Muse

What's happening? Nothing. It's just I think a furry snuck in and then he's scritching. What's a furry? It's not a big deal. What's a furry? A furry is simply just someone who likes to dress up like an animal with human characteristics. It's a form of role play. It's huge. Yeah, that's great. But then the scritching thing you said, what is that? Scritching is simply light scratching or grooming. It's a form of affection. Furries love to do it. I do that. It's fun for them. Exactly. We all do it. I was in the other room and one of them kind of bumped into me. I thought the guy was going for my wallet so I turned around real quick. It seemed different. Did he yip or did he yiff? He said skip and I said no my name's buddy. Okay he yipped. If he yipped that means hello. If he yiffs if that happens well then you got a problem. Yeah you know what might have been yiff might have been yiff. Well if it happens again and just go, gruff.

T-B-T-L. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is. It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

Hey, what is the deal with the smart car? How smart is that? Those things are tiny. Can you even drive them in traffic? Yeah, I'm so smart. E equals FC squared. I drive a smart car. I don't know who that is, and I don't care to find out.

You're not even a real journalism. That's right.

www.this and www.that. Let's www.explainit.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. I don't know if it's video games or what. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host, coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio. It's so unfair to, after something like this, to blame people in the backseat or say they deserved it. Perched high above the mighty Columbia where I almost can't contain my joy, though, that we are getting, we're extending the daytime on Sunday. i've done an entire i was paid not that much don't worry i was paid some amount of money to fly to new york city and sit in something called the flash studio take up valuable time at the cbs news broadcast facility to record an entire commentary around the topic of daylight saving time and i'm as i sit here on the friday before we spring ahead i'm forgetting if we're going into daylight saving time or coming out of it i feel warm and i'm levitating point is we're getting longer afternoons and it's not gonna be getting dark at 4 30 anymore and i find it to just be absolutely life-giving to me also episode 4 418 that may give life to you let the fun begin not to set the bar overly high but that is the episode in the collector series that we arrive at on this friday something may be changing imperceptibly inside me and i didn't even realize it related to professional football and my professional football team the seattle seahawks you gotta

be a real football nerd to sit through the whole thing i think there's a technology

a technological innovation that might be to blame for my my changing feelings on the topic so we'll talk to that and we'll say hi to this guy the longest running co-bro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships he just dropped his new mixtape as mc squirt he's got like every meme ever produced on the internet he can knock us out with his memes he's andrew

welsh and he's joining me right now good morning my friend good morning luke listen i have an idea and it's a good idea i'm going to share it with you here i came up with this this is the very first thought i had when i woke up this morning and i don't know why that's what i say thank you for coming into this idea with that energy i don't know why do you ever wake up with a song going through your head by the way just like randomly you're like why is this song going through my

head first thing in the morning i don't know if that happens to me so much in the morning i do know that when i'm falling asleep or when i'm waking up if i'm sleeping lightly i get a lot of big ideas they always seem really big yeah like this one is big like big if true too big to fail yeah and then and then usually what happens is in the harsh light of day i go why did i think that

was such a breakthrough okay well so sometimes they are good though you thought this up in the bright light of day i well it was like it was in my head as i awoke this morning one of those things so i think we're talking about the same thing only i am a good ideas man yes you are because mine are still good yes a couple of hours later because here's what i'm talking about i'm talking about and i know there's already been one of these just hear me out in alanis morissette review right a musical review yes collection of her songs yeah performed all by otters by otters called you otter no uh-huh and that's my idea that's as far as i've gotten yes i thought maybe there was like a colon you otter no that's

it it's performed by otters maybe okay hear me out i'm open to ideas if we maybe it's all kinds

of rodent-y creatures can i help you workshop the pitch a little bit let's go let's go i think it's good but you know iron sharpens iron sure of course so okay uh i think it's good but i don't think in the pitch you can say otter before otter no i think that the otter no has to be the reveal

yeah i realized as i was saying that it could just be rodents and then or you just describe otters

in a more vague way. Yeah, sure. So it's just like, you know, and maybe this is where I classically make things worse by over-involving them, but you could talk about, you know, vocalization in animals and that there's been some research that certain kind of mammals actually do communicate vocally with each other. So if you could train them in the music of Alanis Morissette and then put this out, maybe either on Broadway or SeaWorld, and it would be You Ought or No.

