now, Luke, as Genevieve says, it's like a men's boutique in there. I now take my two socks. Clothespins? Nope. I roll them. I roll them up. I take two socks. I lay them down, you know, so that they match up. And then I take from the toes, and I roll them tightly. So they're like little, I don't know, they're like little rolled up little appetizers. Profiteroles. Profiteroles, exactly. They're like those Swiss cakes.

The thing that they put me down with yesterday.

Right, right. But can you picture it, though? So, like, in fact, at a men's store.

By the way, I don't think that's what a profiterole looks like.

No, a profiterole is like, that's any kind of a sweet treat, right? Like a little.

But I was trying to think of those like a Danish butterhorn at Starbucks.

Okay, I don't know. I've never seen one of those before, but the fact that you're using the word horn makes me think that we're not talking about the same thing here. Should I look up Danish butterhorn?

Well, the one from Starbucks, though. You can't look up a general one because they don't look like Danish butterhorn Starbucks.

Not quite. I've also never had one. No, no, that's not right. I mean, a little bit like that.

Swiss butterhorn. Have you looked up Swiss butterhorn?

I think maybe it looks like that if... It's a roll. It is, but it's like... Well, the pictures I'm seeing, it's more like it's pointy on one end, and it's more like a...

I'm hungry again.

I'm here to eat my socks.

Bart Scompson, eat my socks.

Calm down, poop box. But, yeah, so I roll them up, and because they're equi-wide, they don't end up being like one of these profiteroles,

But TGIF, I don't think we have – we have about 20 minutes more of content in us this week.

This is so bad. But, you know, like at a men's store, if you're buying socks, in fact, I think I got the idea because they come rolled up in the package with little cardboard bands around them to keep them in place, right? Well, I don't keep the bands, but I do just roll them up and then set them carefully into my locker. So when you open up my locker, I have a whole bunch of pairs of socks that are like all of the same brand, various color combinations, but rolled up together and sort of stacked. And it's very neat. I've started doing this, I don't know, in the past few months or so, and it's improved my life. Like literally opening up that locker and not just having a bunch of tied up socks together, but instead a nice looking like display of rolled up argyles is very nice. It pleases the eye. but the reason I'm going into so much detail about this is because of the system I have for when one of my socks gets a hole in it as you might know Luke usually one sock gets a hole not both at the exact same time now the other one if you're wearing them together the other one is probably not long for this world either but you can still get some more life out of it because I'm constantly buying the same brand socks when a hole is in one I throw that one away but I take the other one and i launder it of course and then it's like a single guy again it's a lonely guy as we say but i tie that with the other lonely guys and so like today i had a gray on gray argyle sock that was a new lonely guy so i went in i grabbed a new pair of socks to put on but then i wanted to see what are the other lonely guys i have right now do i have a gray on gray lonely guy i can match this guy up with the answer sadly was not yes i had a red and black one and i believe

a blue and gray one so i was like has this ever worked have you ever had hell yeah i've been buying these socks for years so sometimes a lonely guy will be matched up with its partner like i

said there's only like like maybe five or six tops but i think yeah let's just say five there's only like five different kind of styles of these socks and and i've been buying them for so long that one wears out okay i'll keep this other guy and then eventually another one of that kind will wear out And then it's like, hey, go to the lonely guy's pile. And there they are. We have a match again. So right now I have three lonely guys in there. That must be very satisfying. Oh, it's great. But today it wasn't satisfying because I added a new lonely guy to the pile.

But the hole was in the heel of your sock. True. So it would have been uncomfortable to walk around. Like you wouldn't. Let's say I have this one Adidas sock that has a hole in it, but it's kind of midway up my ankle. It's below where the Adidas logo is on these socks. And I don't enjoy, when I pull it on, I feel like I'm going to have a bad day, but I have yet to throw this sock out for some weird reason.

You've got a hole that is above your heel, so it's not on the bottom of the sock.

No.

How did it get worn out? From running? It must be from running. Does your shoe hit your ankle?

