Muse

Whoa, is this the new copier? It sure is, Dennis. They installed it this morning. Can't believe corporate actually listened to our request. Yep, I guess Christmas came early this year. This thing rules. It collates, staples pages, no more stapling by hand.

Yeah, Santa should have wrapped it. What? The printer. Santa should have wrapped it when he gave it early. Oh. This is gonna make our lives so much easier.

I know, this is so much nicer than the old copier.

Yeah, I know, and Santa and all his elves must have worked so hard on it, and then they gave it to us early?

It's a very nice printer, Tracy. Just make sure no one copies their rear end, eh?

Oh, that naughty old elf must be one mean bastard to give us this so early. What? Did I stutter, Megan? Santa Claus.

Okay, it looks like the printer's gotten everyone a little too excited.

Of course it did. Everyone just go back to work.

TBTL! That's it. The radio. I'll go on the most popular program of the day. I assume that's still Don McNeil and his breakfast club?

Can I just say I feel like I'm on MTV right now?

They have been posting their stuff out on the Internet, and apparently they've been met with virtually nothing but ridicule.

This is about respect. This is about personal space. This is about the violation. Hey, skip to the end. Got it. Here's the long and short of it. Someone has been touching my karaoke machine. I stand corrected. This is compelling radio.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. A beautifully wrapped, glossy, sweet-smelling show. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Mr. Unlimited. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's just an absolutely gorgeous blue sky day.

It's like I'm walking on sunshine.

This is, I think, that little blip of time that happens in the Pacific Northwest where it feels like spring has sprung. And we get a couple of days of nice weather. It dries out. Everything is green. It's just perfect. And you think we made it, folks. We did it.

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

And then the podcaster sees his shadow when we go back to four weeks of rain and gloom. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy this and hope that you enjoy this episode of TBTL, which is episode 4,412 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Not enjoying Jeff Bezos' recent announcement about his editorial policy for The Washington Post. I'd like to point out to anybody watching, this is really bunk journalism. I did cancel my Washington Post subscription this morning, which hurts because I don't have any problem with the fine journalists there. In fact, I really like their work. I don't know what to do exactly. Maybe Andrew will have the answers from bad editorial decisions to great ones. One of my favorite podcasts, Heavyweight, is coming back for another season.

We are living in the midst of a podcast boom.

But it also seems to indicate something about the podcast business. or maybe the section of the podcast industry where we live, anyway. It's a Thursday, a.k.a. Blur's Day, so we'll do those birthday messages. And, of course, we'll talk to this guy, longest-running co-bro of the show, although that's not his only notable note. He may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships, capturing their grace and power. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. How much would you be willing to pay for an unopened eight-pack of Sony-brand mini-discs?

More than the average person, just off of nostalgia.

Our friend and dear listener, David Zakaris of The Submittance Fame. And of designing our logo, I believe. Exactly.

Featured on the ascendant social media platform, Blue Sky, where we now have an account. That's right.

Oh, that's right. Good announcement, Luke. Great announcement. Yeah. Hello, everyone. Madams. What's yours? But he heard me talking about my eBay adventures. Oh, by the way, great news. I woke up this morning to an email from eBay that said, you have been outbid on your broken G.I. Joe figure that I no longer wanted.

Were you able to sort of stop the urge to go ahead and try to outbid that other person?

I've come completely 180 on that. Or is it 360? No, that would mean I'd want it again. I went 180, and then I stayed there. Because yesterday after the show, I was like, what am I doing? I wanted to cancel the order. But anyway, I'm very excited to say I am not a proud owner of a broken G.I. Joe toy from 1982. And apparently this has led...

led to me learning through David about something called Goodwill Auctions. If you just go on to the Goodwill website and go shopping, it's essentially...

That's the movie where Matt Damon is a genius janitor, right?

Goodwill Auctions, I believe so. You know, I do get that movie. Do you know I've never seen Goodwill Hunting? I've never seen that movie. I have no desire to see it.

Despite it winning an Oscar and having a moment, and, you know, I was very there for that moment because I really liked Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's existence. In those days, they had a great kind of scrappy story, which was a couple of childhood friends who had dreams of making it and essentially wrote this movie so they could be in a movie and then it had all this success. And that was back when I was still living in some DeLulu land where I was like, well, maybe I'll write a movie like that and be in it or something. And so I was very pro those two guys. I remain very, very pro. I'd say both of them. I love Matt Damon. Matt Damon, he's an ally, he's a stan By that I mean he stans public radio He's a good dude I think Ben Affleck is a more complicated But I still think essentially decent human being I like Ben Affleck, yeah

I like Matt Damon on 30 Rock Remember he had a star turn on 30 Rock He slips into some pretty funny roles They think they can fly through the air

Like the owls of legend of Gahool

I like that he does not take himself too seriously He plays roles that basically make fun of him

and didn't he have a whole thing where he was like living in in ireland uh because he was shooting a film there and he became a really big story on the local morning radio show and he was

like calling three hundred dollars and a photo id gives him the right to fly through the air like

one of the guardian owls of legend man i'm so glad you have that tape i forgot about that how charming yeah he was there shooting a film or something and then he just started calling into the morning

show kept being these like matt damon sightings and then he just started i believe he was calling in he would seem very game all that is to say andrew i don't think 2025 is the year for you to check in with the movie goodwill hunting no i don't for all of those caveats and for how pro those guys i still am i don't think that movie is going to be for you it was summarized once as being imagine if you wrote the movie and you were describing it to someone and they were like okay well what are you it's like well i'm a janitor okay but i also can solve math problems no one can solve, which is a thing. Let's say custodian. Let's use the proper nomenclature. And then it's like, oh, wow, so you're a custodian. You're a real salt of the earth, but you're also smarter than all of the Harvard students? Yes. But what about fighting? Yes, I also kick asses in bars. Oh, I forgot about that aspect. If you were writing this and you were just describing it to someone, they'd be like, you know, pump the brakes a little bit on the legend of Gahool here.

I heard one of the stupidest comments. That's not fair. That's not true and that's not fair. I'm being arch. I take it back, but I did yell at the top of my lungs in my car yesterday while listening to a podcast in reaction to the podcast I was listening to. I screamed green book because somebody said, I think it was Dan Levitard was kind of like, well, there's never been like a bad movie nominated for best picture. Right. There's never been a bad movie nominated for the Academy Awards. I'm like, are you kidding me? Some of like they often pick the movies I would want to watch the least. Now, I know that maybe I'm out of step with maybe mainstream America, but to say... It can't all be Whit Stillman these days, Andrew. Right, right. How many Oscars does Whit Stillman have? Too few. Too few, certainly. But anyway, just the idea that the Academy has never made a bad decision. It's just like the most like, that is so levitard.

And that's the part of his particular worldview that... I'd say that's one neighborhood over from comedy is about free speech. And if you try to police speech and comedy, you're going to kill the soul of comedy. That's the other favorite take from him. But yeah, but I will say the thing about Green Book, which I did not see, is what you did see it. Because it features two actors that I absolutely adore, Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen. I love both of these actors. And it was, of course, a very well-received movie at the time before everyone kind of said, well, wait, just hold on a second. Right. Was that the kind of journey with Green Book?

Well, I hated it right out the gate. It just seems like that just absolute Oscar. Is this real white savior shit? Yeah, white savior. But then also just the generic dramatic arc of these types of movies that are always Oscar bait. I watched it for a podcast that I should shout out. And I'm so sorry, I can't remember the name of the podcast. But they had us on. And it's a podcast where usually you talk about movies that spark joy. but i think they wanted to have me and genevieve on to talk about like they want to do an oscar special and so like i think we were assigned green book or something like that and or we we just said hey listen we'll do whatever movie wins this year which was probably a bad idea because then we just went on the on a podcast to talk for an hour or whatever and just shit on a movie which Take that.