Okay.

See how that just improved it by maybe negative 5%?

I'm already angry at the world because I just typed in the word.

How did you go from being good idea man to angry at the world?

You can be both. You can be both. It is both. The ideas come from the anger. You want to be the change in the world. Harness your anger, Jedi. Why is AI ruining everything? I just typed in otter into Google. I was looking for other words for otter. What family species class or whatever does it fit into. You type otter into Google now. The first result is not a furry little creature that loves an otter box. It's otter.ai, an AI meeting note taker in real time AI transcription.

We don't- We just announced that we're creating a strategic reserve in otter.ai and making the creators wealthy. You've been following that about crypto, right? No, I have not actually. It's just, I mean, you know, why do I have to turn a good idea guy slash angry guy into angrier guy here on a Friday morning?

Angry guy who has bad ideas.

The short of it is, as I understand it, and my understanding is pretty limited. know you've got a bunch of people that own crypto and they particularly things like bitcoin which there's you know a a limitation on i forget what the number is like 120 million bitcoin to be ever made and that's pitched as a a reason why it will only increase in value because it's there's a scarcity there now i was just pointing out on i i everything i'm saying to you is a watered down version of what i heard on chris's show uh a few weeks ago where he was talking to a crypto expert but if you want a comparison of something else that there's 120 million of at one point i forget which vhs it might have been home alone 2 lost in new york they might have printed 120 million vhs tapes okay and he said you can go online and find them for very cheap the fact that there's only 120 million of something does not necessarily yes right ensure that it will only go up and up and up yeah it might have been a different film but you get the idea yeah well

I did invest in a lot of Home Alone 2 VHS tape, so this is actually crushing me right now.

Ah, so good idea guy to mad guy to more mad to poverty-stricken guy. I think life comes at you fast. Or patient guy who's going to show you all up when the wet bandits show up in New York City. Or doesn't try to catch a falling knife guy.

Is that in Home Alone 2? That's like a finance term.

No, that has to do with trying to like—

I thought it was a Home Alone 2 term.

may have also the wet bandits may have been trying to catch a falling knife at some point

is hold the line hold the line is that a wet bandit stir i hodor yes actually that is another

crypto that they so here's the thing the uh you know crypto is only it only has value as long as someone else agrees it has value it is purely speculative i think you could make the argument that most stocks are purely speculative at this point in that if you own some stock in whatever uh apple you don't likely have enough to really go vote at the board and move policy at apple you don't have control of what happens to apple and you can't trade it in for a free apple computer and you don't get dividends from apple if i understand right so in other words even a stock in a regular company like the original idea of the stock of course was i have a company you buy part of the company through these shares and then you share in the profits from this company and because that those things had value because you were entitled to profit from the company because you own part of it now you can sell your your profit your share of that company to other people now we're selling stocks but at some point this went out the door this idea of like you can really trade it for anything tangible you're just buying it so you think so because you think somebody else might buy it um you know for more so that's stocks basically but at least something about it has been around for a long time it kind of feels like a thing kind of deluded ourselves the only point i ever won rhetorically on dave ross when we used to do that show together was when he would chide me for gambling and i would say how are your stocks doing and he would go all right good point the one and only point i scored okay so cut to crypto it was pitched originally and the blockchain which is like this giant sort of google dock that keeps track of of every transaction of crypto.

it was this the idea was it was legit going to be a currency that everybody was using and that that small nations were using that didn't want to be part of the international situation and and that it was going to just be it was actually an effective way like you were going to go to the dentist and you were going to pay in crypto and then there people were creating like crypt platforms for dentists to specifically accept crypto it was going to have a use it was going to actually be something and then that went out the window and now it's just a thing that Nelk Boys are buying because they want a different Nelk Boy. I'm really big on Nelk Boy references this week. Yeah, right. Anyway, so all that is to say... The Nelk Man always knocks twice.

I got so much about that wrong. It's rings twice, I think, right? No, I like it. I'd rather they knock first. And it's not even Nelk Man. It's Post Man. No, Nelk Man, no. I liked it.

I was there for it.

Just throw an otter in there and work gold.