These aren't ones that I wear for running. And also, this would be, I'd have to be wearing like a lace-up Converse in running or something. It's further up than, I think it's just poor, it's probably poor craftsmanship. It's just probably a cheap sock. It's weird for all the money that I sort of, you know, profligately spend on all manner of things. Socks are a weird one for me that I just don't buy new socks that often. And part of it is because I do the exact opposite of you. Most of the socks that I wear every day for like, you know, just my normal daily life are all black and featureless. So that they're totally interchangeable. The only socks I have that have any specificity to them are the ones that I wear for jogging. they're made by nike and for some reason nike decided to create a left sock and a right sock which is so dumb i don't think that there's any difference i mean they would tell you there's some performance aspect like we've you know we stitched this together in a way to make your right foot work really well with this sock on i think it's probably marketing bs but the socks one of them says l and one of them says r and i am too lazy to match uh the l's and the r's when i'm like you know doing my laundry and rolling my socks up i'm just doing that thing that you described in your earlier days where i just grab these two socks that i know are both the same nike running socks and then i roll them together and i make a big pile of them i by the way keep all my running socks in a separate drawer from my regular socks like i have the drawer for the socks that i wear to go out in my life and then i have the the drawer

that's like athletic stuff yeah because they'll talk you want to keep those separated those are

Well, I don't like my athletic socks bullying my regular socks.

Yeah, no, that's fair.

You know? And so when I pull, like, one of these, you know, pairs of these running socks out, I have done—and now it's actually intentional. I intentionally do not give any mind to their pairing because I love it when the left and right come up. And what happens is we get on a pattern. We can have a bad week or a good week because if the first time, like on Monday, I pull it out and it's two rights, now I know they've made a wrong. There's some lefts out there. I mean, think about the math of it, right?

So these are not paired up at all. It's just a bunch of loosies.

Well, they are paired with other socks, but I have not taken the time to look if they say L or R. I have not gone, like, I have a left sock here. Where's the right sock? Let me pair them. It's a big pile of Nike socks, and I just grab one of them, and I grab another one, and I roll them together, and I toss it down. I roll another one. I roll another one. There's, like, maybe five or six pairs. but what happens is if I get lucky and like if in you know if if early on I'm getting a left and right like if I just accidentally pair them up properly then it sets them all in order and they're good but if I get off track if I accidentally grabbed a left and a left the first time like on Monday I'll go okay I take the first sock I go I sit on my little chair in my living room take the first sock and I pull it on it's either right or left and then it's like an internal drum roll and I look at the I turn the other sock over and if it's the other foot I'm

just like dude this week is going to be sweet but if it's the same foot you just power through and

you wear power through i tell myself it doesn't matter i tell myself that there's not any actual important difference between these two socks like in other words there's nothing wrong with me wearing a left a sock mark left on my right foot i tell myself that it doesn't matter but i i'm

actually slightly more i mean that's interesting but i'm also more interested in this black sock situation because you said you're the opposite of me if you get a hole in one of your black socks but all of your black socks are identical you're not throwing away two socks when you get a hole

in one you must have so i have a weird i also don't get that many holes in my socks like i think it's i think there's something about argyle socks are probably a little more delicate don't you think i mean they're a dress sock basically right they are yeah you think that yeah i guess they

are probably a little i didn't think about that yeah um because you've got a whole system and i

can't tell you other than this weird random thing in one of these adidas socks which the story on And that is just, every time I pull it on, I think, what am I doing with this sock? I've got to toss this. And then I never do. I wear it all day because you can't see it. It's under, like, you know, where my jeans come down or whatever. So, and it's not like, it's not huge. It's not like a quarter size. It's smaller than a dime. So it's not really, it's not really doing anything other than it just makes me feel like I'm a cartoon.

Yeah, right.

Like a cartoon vagabond from the whatever.

Is the hole, and I'm sorry about this, but is the hole on the inside of the ankle?

It's on the inside. So imagine just like a black athletic sock, but it's not, here's the thing, it's not like a sweat sock. It's not the kind of sweat socks that we grew up wearing for like gym or whatever. It's because of the athleisureization of everything in our life. Everything, you know, I just wear, they're a black sock, but they are made by Adidas, and there is a little tiny Adidas logo kind of stamped on them. They're black, the Adidas logo is white, and that's at the top of the sock. And these come up like midway up my, above my ankle, midway up my shin, okay? And the hole is near the top underneath the Adidas logo. It's not doing anything other than it's kind of unsightly. But it's just weird that I don't throw this sock out, that I've just been, I've been putting up with this for probably a year now.

I am on Amazon right now because I was going to order some more socks while we're talking about it. I'm like, you know what, I actually need a new bag of these things anyway. And this is sort of, well, I don't know. I find this interesting, but maybe this should have just been an internal thought. But you know how Amazon bought Whole Foods a long time ago? Like, what, has it been five years now or something along that?