That's not fun. That's, you know what I mean? Even though I guess I'm starting the show very negative today, like generally speaking, I don't want to go on a show and talk for an hour about something I don't like. I'd rather talk about something I like. Like mini discs. Like mini discs. $77 current bid for eight of these things, Luke. That's a little rich for my blood.

Now, I did have a, I wonder if the listeners know what a mini disc is. I feel like that was kind of slightly because of our radio times. There was a period of time where we were recording on minidisc when we'd go out in the field. And for those that don't know, it's kind of what it sounds like. Imagine a very small compact disc, but it's kind of in a plastic cartridge. You can't open it. You can't get to this little minidisc.

It's a really cool-looking technology. Of all of the portable media technologies, the actual minidisc is so cool. It's like the perfect combination of a cassette and a CD.

But I don't think it was ever, like, widely embraced. Like, you didn't see people on the bus listening to their music on mini-disc, which I'm guessing was originally the thought. I guess it was that it was more stable than a compact disc player. Boy, a lot of CD talk this week. Yeah. Well, we're young. But I am getting younger. I, of course, had some kind of a mini-disc player. I probably boosted it from the radio station and or maybe I splashed out for it. But I remember there was a period of time where I had decided my new personality is guy who listens to his personal music on minidisc. Did you ever go through that phase?

No. I mean, I have I still have a minidisc player and recorder. I think I have my first one, which was like they were nice because they were compact. But this was a pretty solid, chunky boy that I have that I think even maybe had like an external speaker on it, maybe. And I loved that thing. And then when my friend who is also a journalist was moving away to Australia, she gave me a bunch of like brand. Maybe I should sell them on Google or what is it called? Goodwill auctions. Goodwill hunting. I have a bunch of unopened mini discs, I think. But I'm interested in your journey because as much as I love that technology, I used it more like a dictaphone. Like, you know how I take my little tape recorder out and record me and my friends being idiots in bars or whatever? I treated it like that. I never treated it like a disc man.

Well, I must have bought this because there's no way the radio station would have let me walk out with one of these. I had a Sony MD. mini disc recorder walkman and i swear andrew if you google this and you look at this little device you will it will time travel you right back it had walkman in the title did i have that mini disc walkman sony md walkman the mz r55 is the is the model that that i had and the problem was getting the music from all my cds and whatever onto the mini discs this involved you know dubbing and i think you could you could bookmark things there was some way that you could sort of make little chapters you can kind of you could make this into a you know uh a way to listen to your music but it was not easy and uh it was a i remember it being a very time consuming process and i remember it not ever really taking in my life like i think i think it was better in theory than it was in practice but i do remember going out into the world probably i'm on the uw campus i'm probably a college student still and i've got my mini disc player with a bunch of like the sundays on it or lush or something and i'm walking around and i'm listening to my i'm skipping along between the songs in my mini disc player and loving life i kicked a boy till he cried luke oh god album is

so good um i i don't remember trying to transfer music onto these things i'm going to ask you a question that you might not have the answer for but when you were loading tracks onto this thing was it a late enough technology that you could actually drag and drop mp3 files it was all it all had to be real time right you had to record onto it like you recorded onto a cassette i believe

so there might have yeah i think there was probably some kind of like you know line in so you could do some kind of aux situation you could play out from one thing and then into the minidisc player directly but yeah you couldn't there was no uh dragging the mp3 file over that

i remember that i remember either because you know the technology was sort of there because this was the era of readable, writable CDs. Do you remember the era? And I don't know if you were nerdy enough to get into this, but I assume you were. But like in the era that we were making CDs for ourselves, like even compilations of music or whatever, you had to decide whether or not it was an audio CD or a data CD. Like you could load hundreds of songs onto a data CD, but you could only play it on your computer because it was basically like a little, you know, just a little hard drive essentially. Or you could say, no, I want to format this to be like a cd that i can play in my cd player but if that was the case then like once you sealed that baby up it was sealed up you couldn't like rewrite on it and i

don't think i ever fully grasped the difference between was like one was called like cdr and one was called something else cdwr and i was constantly like going to the like

spindle of cds and grabbing the wrong kind yes oh those spindles do you remember the feeling i don't

know why we're doing this we should move on do you remember the feeling because democracy is

dying in darkness andrew and we're focusing on minidisc technology from the 1990s you and i are

just like just can we just talk about anything but the world anything but the world but uh do you remember this sort of feeling of a brand new spindle of cds is almost squeaky it almost kind of I had a bad – did it give you a bad – because you're somebody who does not like the feel of cotton balls, right? I don't like that.

I don't – and just the saying of the cotton ball thing. No, that's okay. It's life, but – and there are worse phobias. But, again, I'm not trying to be dramatic. For me to even utter the words a bag of cotton balls or consider it, all the hairs on my body stand up. That did not happen for whatever reason with that spindle of CDs that would, of course, also have that plastic housing on it when you first break it out of that. And then at some point that housing would go missing and you'd just have, you know, not mine, but stack. Not yours, of course.

Only people who watch Goodwill Hunting would lose their spingle cover. Yeah, out there winning bar fights and being friggin awesome like I was.

That's right. Anyway, okay. So you have recently come into possession of a bunch of mini discs. David sent you some. Well, just pointed it out.

David Zakaris was just like, hey, if you're on this eBay thing and it's not working for you, try Goodwill Auctions. It's going to be a little less precious. It's going to be less of a collector's mindset, so you're going to find better stuff there. And then he's like, for example, are you interested in this eight-pack of mini-discs unopened? I am not interested. I did think $77 was a bit high for that, and it does make me wonder, in my big, heavy box in the closet of Jurassic technology, I got a bunch of stuff. I do have a little bit of a mentality. I think I'm starting to shed it now as I've successfully made it to age 48 without being a complete derelict. But I think my entire life I was always ready for the bottom to fall out. Now that I'm saying this, the bottom is going to fall out tomorrow, I'm sure. But I just always thought, well, eventually I'm going to be living above a bar in some sort of just Bukowski-esque nightmare.

I was just thinking that the other day, Andrew. We're aligning on this.

Yeah, you were you were thinking about how you used to also be like, oh, I was just to finish my thought, I guess it was like part of me is kind of like, well, if things really go bad, I guess I can sell those unopened mini disks.

Uh-huh. Sure. Right. Like I've told the story a million times, but I have this piggy bank that's it's it's hyper realistic. I think it was based on what would had actually been some sort of, you know, science class fetal pig. And I remember the coins. it's it's uh you know it's it is like a traditional piggy bank there's a little slot in the back of or on the top of it but i remember for a while uh you know in this turbulent media landscape uh thinking well i've got that i've been putting money in that piggy bank for a long time i mean literally this is my thought if if things go sideways that's got to get me through a couple of weeks and then one night i got drunk and counted out i think it was sixty dollars or something it's not yeah but you have a system it was not a good back of that very but um no i was in um There's this little town across the river from me, Rainier, Oregon, and I was over there at the True Value getting something, and there is this bar that's there called The Old Pastime, and it's the kind of place that, you know, I used to spend a considerable amount of time in my life, and I was just, it's across the parking lot from the Eagles in Rainier, Oregon, which is also like the, I mean, peace and love, area number one till I die, although I don't pay dues there. That was another conversation I had with Genevieve when we hung out a few weeks ago. I said, yeah, there's something weird going on with my membership at the Eagles in Seattle because the folks in Rainier couldn't find it. And she goes, well, are you paying your dues? And I said, I thought that was a one-time thing. She goes, no. Are you familiar with how dues work? They're due. When did you join?

That was more than a couple years ago.

Oh, I was living in Portland, and I remember it was, I think we were like out of the pandemic, But still, there were some, I was allowed to be a part of this virtually.

Just because you didn't show up. That wasn't because of the pandemic. You just didn't show. Everybody else was there.

Well, let's just say it was a complicated time.

It was not a complicated time. Let's roll it all together. It was only complicated because you made Genevieve walk around the area with a laptop with your face on it. Like, arrested development.