It worked spiritually as a joke for me. I know what you mean.

lot of it was factually laugh but i understood the spirit of the comedy really rough stuff

but so here's the thing we started off as friends it was true and it all began i mean this is where i try to quote as much of the uh song since you've been gone that song was going oh you know why i was i spent so much time this morning in the shower and walking around the house just quoting the song since you've been gone by uh kelly clarkson uh kelly clarkson uh and why because I was listening to Girl Talk while I was doing my weights this morning and he uses Since You've Been Gone.

Oh, that must be new. Is that newer? Is that newer or I just forget how

old that song is. I think you forget how old it is because I haven't gotten on any new Girl Talk and this is like either play your part or like feed the animals. It's one of the like pretty OG ones and anyway okay, so back to... I was excited

I just want to say I was excited for one second. I was like, is there any chance you were in Seattle last night and also hanging out at Goldie's because I took a long, not a long walk I took a walk up to North Seattle to return some cat food yesterday, don't worry about it and then while I was up there I realized, I was starting to meander home and I realized, oh Genevieve's going out tonight I'm already up north here, how about I just hop on the E-line, go up a few blocks and get off at Goldie's and have some, I didn't even pull tabs, I just go there now I get the wings that we like or that I don't think you're into them but the salt and pepper wings got a few gin and tonics are they they the bill was like 22 like the it's ridiculously cheap there is it because they're just not making money on the food and drink they're just making money on the gambling uh there you know i've i've bought a couple plates of thousand dollar wings yeah right exactly it's a loss leader it's a very smart one i'm gaming the system i go in there i don't i mean sometimes i'll pull tabs but sometimes i just go there and i just sat between two old men watched like highlights of spring training in my wings made mild conversation and uh and and just like it was ridiculously cheap at the end of the day i mean honestly since you're impervious

to the sirens call uh someone should write a book with that title yeah um since you are impervious to like uh the temptation to go over and play those table games you really are gaming that system and you really could just kind of make it your local bar in a way because you've kind of complain that you don't have a good you know you don't really have the ideal kind of the you know i don't want to say dive bar but just the unpretentious bar in your neighborhood but if we're talking e-line yeah from walking from your house to aurora to the e-line to goldies i that

can't be more than a 15 minute oh no no journey and i know i do it a little bit more than you probably know honestly and i do it more or should know i do a little bit more during baseball season as well um i guess let me put it this way i do it enough that one of the off-duty bartenders i didn't realize she was behind me and she said goodbye to me yesterday and i said oh i i think you're mistaking me from some for somebody else she said no i know who you are and i was like oh okay i have i honestly sorry you're in the middle of explaining a bitcoin to me yes but it was finally someone's doing it was a moment that lived in my head because i'd see i've seen her like she's probably been a server for me at the bar i'm gonna say maybe five times over a couple of years though because i go in there mostly to watch baseball games sometimes with v sometimes myself and when she said goodbye she tapped me on the shoulder and she's like see you later and i'm like oh i think you're thinking of somebody else she's like no no i know you i'm like oh yeah okay see you later i was thinking about that later because there's a weird awkward interaction for me i'm kind of that's what i'm known for but i was also like i really think i'm invisible i really go through the world think and i don't even mean that as a oh poor me thing i like that and sometimes it bothers me when i realize people can see me right you're not into being what's the

word observed yeah exactly okay and the irony that this is your job right and that we do live events and we go meet people it's so but i understand we're we are complicated we I don't know.

contain multitudes yeah yeah okay so basically as i understand it and where there are so many people listening to this right now who understand this so much more deeply than i do but i listened to one podcast about it so i think i'm pretty read in good but like the idea is that you know if you are somebody who's holding on to particularly bitcoin but any number of what are considered successful cryptocurrencies then you know if a giant government like the united states decided to create a crypto reserve if the united states decided we are going to put taxpayer money all of our money into buying up some of those 120 million you know crypto uh you know bitcoins or whatever they are well and then we're going to hold on to them because this is a strategic reserve like they do with other currencies and gold and things like that with these strategic reserves or these big you know holdings of a certain thing well if you if that happens with crypto that's a boon for people that own crypto already because all it's doing is the government is just saying there's a fixed amount of this thing and you all already own it at a relatively low price and now we the government are going to buy a bunch of it and just hide it away forever so there's a less of it and b it's being owned by supposedly a very solvent very kind of you know reliable thing so they're just basically it's a massive massive grab for nelk boys for for crypto bros for for exploding kitties or what was that what was the whole gamestop thing i mean i know that's actually a stock it's not a crypto but my point is just this kind of like i i think already sort of under regulated world of and what you hear in my voice also is a guy who owns zero crypto actually that's not true i think i have a thousand dollars of ethereum or something that i bought i think because we were doing promos for a no that's not true we weren't we never did any crypto promos