I bet it's been 10, Andrew. Whoa, yeah.

I know that I was. I don't know.

It's probably been a while.

Because I'm not usually a Whole Foods shopper, but when I lived in Roosevelt, there happened to be one almost directly across the street from me, like three blocks down or something. And so. 2017. I was often going there. Yeah, about five years. Oh, no, no, no, more than that. So anyway, and so when it was very close, I would go there from time to time, grab lunch, grab a six-pack of beer or something like that. I never did my, like, actual grocery shopping there. But all of that is. to say i just went on amazon and i wanted to look at my previous orders that's something i will do when i'm restocking something like these socks we're talking about and they've introduced something new which is now they're showing me my previous orders at whole foods the other day i was at guitar center buying a new little recording device that's pretty sweet um and that's in the whole foods parking lot the same parking lot where a handsome young man once yelled at construction worker real polite car um you know it's the stuff of legend stuff of legend um and now it is including your whole food there's here it is a six pack of bodi zafa ipa is now part of my amazon

history boy i need to know what's next with this articles that you read in the washington post or articles you didn't finish would you like to hey would you like to finish reading this article in the Washington Post or

editorials that were spiked by Jeff Bezos articles that I would have editorials that I would have read in the Washington Post if the if the publisher weren't a bootlicker happy

Friday big weekend plans

Andrew oh you can't you gotta tell me when yes there's big weekend plans of course there are but I gotta I had that ready at the beginning of the show big weekend do that to me I was buying socks The biggest one I've ever had.

Well, you've just done your big weekend plan. You bought the socks. Now what else? What is there left to do?

No, I'm about to buy the socks. No, that's on there. Well, I mean, I might go see a show with my buddy tomorrow, but I've got to say I'm really looking forward to the Super Bowl. We should talk about our Super Bowl plans. Now, actually, I think I am – now that I don't have to – now that I'm not allowed to buy the $80 Fubo package and I'm just watching it for free. I've rescinded my idea of having people over.

Now you're going to spend $80 in food and drinks at an establishment somewhere?

No, I'm going to. Well, the thing is, when Genevieve was being so gracious about me potentially signing up for Fubo, I was like, oh, great. Well, maybe we could even have, I was feeling, I was feeling like generous myself. I was like, well, maybe we can have people over. We'll buy this thing and we'll make it worth your while by having people over. But now that we've put the kibosh on that and I'm just watching a free feed via Tubi of the Super Bowl, I'm like, well, then I don't have to have people over. I can watch the Super Bowl the way it was intended, by myself.

It's famously not an event that brings people together. I don't know.

Now that I say that, I do realize it sounds crazy. But the thing is, it's a very short turnaround before Vives and I have to talk about the commercials. And so I really like to, like, not just catch as catch can. And the last time that I went to watch the Super Bowl with a bunch of people, It was fun, but it was really frustrating to like I was sitting as close to the TV as possible, like trying to will the sound of other people out because people are just talking. I mean, it's a social event, but I'm trying to pay attention both to the game. I think I care about the game probably more than most Super Bowl watchers in my circle. And I care about the commercials way more, even though people are like, oh, this is a good one. The laugh, but then they'll talk over the avocado one. And I'm like, dude, you got to understand I got to talk about the avocado one. Like, even if we don't love it, like, I want to watch it because I'm not, like, TiVo-ing this whole thing. It's kind of a pain. So, like, my plan is probably to sit home. The ideal thing, and this sounds so unfun, I realize, but, like, for the podcast, Genevieve likes to be watching the game with people so she can sort of also report on, like, sort of the reaction in the room. whereas I can be a little bit more like kind of tuned into what was actually happening and like being taking even like maybe even more specific notes on the commercial.

So I think I'm going to get medical staff going towards the things that actually fit in with their personalities and lifestyle. Genevieve is the party correspondent and Andrew is the, I'm going to study these commercials correspondent.