Okay, fine. That is what happened. And then I paid the dues. I didn't realize it was a recurring thing. And so anyway, all that is to say, when I was trying to sign up at the Oregon one and I was like, yeah, I'm from area number one, I was, you know, I'm very proud of the fact that the Seattle Eagles is the first one and that I have been associated with it in one way or another, as has TBTL over the years. And the people that were very nice, I keep getting calls from some guy going, hi, this is Tom over at the Eagles. We can't seem to locate your membership or whatever. All that is to say, I was looking at, there's like a little apartment, I don't know, maybe a series of little apartments above this bar in Rainier, Oregon called The Old Past Time. And I just had this weird thought the other day. I was like, you know, because a lot about my life has really changed so that the trajectory of it is less taking me towards living in that apartment, you know. but i just saw it up there and i thought i wonder who lives up there and also i wonder how much that place costs and also is that the third act of my life is the third act of my life like a little efficiency apartment with like a bare light bulb hanging down and uh easy uh walking distance to some local watering holes and just like and again i don't want that to be my life i've made some very intentional changes so that does not become my life but there's still five percent of me kind of

thinks that could still be my life yeah i mean this is this is really dire and so i i don't think this really even fits in this conversation but i'll finish my thought but like there's the part of my brain that's always kind of like well when worse comes to worse like it's always sort of there a little bit and i don't know why i'm not somebody who has had a lot of bad luck in life when i was a kid i said that all the time i remember being like a a wry little kid saying things like, well, I don't want to bet because I don't need more bad luck or whatever. I always felt things never broke my way because I was a little kid, I was bullied, never felt kind of comfortable in my own skin for the first part of my life or whatever. But obviously now at age 48, I can look back and just look at how unbelievably lucky I have been and how everything has broken my way. But when I open a can of cat food, sometimes I think if I had to eat this one, would I be able to eat this one? And that's more of just from, like, growing up with just, like, this idea of, you know, post-apocalyptic movies. How many, like, The Last of Us type of shows have we watched where somebody is rummaging around in some basement and say, oh, thank God we found some cat food?

Yeah. I wonder if that's generational. Also, again, so many things about the wider world sort of – let's just put it this way. I'm on a well here, you know what I mean? Like, and I'm, like –

Your water that comes into your house. The water that I drink. Through the well.

There's a well. I have no idea how it works. I know there's like a pump in the basement of my house. There's a big blue. It's actually a very beautiful object. You would like it. It's this giant. It's an oval. It's almost like a pill, you know, you would take. Oh, yeah. Like a gigantic tank, big blue tank.

Is there a seam in the middle that is bolted together like a submarine?

Probably. I haven't looked closely. But I was just like Googling the other day, like, what happens to your well when the power goes out? Because, you know, there's a pump that's bringing the water. And I just start going down this this path of like, well, I got to make sure that I have some sort of backup power, because if the power goes out, I need still need water here. And then I start thinking, you know, if I could rig this place up with solar and I'm on a hill that gets like a lot of sun, I could plant, you know, crops. I could plant some veggies. I was like, if I'm getting the water from the ground and I've got solar power and I can grow stuff, I'm basically off the grid here. Like, these are the thoughts I'm starting to have, you know, which I don't want to alarm people. But I mean, the state of affairs in the world. Also, by the way, I live in a neighborhood. It's not like I'm not out in the country per se. I'm like in a sub kind of a subdivision. So I don't even know what my plan is. Like, I'm going to be living here totally disconnected from the grid like it's the last of us, but also just in a neighborhood.

The neighbors are clawing at your at the wall.

You've built around your property. I promise you Brian has his shit more together than I do. Yeah, the guy with the guns. Well, no. Oh, that's the other guy. that's the other guy he's also probably got his shit more together than i do as well but like yeah if anything i'm going to those guys and asking if i can please borrow some cornmeal

yeah or whatever and they're gonna look at you and they're just gonna see like a big turkey leg like a yeah exactly cartoon yeah the one i'm gonna be staying with the other guy who's got

the harris waltz signs still up yeah we have both and that's good though he's like a he's like a former airline pilot he's like a real you know kind of i don't think he's ex-military but he might as well be that's kind of the energy of the whole thing like that's and and a harris waltz guy yeah so that's where i'm that's where me and mine are going we're going to brian's house if this

whole thing implodes let me ask you one last question uh about uh regarding our trip down memory lane here you talk about you using well water in your home but you don't actually see

your physical well anywhere right no did you grow up there's i see i can see there is a a large kind of metal square that's the lid to the well that's in where my car

is parked. Okay, so it's kind of a piece like a cement area and then a metal grate, or a metal more or less. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Okay, yeah, because growing up I grew up in the country, like wells were a thing. And remember there were some major national stories when kids would fall down

wells. I think little Jessica, right?

That's right, and I believe The Simpsons did a whole episode about that. That's where I get most of my news. Do you remember that episode? What do you remember about that?

Yeah, but I believe Bart was faking it, right?

He was faking it at first, but then he was kind of hoisted by his own petard because when he did fall down the well, nobody believed him. They thought he was still just pranking the town. But I believe Sting believed him. I think Sting went down there to rescue him.

That seems like something Sting would do.

Yeah, so this seems like something cartoon Sting would do. But I just remember, like, we had, I don't know if we had an actual well on our property, but it was not uncommon to be at somebody's house and they would have, like, you know, like kind of a classic looking well, like a stone well with a little, like, cover over it. And we had. With a bucket that you, like, lower down? Yeah, most of them, I think most of them were left over, though. Like, I remember, and I'm really blanking on who this was, which is a disappointment because if I could name the person, it would really make you connect with the story a lot better. But I feel like there was somebody whose house I would go to, they had that. But there was no longer any moisture or water in there at all. It was just like it was kind of dried up. But we definitely had somewhere on our property one of those clanky metal things with the big handle that was like a spout. And you'd go to it and you'd work the handle a few times. You'd be like, this thing is broken. It doesn't work at all. But then you do it like 25 times. All of a sudden, water starts popping out of it.

Yes. Yeah, I probably need to find out if I can get one of those two as a backup. Like, in other words, if all else failed, could I go out and just hand pump the well a little bit? Also, and we have listeners that know so much more about this than I do. It's just, I just, I bought this house, and they said, and there is like part of the process of buying a house is they do come out and do some sort of a, you know, I was going to call it a wellness check. Somebody who knows about it comes out and basically checks out the well and makes sure it's all operational and everything. but like that's as far as i've gotten with this topic like somebody told me it works i don't know how much water is down there i don't know if i'm running out i don't know if you know what i mean i know nothing about this process other than when i turn on the faucets in my house on the shower water comes out and there's a blue thing in the basement that i think is associated with the well i know almost nothing about this process which is vital to my ability to live here and there's a troll down there i assume yeah gary oh i was going to ask you the name yeah that's more specific and and therefore more entertaining when I give you a real name.

We was hoping for some razzle-dazzle. Razzle-dazzle. That's right, man, razzle-dazzle. On your mark. On your mark.

Get set. Get set. Now ready.

Ready.

Go.

Everybody razzle-dazzle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These wonderful, generous folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough to the program. It's the only way that this whole thing can work. And they've also said that I can come live with them if my well goes out here at the Madrona Hill studio. And you can bring Gary the troll? Gary does not travel well. Uh-huh. Does not. He's, yeah, I mean. He's not a people troll. Trying to get him to go anywhere is like, forget about it. Yeah, I feel you, Gary. You know what else is going on at my house that's mildly upsetting? I think I mentioned this last year about this time. It must be seasonal. but those bugs that I think we have decided maybe are called stink bugs in the south just they're like they're not a potato bug because they have flight but what they like to do this time of year is hang out on the outside of my house not on the inside thankfully but on the outside so they're not really doing anything but there's like thousands of them I'm just I'm looking at my house at this window that's kind of near one of the bathrooms And there must be like 2,000 of these little bugs. They're just sitting there. I think they're warming in the sun. They're not really hurting anybody, but it's mildly unsettling. It's like I feel like they're plotting.