but some was it we did you coinbase or something i think i bet i said i think i said i don't want to do this and i think you no no you had a stock i don't think that was crypto that was robin hood you did something with stock for tbtl you did something with our friend because our friend was into crypto i think you just got your beak wet a tiny maybe that was it yeah our very very

rich friend who very much i texted her right away when i when i heard about this a while ago and i I was like, how are you feeling about this? And she was like, well, if I'm being honest, pretty great. Because, well, you know, she's like, I don't love anything about this administration, but I'm not mad at the idea of the U.S. hoarding crypto because Donald Trump at some point identified, you know, he was on the record as saying, that guy doesn't understand regular money, let alone crypto. You know what I mean? Like he was, so because he was an old school, you know, New York real estate money person, he was, of course, threatened by crypto. he thought it was bs he was on the record as thinking it was a scam which it kind of is honestly and then of course because the crypto bros sensed that he needed someone in his corner when he was really kind of losing popularity and and his his run for re-election didn't seem as imminent they wisely dumped a bunch of money into his campaign and you'll be i hope you're sitting down andrew he became very pro crypto and now is is super into it but this idea like i don't think the u.s needs to be sitting on a bunch of inf or a bunch of like doge by the way doge you know you want you know what one of the most successful meme coins is fart no i guess chad thundercock was taken right like there are people i actually said to our friend the crypto a person who has all the money i said how much fart do you have i think the way he just described there is our

crypto friend who has all the money well all the money in our friend group our friend who has all

the money i was like how much fart do you have she goes i wish i had more and i think i think

he means that in both ways by the way yeah precisely like these meme stocks i mean doge

is a meme stock these are literally just a referendum on the person the funniness of the name or the person who launched it and then everyone just trying to like a meme coin has I may have just used the term meme stock accidentally. A meme coin, I mean, none of these coins have any value inherently anymore. Meme coins have even less somehow. A meme coin is, we could start a TBTL coin right now. And if we were able to get people talking about it, then there would be some impulse for somebody thinking, I want to be in on the early group of people who buy this TBTL coin, because then other people want to buy it, and then I just want to make sure I get off the escalator at the right time. and so nobody wants to be the last one holding the meme coin you can't catch a falling knife andrew so but there is if you think there's a possibility that this stupid meme coin i mean is a pure speculative gamble which you think i would love more as a person who loves speculation and gambling again i think i'm just mad because i don't know how to interact with the with the actual technology i don't really know how to buy a a fart buddy could you spare a fart That's going to be cut to Depression era United States In 2028 Buddy can you

Spare a fart. It's the new, like, isn't Buddy Can You Spare a Dime? Wasn't that like a song from back in the Depression era?

Yeah, I believe the show title yesterday or the day before was Buddy Can You Spare a Yub Nub.

There you go. So anyway, all that. I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from. It's just annoying because I was hearing about this and now it just seems like it's happening. It's like, it's one of the great frustrations about the current moment in American politics we're in is that you just hear something that sounds like the worst case scenario and then you just watch it like a slow speed car crash actually unfold. It's like, wow, what if Trump just threw a bunch of money to crypto folks who already have a bunch of money presumably and just because he just feels like it and then you just see the gears turning and then you see it happening and you can't do anything about it. And it just, it's just so, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

You could probably hold up a little round sign that says, stop doing this. Like, right, isn't that something you could do?