And you know, Yeah. I mean, yeah, well I don't want to be rude about like, I got to say like if you were in town and you're like, Hey, do you want to watch the Superbowl? I'd be like, yeah, because i think that you and i would be tuned in to the same thing you know what i mean i feel like we'd be locked in on it the same and like whatever and i don't think that that is an intensity of watching not that you're like super intense but i just think that you'd have more interest in the game you would understand like i just i give up too much control if i'm trying to actually pay attention to something if i'm in a big group of people where the super bowl is the excuse but you know but more of a casual experience i have told becca that if the seahawks make the

Super Bowl, I cannot watch it with her brother and sister-in-law do this really fun Super Bowl party every year and make all this great food, and it's a big family event, and it's really fun, and I've said, I can do this as long as the Seahawks are not involved. If the Seahawks are involved, I'm not watching the Super Bowl in a group environment with people that are moderately interested in it. Like, I'm getting together a ragtag group of misfits from the Los Angeles underground.

of fellow obsessives and we're we're watching it you know somewhere where nobody is at the end of the game as once happened after we threw that interception uh in the new england game why is everyone so sad like i cannot and but more than that it's just i it needs my complete and total

attention and you need to protect the people you love from yourself precisely i mean really it's There's a lot going on there.

I don't – they can't see me like that. It's not going to be good.

I do want to ask you about your situation, though, because are you literally going to be in an airplane heading to jolly old England during the game?

And not just any – yeah, I'm not even going to be in the good old U.S. of A. any longer. That's the part where it gets really dicey. So my big weekend plans are we are doing an event tomorrow night for Livewire at the Hotel Crocodile. Thank you.

The biggest one I've ever had. This might be the biggest one I've ever had.

We're doing a LiveWire speakeasy tomorrow night at the Hotel Crocodile. You can get tickets at LiveWireRadio.org. Please come. Food, drink. It's going to be really fun. Emmy pop. Then I get up at the crack of dawn on Sunday and go get on an airplane and fly first to New York and then change planes and then get on a British Airways flight and fly to England. And that's going to be like, basically my first flight is going to be landing when the Super Bowl starts. Because it starts, wait, wait, no, it starts at 630, right? Usually East Coast.

I have to double-check that, but that sounds about right.

It's usually about 3.30 on the West Coast, so I think actually literally the British Airways flight will be taxiing, and it will be taking off. And I'm very curious if I can, because, you know, I have this Fubo thing on my phone, and my dream scenario would be that the Wi-Fi on the airplane is, even though they tell you this is not for streaming, sometimes it does work, and it would be amazing if the Wi-Fi was powerful enough that I could just watch it while flying. That would really make the flight go by quickly.

Do you know that I bootlegged a Browns-Ravens game on a plane one time? Because usually the strength of the signal is not good for streaming. But I remember it was during...

Or illegal streaming, for that matter.

Yeah, and it was during one of those... I think I was flying for work, which is probably why I had the laptop. Maybe we were flying into St. Paul or something. And I remember taking a photo of my... It was great. I had a cocktail, and I had the Browns-Ravens game on and it was when the Browns were sort of like, I think it was Baker Mayfield years and they were starting to get good before getting bad again. And so anyway, I remember like, I think they won this game or something. It was pretty great. And boy, yeah, that makes the time go by quickly.

No, British Airways does not offer live television on its flights, but it does have an in-flight entertainment system. That's what the internet is telling me. This would be the one time where actually being on JetBlue would kind of rule because JetBlue has live television. I don't understand why this is not more the case. By the way, there's a family of deer walking past the door of the Madrona Hill studio. How many? I'll give you one. And I think there's a baby. Well, baby, like a juvenile. So it's just like a mom and her kid. Jet Blue has live television, at least the last time I flew them, which was kind of a long time ago now because I'm such an Alaska boy. And it's amazing It's live television Apparently it is so much better Than their entertainment package In my opinion There's something about Like I've flown cross country on JetBlue And just like watched a basketball game And there's something It's just like your cable TV you would have at your house And for some reason That to me makes the time fly so much more Than I'm going to go through a selection of movies And things I don't know why it matters But it's like, again, I don't want to watch the news now, of course, because it's a rolling nightmare. But the idea that you could just be like watching MSNBC and, you know, doing normal life TV watching while you're hurtling through space, it really, really makes the time go by. I'm surprised every airline doesn't do this.

At the gym, like basketball is a tough one for me because I've never watched any basketball. So like I don't it just doesn't look like anything to me. You know what I mean? Like, literally, the only thing I understand is, like, points accumulating and balls going through the hoops. And I understand there's a two-point shot and a three-point shot and fouls. Well, there's slam-dunk three-pointers. There's slam-dunk three-pointers. And you've got noodle arms. Like, some of those players just have real noodle arms. Real noodle arms. Like, that's all I know. And so, like, obviously, you can maybe get a little bit of buy-in. It's kind of like, well, I like the team with the red jerseys. I mean, now with all the talk of, you know, the Lakers and I was going to say the Nuggets, but it's not the Nuggets. Who's the Mavericks? The Mavericks. Like, I got to say yesterday, I think in passing, I saw that there was a Mavs game on followed by a Lakers game. And I was like, oh, OK, well, at least when I'm looking up, I know the names to look for and a couple of the faces that I recognize. But having said all of that.