If you wake up any day soon and there are also frogs all over the place or toads, will you let me know? I need to keep an eye on these things. I'm developing a theory about where this is going.

How are your boils?

How are those boils going? Not great, Luke, to be honest with you.

Well, thank God we've got Lorraine Hirakawa in our corner in Puyallup, Washington. That's right. Lorraine is our first dazzling donor and says, I just want to say thanks. I've taken Luke and Andrew with me on a lot of journeys the past few years. They were visitors during COVID. Remember COVID, Andrew, when I had to join the Eagles remotely?

That's right, because nobody could be there in person except for everybody but you. God, it was such a weird pandemic.

That was a crazy – we forget how crazy it was until we think about moments like that that we were all participating in in the same manner. They were visitors during COVID, friends when I lived alone in a foreign country, and empathetic listeners throughout this last election. Thanks for my slabjacking bracelet. Oh, nice. I'm so glad, Lorraine, that that's one of the ones that you got. I think I made those, right? Was that me? I mean – I mean, let's be honest, the listeners made most of them the vast majority of them.

Slabjacking.

Were you a slabjacker?

Well, you would know better than me. Well, that's between me and my God, Andrew. But no, I feel like I was for a while maybe at that table or something. No, you know what it was? Here at the Madrona Hill studio. When we started, I think I might have been making the slabjacking bracelets. But then, of course, we realized pretty early on that this was going to we were going to take a village of TBTL listeners to create the thank you gifts that the TBTL village was receiving for their donations.

I have a question for you, and I sincerely apologize to Lorraine for asking this question during her dazzling donor message, but the little pause we took there to appreciate the almost double entendre of slabjacking made me remember a question I've been meaning to ask you, which is how are we going to handle having somebody named Master Boney on the Mariners? Because I feel like I'm not mature enough to hear the name Master Boney a lot without sending text messages to the chain that are like, you're going to go blind in all caps or something along the lines of that. Who's Master Boney? I don't know if I'm saying it. Is it Master Boney? When they say it on the radio, it sounds like Master Boney. But it's spelled Miles Master Boney. I believe, is he an infielder that I think we just brought in? Yeah, we just brought him in from maybe Chicago, I think.

Okay. Well, I thought that this was maybe a Jay Buhner reference, a.k.a. the bone. But no, we've got a Mastro Boney. Mastro Boney, yes. Mastro Boney. Yeah, it's going to be tough. It's going to be tough. And it also may end up being one of the few bright spots, depending on how the season goes. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Exactly.

Cut to August, and it's kind of the main thing we're now looking forward to.

Yes, exactly. I guess he's a utility player, so yeah. So I don't know what he's going to bring to the team other than distracting me from the game with his name.

Well, did you, Andrew, like I did, spend this morning perusing all of the Mariners' first-day starters since the beginning of the team? Because that's how I spent my morning. No, just starters or starting pitchers? Starting pitcher for the first game of the season. I think it was Ryan Divish had a whole piece about who is going to be the day-one starter for the Mariners Because we have the luxury, you could say, of having a couple of people that would be legit day one starters on other teams. Yes. And so then they included a little link to the list of all of the Mariners' first day starting pitchers, including Diego Segui, who started the first game ever that the Mariners played. And then it was such a journey down memory lane. I was like, oh, Mark Langston. Hell yeah. Oh, Jamie Moyer started. He was 53 when he started his first game of the season for the Mariners.

Wasn't there famously one year where they didn't let Felix have the start?

Yes, it was for Eric Bedard.

Eric Bedard, who went on to be a manager, right? Don't I know that name is a manager? Probably.

I think he was maybe. Eric Bedard was one of many, many, many, at the time, high-profile Mariner acquisitions that absolutely disappointed. I think he had been a really well-regarded starter, maybe with the Orioles or somebody else. We went and got him. We made him our day-one starter, and then he pulled a Mariner, which is to say he had his worst season statistically ever and then probably went off somewhere else and did fine.

Never a manager so far as I can see here. I don't know why I thought he was a manager.

Apparently that really hurt Felix's feelings because he had been the day one starter and then Eric Bedard comes in who did not really have the love of the game that Felix did or the love of the Mariners and then Felix goes on to start 10 first days after that.

Yeah, I understand why his feelings would be hurt. Anyway, I'm not going to continue my thought there because we were in the middle of thanking our dazzling donors.

We're thanking Lorraine, and Lorraine said, thanks for my slab-jacking bracelet, the laughs, the tears, and the community, and the Marco Gonzalez talk. Yes, thank you for bringing it. Because Marco Gonzalez eventually replaced Felix as the opening day starter. He got the start? He got the start, and Felix had hurt feelings, and his relationship with Scott Service never recovered. Marco Gonzalez got the start over Felix? Felix had had a very turbulent season leading up to it. Marco Gonzalez got the start and apparently cried when he was told he was going to be the day one starter.

The Mariners cry. Do you know I have a clip folder? That is true. Do you know I have a clip folder? Literally, I'm not even, this isn't like, this isn't like just an expression. I mean, I have a folder on my computer right now with a whole bunch of screen caps of every news story I can find. We're talking about Mariners crying in the clubhouse. Add this to the list.

There's another one, Andrew, and it's DJ Khaled voice. Another one. It's another one. This is Marco Gonzalez getting emotional when he was informed that he was going to be the first day starter for the Mariners. So put that on the list.

Oh, I thought it was Felix who was crying because he wasn't getting the ball.

No, no, it was Marco.

Then the point of that is that it's, you know, it's an emotional thing for a pitcher because it's saying something about how the team values you, etc.

He was he was a really good guy. I he was not my favorite pitcher. It was that's a very strange. Yes, it was a weird era. Yeah, that's not a he did not throw fastballs. Right. Like, anyway, let's let's move on.

Yeah, I think that the feeling right. I think here's what nobody wants to say. It should be Logan Gilbert. Statistically, it should be Logan Gilbert. Yeah, I like that. But Luis Castillo is kind of the old, you know, sort of he's the old battle horse of the of the staff. He did have a decent season last year. It was kind of a letdown for him. But there's kind of a respect factor. It's like the theory is Logan Gilbert has 10 more opening days in him and Luis Castillo has one. So give it to Castillo. But that would be more the kind of like emotional choice versus it should be Logan.

And Logan is a mariner through and through. You know what I mean? Castillo made his name elsewhere. We brought him over from Cincinnati. Am I right about that? I think mid-season, two seasons ago. I think it was that he pitched for the Reds. And he was already like an all-star. You know what I mean? And so we embraced him, and he embraced us. And I'm not saying that there's some sort of a, you know, any kind of bad fit or something like that. But Logan Gilbert is a mariner's mariner. You know, that's why just emotionally I think that that is who you give the ball to. Well, we will find out. It will be a big decision for Dan Wilson.

I keep forgetting he's our manager. Dan, the man, Wilson.

They've updated his commercials on the radio, I heard, because he always does these as a Franciscan health commercial about staying in shape or something like that. And I heard one the other day. I'm like, wait a second. Oh, that's interesting. He can still do these as the manager, no longer just like an announcer for the team or a broadcaster for the team. And then I listened a little bit more closely. And he does say he used to just say when I now because he says, you know, I threw so many pitches to second base, you know, throughout throughout my career. And now, like, I don't know, he's making a comparison about his creaky joints now to then or whatever and taking care of himself and staying in shape. But he used to just say, now when I spend time with my family and they augmented it to say, now when I spend time with my family and coach the Mariners. And the Mariners had gone. I'm sure they recut the whole thing, but it does seem like it's kind of jammed in there.