Becca lives down in a part of Portland called the South Waterfront. And the other day we were going out on a walk. It was a Saturday and I saw two, you know, a couple of women probably in their mid-70s. And they were both just holding these little signs that said, this must stop. They were like handwritten. and then the other one had something else and I was like, they were standing by they were standing by a restaurant called Little Big Burger and I thought, is this just like guerrilla protests? Are they just popping up in this corner? Then I remembered, oh no, no, no the Tesla dealership is like four blocks from here and they had been at a get together at the Tesla dealership with their signs and it's like I wanted to go up and hug them and I know that it didn't do shit, but I love that these people were actually engaging with the discourse in whatever way that they were, you know? Yeah, yeah. Like, it's weird. It's because it is mostly feckless, and yet I think it's our only way out of this.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think I'm encouraged by the Target boycott. I think that could actually give us kind of a long boycott. Can I still sharpen Targus? Wait, yeah, Targus, Targus.

There's no Targus boycott, right?

I said the right, for a second I got nervous. I say the wrong word so often I want to make sure. Yeah, but it's Target, right? Not Targus. No, it's Target. It's one of the major retailers in America. I will never boycott Targis. Actually, Targis is also a major brand. It's a brand of like kind of active.

What do they make, bags, backpacks or something? Yeah, like active bags or whatever. All my CD. I couldn't find another CaseLogic, so I had to go with a Targis for my CD needs.

But, yeah, I don't know. It sort of seems like, I don't know, it's just feeling absolutely powerless. It's kind of like, well, if people can bandy together and, you know, kind of vote with their dollars or vote with their feet or whatever it is, like a little bit more like maybe you can send a message and i sort of feel like based on based on targets like kind of demographic thing is dei right yeah it was like kind of them immediately rolling back dei efforts apparently like kind of cutting back on some they had just like made they had sort of made commitments to like sort of support black owned uh i think lines of if not fragrance i think maybe um cosmetics or something like that just generally speaking did some very good things that people were on board with and i think do have a little bit more of a i think that there's a for better or for worse there's like maybe a dichotomy between people who see themselves as target shoppers versus like walmart shoppers not that there's not tons of overlap there but you just sort of think that i mean even going back i remember do you remember the 90s luke who was when did schubert dip come out i don't even know now that's what i call a century wait A decade?

A century?

I just sort of feel that, like, Targets always sort of had a reputation for being a little bit, like, you know. Yeah, they were design-y.

Yeah, they had, like, is it Todd Graves? Michael Graves?

There was somebody in the 90s who used to be, this is how I'm going to say this, and this isn't going to make a lot of sense, who was the biggest, like, superstar model of the 90s who had the mole on her lip, and she had a show on MTV. her name was I had a poster of her Cindy Crawford Cindy Crawford had House of Style

Todd Oldham

Todd Oldham yeah that sounds right but I'm worried that that is Todd Oldham a filmmaker who makes dark films or is he the guy who had a design line my point is I just remember going back so long

literally a picture I think of him and Cindy Crawford that's coming up on one of the first things

And wasn't he one of the early kind of like name brand designers to pair up? Exactly. Michael Graves, Todd Oldham.

It was like, we're going to sell you a toaster, but it's going to be cuter than it needs to be. You know, it's going to be a little more designy. That was my sense of what Target was.

And so anyway, I don't, you know, fully understand why these private, I mean, I think I have some ideas, but I don't fully understand why these private companies who have like no, you know, direct connection.

the federal government had to suddenly feel like they had to reverse whatever dei whatever you want to call it kind of policies it's kind of it's pretty it's pretty gross and them just voluntarily sort of bending the knee to like some sort of new like cultural norm mandate from the gross white

house like i don't it's just gross well the reason is because none of these companies wanted to do any of that in the first place right exactly it was 100 because they were worried about getting a backlash and and so they did a lot of stuff that they didn't believe in but they did it so that they would appear to be keeping step with the culture and then as soon as they thought that that they weren't going to be held accountable they just reversed it right exactly so all of

it is to say i sort of feel like hey man i i feel like there is like the the the already the audience the audience the um the customer base i should say of target could actually have an impact on their bottom line especially with you know a lot of questions swirling around about tariffs and what have you target is already not in exactly the best position economically if i understand it correctly along with some other major retailers and like this this boycott could actually have an effect it would be nice if some it would just be nice if it felt like the people had any kind