Basketball is a tough nut for me to crack, but almost any, did I say baseball? I meant basketball. Any other sport at the gym, I can get into it. Softball, like anything that I understand the rules of, even if it's like the little league games or whatever, I can find myself invested in one of the teams, and it just nothing makes time go by quicker than watching other people compete.

Yeah, I remember, like I said, watching, I think it would have been basketball, but imagine this. yeah just you're just watching a football game that you already wanted to watch and you happen to be getting to your destination it's like the perfect crime because uh and again i've now i've said it three different ways so i can just shut up about it but i would get on that airlines there should be more airplanes where you can just watch live tv so i don't know what the um status is going to be when we take off it would involve the wi-fi being strong enough that my phone the fubu on my phone but i am going to record it this is the other thing that's great about this system Andrews, I can on my phone just go into my little, you know, I have the app I can go into the app and I can just tell it to record anything that I want, so I'll record it and then when I land in England which will be like 7 in the morning England time then I've got all day because you and I aren't actually dialing up until like 6pm where I am, I'll just I can watch it on my laptop in the hotel room in England if I need to so I will watch it one way or the other but it's unclear if I'll be able to enjoy it in real time which is kind of a weird thing. I didn't even realize that I was scheduling it like this, but I guess it is what it is.

It is kind of weird. I watched half a Super Bowl in Costa Rica one time. It's funny, I don't remember Super Bowls that well, but I remember this one because it was that Patriots-Atlanta game where Atlanta was up by, I think, 1,000 points or something like that, and then the Patriots ended up winning. Oh, yeah, and then they came back.

I think it was 28-3. Yeah.

That's the exact amount. I think that's what I said. But anyway, so I remember that, but it was very strange because we had just arrived in Costa Rica. But, oh, and you know what we were doing? We had our friends, Nick and Rosen, actually do the Super Bowl podcast for us that year, I think. It was before we introduced the idea of the Bowley Awards. But Vives and I were like, we can't not do our podcast, but we had accidentally scheduled our big international trip on Super Bowl weekend. And so I think we landed and got to the resort on time to go watch the Super Bowl. And they were having it at Secrets, the resort, and we watched it communally. Hey, is that Kologard? We went into this place. He's always here. He's always on the outside of the fence.

Just looking around a corner at Secrets.

Hey, get out of the hot tub. Get out of the hot tub. We went into the – I don't know if you – I don't have any equivalency for this in my life Other than I saw a commercial for like some casino, like Angel of the Winds Casino or something is like having a Super Bowl watching party. I'm sorry, a big game watching party or something. And they showed a shot in a commercial. And it's like this sort of stadium seating. And this is what it was like in this resort. We walked in this room and it was like this stadium seating that was maybe half filled with people. And like servers would come out and like take your order. But there was just a big screen TV in the front. And that's how we watched the Super Bowl. It was very surreal. Like we had just landed in this country and then we just decided to do the most American, like just basic thing in the world.

Is there a McDonald's around here?

That's why I'm picturing like you going to like England and landing and then just hightailing it to like Little America or whatever part of town is in London. London's Little America where you go in and they just have like burgers that are served on donut buns or something like that. And the Super Bowl, and whatever they call the Super Bowl there.

The bathroom is called the bathroom and not the loo.

Yeah, right, exactly. They call trunks trunks. It's amazing.

You know what, Andrew, we need to wrap things up because if I say there's an American bar in London, it's everything America is, I immediately start spiraling. I start wanting to go dark and talk about all the, I almost made a joke about the horrible things about this bar because it's how I process things right now.

Yep, yep, yep. Let's get out of here.

So let's just, yeah, on this Friday, let's spare everyone that and just slide down that dinosaur, my friends. All right, that's going to do it for today's show and also this week of broadcasting. Thank you for spending the time with us. We'll be back here on Monday with more Imaginary Radio. I will be in Little America. I'll be phoning in from Little America, a.k.a. England. And I'm excited about that. So we'll have a big show on Monday. Please join us for that. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. Go Eagles. And please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to all Power out