Remember the time when I had created an entire made-up life for Dan Wilson that involved him leaving his gated east side community to travel to Points West and eat good food with the hoi polloi of Capitol Hill and Montlake? And then someone said, you know, he just lives like a block from Cafe Lago.

He just lives in Montlake, yeah.

He just goes, and then they just go up to Capitol Hill sometimes because it's like three minutes away. That's just kind of like, I don't know why I had constructed this entire universe around Dan Wilson and his wife and their eating out habits. But anyway, go Mariners. That's what Lorraine Hirakawa always says. Go Mariners. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

Look who it is. It's our friend Chad Bates, who's in Bothell, Washington. Hi, Chad. Thank you, Chad. This year, I finally have something to promote. I started a podcast earlier this year called Managing Humans. It's my attempt to help new managers and people who want to get better at helping their teams grow and love their job. If the 10s are interested in listening, they can find all the links at managing-humans.com. They will hear the TBTL inspiration from right away. I'm still working on getting more drops into the show, but I am still learning all the tricks of Riverside. Way to go, Chad. Nice. I am also looking for tents who are leaders and managers who would be willing to be interviewed about their experiences. They can email me at managinghumanspod at gmail.com. That's managinghumanspod at gmail.com. I'm also available for consulting on process change, building a customer service or technical support team, and helping new managers get up to speed. Thanks for the inspiration and the continued hashtag content. That's actually a very good idea for a podcast, Andrew, because what you will know if you are a person who has ever been managed, which is most of us, is that it is its own whole skill set. And if you've had a good manager, you know what that feels like. And if you've had a bad manager, you know what that feels like. It is not something that I have ever been asked to do, Andrew, for obvious reasons. It's not something that I have any kind of natural talent for. It's funny. I seek to be managed, not to be a manager. but for other people for whom that is interesting it is a whole thing to learn about and how to handle people and how to get the most out of folks and make them feel valued etc so it's a good idea the thing i didn't love was because you were a manager people don't know this about you maybe you were a big time you were running a big time public radio show in los angeles california and you were the executive producer right I was, yeah, and I was an executive producer of a show in New Hampshire as well. Now, the thing that is somewhat troubling to me is that I, I don't know if caught is the right word, but let's just say caught our colleague, John Sklaroff, listening to this podcast, and then he kind of like moseyed on over to my cubicle, and he was like, something about TPS reports and telling me that I was going to have to work on the weekends or something along those lines. And I just sort of feel like I don't who's managing who in our little business boys situation is what I want to know.

Well, that's the thing. Sklaroff needs to listen to Chad Bates's podcast, because I'm sure that one of the first things that he specifies is just go easy on the TPS report. Yes. You know what I mean? That's something that people famously bristle against. And John, just saying, take a note. OK. And thank you, Chad, for. Yes. Thank you. Everybody go check out the Managing Humans podcast that our friend Chad is hosting. hello and welcome to top story well it happened andrew i had to go on and uh cancel my washington post uh subscription today which which feels real bad like the kind of the i would say the two papers of record for me would be the new york times and the washington post as far as like the national newspapers that i consume every single day and um and now i had been for a while thinking about switching away from the post to the Oregonian since I read the Oregonian every day and I keep hitting my limit oh yeah and it's like I live you know close to Portland Oregon it's essentially my hometown newspaper I should probably try to support local journalism in that way so I've been kind of thinking about it for a while but this announcement from Bezos yesterday or whenever it was exactly uh kind of helped seal the deal I guess although it's weird for me because I'm friends with folks at the post and I I love the work they do and I feel terrible um you know taking away funding of you know of their work but i don't exactly know what to do now you were telling me that you and vives uh are also going to try to embark on a by the way the announcement that bezos essentially made was this is now a pro-business editorial page i think it's like

what was he calling it personal freedom and economic freedom he's like basically yeah no i believe i started our business boys meeting yesterday by telling you that vives and i were discontinuing our subscription to the post which really really hurt because like you know as we discussed you know a couple of months ago when Bezos sort of stuck his nose into the editorial page uh department and said like hey the paper is not going to endorse a candidate this year it was already like oh that's really bad that's the first time since Bezos took over the paper that we're seeing his influence on the anything editorial but i think conventional wisdom was like hey if you want to get back at bezos or like kind of vote with your dollars or whatever the expression would be feet but isn't voting with your dollar something as well though like probably withholding your your money and like quitting your amazon prime or not shopping on amazon is what you're gonna be a much better move because also you're not hurting the good journalists that have been at the post you're overpaid amazon drivers yeah right exactly um but uh you know like the washington post is good journalism and it was good journalism before he took it over and i certainly don't want to see that newspaper tank um and so you know there was some conversation of people quitting their subscriptions and i i wasn't quite on board with it yet and then there was the the story about the editorial cartoonist who quit her job because she had written a cartoon that was poking fun at Bezos and him sort of bending the knee to Trump, I think quite literally in her cartoon. And suddenly that got spiked. She claims her. Oh, really? I don't think I knew about that. Maybe a couple of months ago. And she claims that that was way outside of the norm. Some people on staff said, well, I don't know. Sometimes we spike things. It was somebody said it was because we had run one too similar recently, but it's sort of it's stank. And then then this news yesterday was just sort of like, damn, we really he's doing it. He's using this newspaper as an extension of his ideology as the world's richest man who believes in free market and personal freedom, which is and and he basically like the post has always had like op eds and editorials that would like kind of look at different sides of different issues and stuff. He's like, no, like straightforward. We're not doing that anymore. I mean, if you can give any credit here, it's that he's not pussyfooting around. He's like, our editorial page is now it has a focus and it's on economic and personal freedom. And that's gross. And so we're like, well, I guess we're going to stop subscribing to the post. But I will say one thing that feels really good, as bad as that decision felt for me. And I got to give Genevieve credit here. She's I read the article yesterday. I felt sick to my stomach, but I didn't really act on it. She texted me and says, I think it's time. Like, let's get off of the post. I was like, yeah, I guess it's time to. And also we are freeze up.

We are canceling our Prime subscription, too. Yeah. How are you going to get Reacher? Is that on Prime? Presumably. Yeah. I mean, I will miss Thursday Night Football, I suppose. But aside from that, and also there are just small things. Because Amazon has taken over so much, there are small things. I needed a replacement. I broke my Stanley thermos that I've been using for 25 years the other day. It fell out of my bag, and the lid got jammed on it. glass inside it no it was a very weird thing it happened at pop-up um the i had a bag full of my coffee supplies and that was in it and it it was full of coffee and it fell right on the lid like right on the screw on cap and somehow it jammed it on there and it just oh weird not get it off like all of the all of the king's men so anyway i had to buy a new one and so i was like well i just bought it on amazon a couple of days ago for 25 dollars it was cheap and it was here the next day like i'm going to miss that because i'm like i don't know where i would drive or walk in my neighborhood to go get a stanley thermos but there must be places i don't know ace is the place i don't know i have no idea helpful hardware folks that's right so anyway point is the post felt really bad the prime thing feels good but is going to be a difficult sort of conundrum in my life because i have become more and more dependent on that website to deliver things to me but here's what feels really good genevieve said let's cancel our post subscription and start uh subscribing to the guardian so i now have the i deleted the the post app from my phone i don't even want their updates anymore and then i downloaded the guardian app and i gotta say i woke up this morning i mean obviously the guardian has great i mean it's an international perspective on some things but they have a great you know u.s coverage like i don't feel like i'm missing it really has done a good job in the 14 hours since we did this of sort of filling that gap and i don't even have such a bad feeling opening it so that's another that's an alternative if you're interested in looking for another like sort of more of a national or international news source it's interesting

because i don't know what's been going on with bezos if if if he was always kind of a heel but he just was keeping it under wraps or if this is what happens if this is what mega wealth does to a person sort of corrodes their soul and warps them i don't really know but like my feeling was when he bought the washington post it was an altruistic move like i don't think he bought the washington post with the intention of it becoming a mouthpiece for a donald trump-like figure uh or a explicitly pro-business platform like i i of course i don't know him but i don't get the sense that that's who he was when he bought it what no 10 years ago maybe how long