of power yeah and that may end up being like you said kind of we have to go not go around but i I was watching Chris's show last night and I forget who he was talking to. But, you know, one thing that they were saying was it's really easy to be mad at the Democrats in Washington. And and I think there's a lot of like a really, really valid criticism of their kind of lack of of action on things. There also is the fact that they do have legitimately a very limited amount of power, which isn't an excuse. But it's like you don't have you don't have the house. You don't have the Senate You don't have the White House, and you don't have the Supreme Court unless Amy Coney Barrett continues with her truly stunning Redemption story Nothing made me happier than that headline. I saw on the paper today conservatives furious with Amy Coney Barrett I didn't see that like all right, you know I think she's gonna maybe Sandra Day O'Connor it was Sandra Day O'Connor she come in as a a conservative but then ended up voting very much down the middle I think and there was I forget which justice it was but there was a justice who was very maligned by the right because they were a Reagan appointee but then they ended up voting the longer they were on the court the more they drifted to the left and kind of you know were a key vote anyway all that is to say it is super duper frustrating to feel like the world is burning and like you know Hakeem Jeffries is talking about you know like Aaron Judge not swinging at every pitch and Fritz Schumer Chuck Schumer is talking about uh pizza it's like get it together although they also do have a limited amount of power I mean the more that honestly the more that I watch this the more I think AOC is the future of this whole thing I swear to God which look AOC seems as out there on our side of things as Trump seems out there on their side of things and yet I feel like uh first of all she's clearly very very smart and uncowed she's she just seems like one of the only ones out there who's not afraid of them you know and this is just because i just see her on tiktok just talking about shit in a way that really resonates you know i i would be unsurprised if we weren't talking about president ocasio cortez at some point um which i think would be a pretty good thing that'd be

amazing yeah i was looking for the tape of her talking about how they're just very how the gop is just very sensitive and their feelings get hurt you heard that tape yesterday right i don't think i did oh this was about censuring um al green green yeah yeah this is longer this might be a really bad idea for tape especially since i don't know what i'm doing with the show today we are the place that people turn for their aoc update i heard literally like about six seconds of this and this whole thing is a minute long so apologies well i think we can live through a minute of tape

this is you know this is not an unusual occurrence as we've seen marjorie taylor green famously disrupted the State of the Union under Joe Biden. And Democrats allowed her speech, you know, they allowed her speech. Republicans are the ones that are now issuing censure motions because they dislike what a Democrat did during the State of the Union. So, you know, I think that it's important for us to note that. And it's really because Republicans just, they're very thin-skinned and they're very sensitive and their feelings are very easily hurt, and so they have to vote on censure resolutions.

That's what I had heard, that little clip at the end. By the way, can we do a little mini fundraiser to buy windscreens for reporters of the Hill?

Get a caterpillar on there. Come on. You know NPR's sitting on

thousands. You know Howard

Berkus alone is sitting on a mountain of that exact kind of windscreen technology. Get any of the NPR correspondents who are regularly covering outdoor events in the west yeah that's the whole that's the whole look man that's a whole move anyway uh can we

ever so slightly andrew too no can we pivot hugely i would like i would actually like to

request a huge pivot okay how about this huge pivot how about how about we thank some donors yeah and then and then we talk about a personal pivot that may have been happening in my own life that i didn't even realize until i woke up this morning and it was the music of kelly clarkson that no not really but um uh yeah let's talk about that in a second we was hoping for some razzle

razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle

all right let's go ahead and do some dazzling donor appreciation here on this friday these donors are donating a dazzling amount of dough they are making this a thing that can happen five days a week this is 100 in fact 1 000 listener supported we have received absolutely no support from the fart coin yet.

I mean, we've probably earned more money based on fart jokes than a lot of people

have. Yes, and we've contributed overall to the fart climate. Oh my god.

Extensively. I have a methane cloud over my house. And have yet received

zero remuneration from our contribution, which is the reason we're so thankful to have our buddy Bobby Pape in Boston, Massachusetts. supporting the show, checking in. His name is pronounced Greg Cody,

which, if you know, you know.

And then he requests, and Bobby, anything for our buddy Bobby Pape, a.k.a. Greg Cody, he requests some ragtime music.

Do you have some ragtime music? I think I see where this is going. Okay.

So, on the Dan Levitard show, do you want to explain it, Andrew? This is really more your world than mine.