has he owned it that's a good question i don't know off the top of my head it feels like less

but you know time is moving faster my my sense of it was you know that was the time when the media landscape was shifting really rapidly and you had these things like the new york times and the washington post that were kind of in financial and a certain amount of financial trouble the times did this incredible thing where they got ahead of a bunch of this stuff between their subscription stuff between digital between expanding their audio offerings and i mean you The sense is that the New York Times has actually made it through just fine. But the basic deal is, as I understand it, is there gets to be like two or three national newspapers that can be profitable. That's it. You don't get like it used to be there was 20 or something. That's just not the case anymore. So the New York Times has dibs on one of those spots. And then my sense was the Washington Post actually was sort of doing okay financially in the time after Bezos bought it. But my sense when he bought it was, oh, good. somebody who's got plenty of money is buying this and he's not buying it to make money on this paper like he's buying it because he has the money and he wants to preserve uh this important uh you know voice of i mean as their little thing says democracy dies in darkness like i i thought it was a good thing that bezos bought it but obviously now he has decided that this is just going to be his personal microphone to push the ideas that he wants to push and it's a real bummer because even though it is something he owns so on some level it's like yeah well he owns the paper he gets to say what he wants we own tbtl uh i guess we get to say what we want but there is something about a newspaper like the washington post where it is it's not just a a business it's something bigger than that it has to do with the discourse and how people think about this country we live in and therefore i think that you have to hold yourself to a higher standard than like you just bought a

business and now you can do whatever you want with it yeah he bought it in 2013 by the way i just looked it up so just over um 10 years like you had said yeah it bums me out because these are the institutions that we need like it's the erode that me unsubscribing from the washington post really hurts like i i don't want to be i don't want to be rejecting solid news sources you know like it's really really important maybe now more than ever to have papers like the times in the Post out there reporting.

And I read some quotes from some people who work on the news side of the Post and they said, we have not felt any encroachment here as far as our reporting is concerned. And that's good. But it just starts to feel like an erosion. And so, like I said, we wanted to sort of make our statement and make our voice heard by withholding our money towards that paper now. but it certainly doesn't feel good because i know people who are on like the right like you know on the on the political right who don't trust their papers anymore because they think the newspapers are all a bunch of liberals you know and when i hear that i'm like come on man that's like that's the newspaper like that's those are journalists who are at least trying for objectivity while you're getting all your news from fox which is very much spin you know and lies yeah so anyway So I don't like being the person who says I'm not going to read the mainstream national newspaper anymore. It really has been it's not it's really this is not a good feeling at all. I mean, obviously, nobody's saying that it is. But this is a this is a real tough one.

Yeah, because, again, as you just said, and I was reading this morning, some some different articles about it. As of right now, no one is saying that Jeff Bezos is calling up reporters and telling them what to cover and what not to cover. And my guess is it would be a long time before that would even happen unless they were working on a piece that somehow Painted him in a bad light or some crony of his yeah But like as of right now the people the journalists of the Washington Post are still doing their jobs and are still creating good journalism So this has to do with the I guess it's the well I'm a little confused. Is it because the op-ed the idea of the op-ed? in the olden days was you would have the editorial board of the newspaper that would have sort of put out its you know its proclamations on things and then the op-ed would be basically the opposite of the editorial page and that was supposed to be kind of a just another voice another perspective counter to what the editorial page of the paper was doing yeah usually an outside voice right like

either somebody of uh somebody of prominence or could even be right it could be like a president could submit an op-ed right or your your your state senator or whatever and is he just saying

we're getting rid of the op-ed page now because the internet is the op-ed page my concern is

what i said before might not i think i accidentally said op-ed when i meant editorial i don't know what's going on with op-eds but i do know that i i you know on staff the post just had editorial writers who approached things from different political standpoints you know so forgetting I said op-ed before, which I think maybe obscured what I was trying to say because I don't really know exactly the details of that. But I do know that he said that the editorial page is no longer going to have diverse opinions. It is going to have basically a thesis, and that thesis is we are for free markets and individual freedom.

Yeah, the giving up Amazon thing is really tough for me out here. I haven't quite decided on that because, you know, where I live, there's a lot of stuff that is like, you know, actually, they just don't even sell it out here. Like, where would I get it from? On the other hand, it could be very liberating in the way that when TikTok went away for seven hours, it was like a spell was broken for me. Like, I do think that I have the tendency to buy things so that I will feel some kind of way, like the excitement about anticipating something coming to the house and or seeing something and going, you know, would be ideal for this, like looking around my house and going, I need a such and such for that corner of the house. Or I'm doing some kind of cleaning task. And I'm like, oh, what if I had a kind of a, what do you call it? Like a thing that went on the inside of the something I just recently bought. What if I had like a rack that went on the inside of this closet where I could hang up my broom and my Swiffer and stuff, you know? And like, I start thinking about that because right now or when i had this thought the broom and the swiffer are just kind of leaning against the corner of the closet i'm like but what if this was a little more organized so then of course i go on i find something i buy it it gets delivered i put it in and i hang up that stuff and it's very satisfying right to see that like that whole process of identifying something that i want to purchase researching it purchasing it anticipating it getting it installing it and then admiring it that's a big part of my life out here sadly and while it would really it would be more of a hassle if i have to drive down to portland or to town or something make a trip out of this to get that little thing on the other hand maybe that would be good for me to interrupt my consumerist tendencies like if i only brought things into the house that i had to drive 20 to 30 minutes and then walk around the store and then like look at the things on the shelf that might actually really change how i'm consuming and that might not be a bad thing yeah

i'm trying to figure out how to embrace it the bummer for me is that i was so late to the on line retail game like i held off and i don't even i think held off is the wrong word or phrase because that makes it sound like i was a wanted yeah like i want I wanted to engage more with online commerce, but I held myself back. That's not the case. I'm just like slow to change. And in my life, I was nervous about buying things online because I was like, well, if it doesn't fit or whatever, like what is returning these items going to be like? Well, Amazon totally solved that by making returns. By just throwing it all into the earth. Yeah, right. By making returns so simple and easy. And so anyway, like I just I didn't integrate this into my life. But now I think I am a bigger Amazon purchaser than Genevieve is, who was like, you know, earlier to it. And it just sort of bums me out. If I had just stayed old and stodgier for just a few more years, I wouldn't have a new habit to break. But I've broken harder habits before. That's what I keep telling myself. Like, I stop smoking. I can do this. Like, I know that's a crazy thing to say, and I'm not trying to sound like a hero, but like, I'm kind of, I'm a little anxious. I'm a little anxious about this. I keep thinking, you know what? You can do this. You still have a minidisc player, and you stop smoking. That's your fallback plan. You have some willpower, and you're an incredibly old man. You can go back to doing old man things like shopping at Target.

And you love that stuff anyway, I think. Well, at least as it relates to the grocery store. I think you enjoy the process of going to the store, selecting the items you need, bringing them home, cooking them, using them, whatever. The other thing is you're saying online commerce kind of writ large, but I don't think you have to stop using any online commerce. No. It's just Amazon, right?

Exactly. In fact, I needed some pants, so I bought a couple of pairs of pants online the other day, and usually my move was – so I have one pair of jeans that I kind of like the way they fit. I got it through Stitch Fix a while back, and so Stitch Fix will take all kinds of different brands and send them to you. We used to do ads for them, and I actually really liked that service, but it's not for me all the time. sometimes Stitch Fix would send me something I'm like oh this works for me but now I just want to buy more of these so I did that I looked at this pair of jeans I had I don't even want to say the name I was gonna I was gonna Jordache no I was gonna try to not tell you I was like I'm gonna get more of these jeans what is the brand and I look and it's called flag and anthem oh no oh for

two one your long-standing distaste for anything that's named two words and then the fact that that's very very flagged anthem it's very conservative coded and by the way they're also

made in china so it's the chinese anthem and the chinese flag i just love the idea of like our company is called flag and anthem oh that's uh but anyway there is there a more perfect

distillation of the of the dystopia that is 2025 right right right something made in china sold here under like a sort of americana sounding thing and but now probably having a tariff on it because of the crazy person who's somehow in charge of the country.

But I got to say for a moment, I'm like, I don't want to buy something from Flag and Anthem. That's like, listen, you've gotten yourself to the point where you're about to buy pants. Like, don't stop it. Like, I'm so bad at clothes shopping, getting new clothes. Don't talk yourself out of this. Yeah, you know the pants are going to fit nicely. Like, just get them. So anyway, I did. My instinct was to go to Amazon and see what they have as far as, like, pants under that brand. I was like, why would you do that? Just buy it from the company directly. And the reason my instinct is to go to Amazon is not just because of the quickness in which it's delivered, but also because we pay for Prime. It's free shipping on almost everything. And I always just assume that shipping is going to be very expensive. But I guess a lot of these direct, you know, resale places like Flag and Anthem, they're waiving the delivery fee, too. Or they're just, you know, working it into the price of the pants. So I was like, oh, you know, like there are other ways to do this. Do you know who the Flag and Anthem crew is, Andrew? Are you on the website? I'm on the website. I have purposely avoided this. I can picture.

It's not anybody who's overtly problematic. Is there a picture?

But is it like a bunch of white bros like I'm picturing?

I don't know. Does the name Dierks Bentley sound like a white bro to you?

That's actually more blue bloody. Well, not the Dierks part, but that is. He's a country singer.

We've also got somebody named Keegan Bradley. Oh, these are brand ambassadors.

These aren't the people running the company.

No, these are the models. These are the flag fluencers, the flag and anthem crew, which includes Christian McCaffrey, somebody called Keegan Bradley, somebody called Dierks Bentley, who I've heard of, someone called Ryan Blaney, and then a golfer named Tom Hodge.

These are my people, man. I wonder if they'll ask me. Maybe they'll ask Andrew Walsh to be a brand ambassador.

Nice. Give me some pics if you're wearing those jeans. Yeah, I will do. Anyway, you know, I need to give this some serious consideration because, I mean, the other thing is I have spent the last two to three years working on this house with my dad and changing so much about it that it actually necessitated some purchases, you know, like anytime you do some.

major overhaul of something then you're like well we do kind of need something to address the change in the physical space here because now there's more room for whatever etc but I think I've kind of it's pretty much set now like I don't need to be buying three things per week for different parts of this little this little house of mine like I could I could really use it as a way of just kind of trying to exert some self-control like I think if I couldn't just jump onto Amazon and buy almost anything under the sun in under 30 seconds, I might consume less stuff and save more money and just not participate in this cycle that I'm very much stuck and I don't feel particularly great about. So it might be kind of good for me.

I know that we're... I do this thing where you wrap it up perfectly and then I just add another thought on the end. But maybe this is the wrong thought to add because maybe this is a deeper conversation. But if I can be honest with you about something, when i jumped on that call with you and john yesterday and i said oh god we're just so you guys know we're canceling the post like i had just gotten off the phone with genevieve we were texting about it so it was top of mind for me and you were like oh why what's what's the news and i tried to summarize it and i don't think i did a very good job of it and as i was saying it i was wondering this is going to sound weird but i almost wondered if you were sort of thinking this guy you did not say you did not say this guy you or this guy me and I didn't and I you didn't say anything to indicate that we had that we were under a kind of a tight deadline for the meeting so we just sort of moved on quickly but it sort of lived in my head a little bit because I was like am I like just becoming like kind of a walking eye roll because you know like I made a big deal or I don't know if I made a big deal of it it felt like I was making a big deal about quitting instagram uh maybe a month or two ago after zuckerberg you know said some really stupid things and brought um dana white on board as an advisor you know what i mean just like these disgusting things yeah yeah it brought dana white on board and said like we're not going to fact check anymore because fact checking is woke i mean and basically like said that right after the

or after the yeah i remember that i didn't know dana white was part of the same yes part of the same news the mark of excellence in any endeavors oh yeah you know which roided ass involved oh my god yes um those guys all eventually start looking like a thumb whether it's roguin or they're on a bunch of tea they've all shaved their heads they're on a bunch of tea they're wearing t-shirts that are two sizes too small and they begin to they begin to resemble a ruddy

thumb a ruddy thumbs like a reddish kind of huge thumb um yeah so anyway all that is to say like I sort of feel like, well, you quit Twitter first a long time ago. Then eventually I quit Twitter. Right, exactly. I mean, the world will never be the same. But I just sort of feel like recently I've been sort of like, well, I'm cutting that and I'm cutting that. And for Instagram, I'm not giving them my money anyway. I'm just giving them my attention. And I don't think anybody's really explored this. If we learned anything, it's a very valuable resource. I don't think anybody has anybody explored the idea of attention as a commodity. Not that I'm familiar with. Hey. Hey, I have an idea. Yeah. No. But, you know, like I'm like so I pulled back on Instagram. I just feel like I have been like dropping a lot of things lately. Yeah. And I just wondered if I'm just coming off as like sort of like just this this really pathetic guy who's just sort of tilting at windmills a little bit. And so I don't know. It sort of lived in my head when I told you, oh, we're dropping the post. I don't know why I felt the need to tell you that right away. And then also wondered if I'm just being a little bit tedious or something.

That was not my feeling in the moment. I think if you saw anything on my face, it was just me being like, because I wasn't up on whatever Bezos had said. So it was, I think what you might have been seeing on my face on the Zoom call was me just being like, everything sucks. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, kind of more like a, what did he do now? Kind of a thing. Not like a, what is Andrew getting upset about now? But more like a, you're like, well, we're dropping the post. And I'm just like, probably where my mind went was like, did they just, you know, did they just install Donald Trump as executive editor or something? Right, right. just kind of that's what you were saying that's the kennedy center it wasn't related to uh me thinking that you're becoming just mr hair on fire yeah it's just because every every hour of every day brings a new revelation of something that seems like how could it how could it get worse

yeah and so and i guess maybe it's living in my head because i i sort of feel like it it just feels so impotent in a certain way like we're just we i just feel so powerless right now I just feel so powerless as such terrible, hugely terrible and hugely important things are happening around. And it's like, what can I do? And it's like, well, I'm going to quit Instagram. I don't know. But it's like, but it's all I can sort of cling to is like, at least in my life, not participate, you know, like at least pick up my.

up my food tray and move to a different table if I can and that's not nothing

you know Hamilton Nolan had this piece that he wrote recently I was actually trying to find it on the fly that was basically there was something that he and the point of the piece was that Donald Trump and his ilk are the political minority they really are it's so easy to lose sight of that and he writes this very long very compelling essay about how kind of you know they're They're they're in the minority of even Republicans. If you think about hardcore MAGA, the kind of people with the hats on who go show up at, you know, rallies and stuff. And he said something in there where he said it's it's like two people with guns. We're talking about Trump and Musk. It's like it's like two people with two guns trying to stick up a thousand people. It only works if we get scared and and and assume that they have this power. They actually can't stick up a thousand of us, you know. And so just keeping that in the front of your mind, whatever that looks like in terms of the action side for you, whether that's dropping Instagram and Amazon or showing up at a not my president protest or I don't know actually the economics of this don't buy anything tomorrow plan that I keep seeing popping up. I mean, probably couldn't hurt. I don't know. I don't actually understand what I guess the lesson it teaches the people in business is if nobody buys anything, it's bad for business. I feel like they have a sense of that already. But anyway, I mean, I probably can't hurt. All that is to say, I keep going back to that idea of like two people, two robbers with two guns trying to stick up a thousand people. And why does that work? Well, because you don't want to be the person standing in front of the guy with the gun. OK, so that's fair. But there are more of us than there are of them. And I think I do think we will continue to connect with that idea that we are the majority. Good, normal people who may not agree on everything, but who generally think we should treat people with respect and love and generally think we should take care of our most vulnerable and generally think we should try to be good to the world at large. I don't think that is the minority position in this country. So I don't know that for some reason really put some wind in my sails. And I keep thinking about that. So maybe that's something to think about today. And just one more thing.

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll. You can't just listen to your soul. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun. You can be number one.

All right. Oh, you're holding your sound effects machine there. I've got it. I wasn't looking at you. I looked over. It's a bright red box, and you were holding it up to your face. You were holding it up almost to your nose, and I looked over, and I thought you had put on a clown nose for this segment, which would be out of character for you. I feel like what if I just looked over, and you're just like, okay, I'm ready for the Blursay segment, and you just put on your clown nose.

I had donned a rainbow wig. I'm holding a big sign that says John 316.

All right, let's do some Blursays here. By the way, if you want to wish somebody or yourself a happy Blursay, just email me andrew at tbtl.net and put Blursay in the subject line. Emma in Sydney, Australia did that. Emma says, I'd like to wish a very happy birthday, leap day birthday to Ann and Polsbo and say thank you so much for the lovely friendship and the excellent picture. Leap day, William. Leap day, William. Now, this year is not a leap year, though, right? Let's check. I don't think so. Nope. No, it's just 28. How do we have all these leap years? But anyway, happy leap day, blurs day to Anne and Polsbo from Emma in Australia. i don't know if this was for air or not but denny says how appropriate that the social medias might feed my algorithm with this gem on the day of my 40th blurs day and he included a a photo of that uh that bowler oh who uh screams who do you think who do you think you are i am who do you think you are i am the best part of that story is when we later learned he was yelling that as a teenager. Do you remember that part? Remember that? What do you think you are? I am. I am.

Never enough perfect. Didn't Tim Robinson do some sort of a, I think they did like, it's not a documentary

now. It's a documentary now. There is a documentary now that is about like the intense bowling community that I think was somewhat inspired by this. Is that what you're thinking of? Yeah.

And is Tim Robinson in it? Maybe. It's been a long time. Because I think he is playing kind of a version of that guy. Is that Pete Webber? Was that Pete Webber? I don't remember his name. I'm looking at Documentary Now Bowling here. I don't know if we have time for this now. There's so much I haven't seen of Documentary Now. It's called Weber. Any Given Saturday Afternoon is the name of that episode. Great name. And, yeah, it does look like Tim Robinson was in that one. Good memory. Oh, man, got to wait for that beat to drop. Happy Blursing to Tim, my all-time number one. Now, unfortunately, I do not see a name attached to this one, but I will read it anyway, and hopefully the details will make it clear who this came from. It says, life can sometimes be, I really thought you had a dog. So when I do the podcast with Hannah, when I do the podcast with Hannah on the weekends, every now and then, her dog Lola will bark. So for a second, I was just like, oh, your dog barked. Wait a second. He doesn't have a dog. I want to go back in my email and see if I can figure out. On your day, you are just going to see a dog walking in the background. You're going to be like, he did it. And he's going to have a clown nose on. He did.

Yep.

Happy Blurzy to Tim, my all-time number 110. Life can sometimes be the best of times or the blurst of times, but you always manage to fill it with so much joy and many dazzling deets. So on your special day, I just want to say, Carol, hold my calls, because top story, I will always love you tons. Aww. Power out.

Yeah, we've got sound effects for all of those things. We've got Blurst of Times.

Yeah.

But then we've also got Blessed of Times.

What was that? It's called a slide whistle, I guess. I love me a slide whistle. I used to have a pretty good slide whistle in here somewhere, too. I'm trying to go back into my email to see if I can find who sent that one in. My apologies for not having the name attached to this one. And let's see, it's Tim. So Tim, we're going to search for Tim in my... What are the chances of it being Tim? Not time, that's wrong. How's the segment going, would you say? I would say strong to very strong. You know what? I'm glad I went back to do this because the person did sign their name. I just accidentally deleted it. That was from Alan. Alan! And that was for Tim, who's in Cartersville, Georgia. Love it. So I'm sorry I left out those dazzling memes, but it was a very nice message. Yeah, it was. And you've corrected the record and... Exactly. Everything. Okay, finally here. Last one. Dan from Miami says, My birthday is on the 28th. Nice. Perhaps my lady friend sent in a Blur's Day message for me, but just in case she didn't, I'd like to happy blurs myself. How does one blurs themselves? Happy blurs to me. Frankly, I am not looking forward to 45, but I think TBTL will make it better. Absolutely. Good company with you two middle-aged hot dudes. Hey. You are also hot, Luke. Sometimes I forget that. We are both hot. Also, happy Blur's Day to my real-life bro, Lewis, whose birthday was the 26th. Lewis. And also, happy Blurs to Alfred Molina. Absolutely. There you go. Those were the Blur's Days. Were they perfect? No. Are they done? Yes. Yes. There you go. On time and under budget. I know you've got places to be

And pods to cast You know we had this line On Livewire recently That our executive producer Laura Haddon wrote which I thought was so great It was we were I forget who the guest Was it was someone who has a podcast And it was for me Saying you know such and such show is available And you know I'm so tired of saying Wherever you get your podcast It's just been said so many times She said something like I think she wrote like You can get it wherever your pods are cast

Yeah, I like that.

That's a nice way to put that. I like that. That's my new thing. I'm going to say wherever your pods are cast, because you're about to go cast another pod.

Yeah, I've been over to KUOW to talk about things that I have no business talking about. Actually, it's a pretty good topic list today, so I'm looking forward to going over there.

And is that coming out tomorrow?

And that'll be the Friday. Gotcha. The Friday. You know, it was so funny because I should get going here because I am a little bit on a deadline. But what they do, the producers will send out a list of topics. you've done this plenty of times before but then it's um it's really fleshed out with just like kind of like these are our thoughts on the topic these are some of the questions this is where the conversation might go and if you could email us back with your reactions to these stories and some people don't some people will write one sentence or or that's it usually i go a little bit over you got to get that dog under control um but you know have you ever been on uh one of these shows with geraldine de ruder do you know that writer she's amazing sure of course the

everywhere-est um i have not been on i haven't been on um kyra or rather kuow with her but i've had her

on live oh okay yeah she must have been amazing right great great writer she's so great and she's and so we ended up she ended up writing her responses first which were very long and catty and just like you know she she writes like she talks and then that gave me fuel to let my freak flag fly so that i'm going back and forth and like taking a pretty like kind of i don't know kind of a jaundiced eye towards some things and being sarcastic and then she writes back again and she's like, Andrew, we're going to be the biggest grumps tomorrow. We're like going back and forth about this. And so finally the email chain ended with me just telling KOW we are coming in hot today. Love it. She is a really, really fun person and Genie's, I believe, hosting as well and I love Genie. So yeah, it's going to be tons of fun. The only problem is we're probably going to record for about three and a half hours and they'll use 20 minutes of it. I'm looking at Geraldine's

blog, The Everywhere-ist, and I I love the subtitle. An award-winning cry for help.

She is like so amazing.

I feel like that could describe a lot of what goes on, except the award-winning part. That could describe a lot of what goes on here on TBJump. That's right. All right. We'll have fun doing that. And everyone else, enjoy the rest of your Thursday. We will be back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Raider. Andrew will be wrung out. He will have cast all of the pod in his system and will probably just sleep through most of tomorrow's episode. But I will be amped. I'll be bringing it.

You might need to do the newsletter tomorrow, because I haven't even started that yet. Usually I try to get that started on Wednesday.

Get Geraldine to write it. Yeah. Oh, man. That would be guest writer Geraldine DeRoyter. Yes. Anyway. All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.