What's the Dan what show? Okay, on the Dan Levitard Show with Stu Gott, there is an older fellow named Greg Cody, who's a journalist. He's a columnist for the Miami Herald. Miami Herald, exactly. And he's always giving these little essays about what it was like back in my day. And so he'll take on—I've encouraged him via social media before to take on light bulbs, for example. I think he could do a whole essay about how modern light bulbs are too confusing. And back in my day, a light bulb, all you had to know was the wattage. So that's the type of thing. Yeah, I know he does.

That could also be a rant.

Yes.

If you wanted to.

It could be. By the way, this week's newsletter for TBTL is a return of the yays and nays. The TBTL yays and nays. We have some great ones from the listeners. But anyway, that's not what this is about. This is a back in my day from Bobby Pape, pronounced Greg Cody, apparently. That's right. Bobby says,

tens there was a time when podcasts were pure just two bros regardless of gender broing it up planning to discuss current events but instead rambling on about sky jinx garbage anxiety and tmi about their bms and bmis no production teams no sponsors just raw beautiful nonsense now every washed up and wannabe with a mic and an internet connection as a podcast how you living jay piven i'll tell you how we're living jeremy drowning in content nobody asked for this is good by the way i wish i would have wrote this back in my day a bar stool was something you sat on true crime was something you read about in the newspaper over breakfast and joe rogan was a dim-witted radio station handyman yes he was news radio shout out we didn't need no high-flying A-listers or stinking sponsors or multi-hour deep dives into topics nobody cares about. Okay, maybe that last part can stay. As long as I don't have to keep hitting the skip 30 button because that was how it was back in my day. That was really good, Bobby. Very well done, Bobby. That was solid. Bobby may be... Like a BM I had recently. Pretty good. Nice double tapered. Sorry, Bobby. Yes. You asked for it.

Bobby may be the listener who's as obsessed with the Levitard show as I am. I think there's like three of us.

Do you think there are three of us? There are three of us.

Yeah.

Do you think that was he listening and then concurrently with you because you started talking about it on the show so much before you?

My guess is he probably was listening before me. I was pretty late to the Levitard game, if you'll recall. You and the StewBots were trying to get me on Lebitard a long, long time before I finally started making it a daily habit.

I think I started hearing it in Bellingham on KPUG. There was a local AM sports radio station, KPUG, that had, for a while it had a three-hour local afternoon show, which I just... freaking loved it was i mean it was uh it wasn't much to write home about but the idea and it wasn't very the the studio the station wasn't too far from my house i would go past while i was taking rudy to the dog park and the idea that every day there was just some hard-working local sports sports broadcast it might have been called the zone or something you know one of those kind of weird athletic names anyway but i think that same station or it could have been a seattle so somebody was playing levitard in the morning and i was listening and i was like this is so good And I got very, very into it and then then kind of lost, you know, lost my place with the whole show. And then little did I know my good friend Andrew would become one of the one of the country's experts, leading experts on the lebitardiverse.

I'm not signing off on that designation, but, you know, I listen to it so much and Genevieve will sometimes listen to it with me. We'll maybe play darts and I'll have it on or she'll be sort of like playing her bird game on her computer and I'm throwing darts. when we're listening to Levitard. And there are a lot of sonic indicators of that show. And Veeves was very excited the other day because she came home. She said, there are a few more food trucks in the university area these days in the U District because certain buildings have been torn down. But while they're waiting to start construction on the new building, there are some various food trucks that have sort of parked in these sort of vacant lots. It's kind of cool. But Genevieve said one of them definitely was playing a Levitard because she heard the dun-dun. Like they play this fanfare sound when they do these ridiculous top five lists or whatever. And she's like, I heard the dun-dun. You got to talk to that guy. He's listening to Levitard. Would you say that Genevieve gets the show? Does she get the show? That's right. I don't know if I should be doing my imitation of Poppy.

Yeah, on the line. Thanks, Bobby. Appreciate you. Thanks, Greg. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Look who it is.

It's Bane Weinberger, aka William.

That's right.

William goes by Bane. That's right. Bane Weinberger out there in Paonia, Colorado. Paonia, Colorado. That's a new one for me. I'm going to be in Longmont, Colorado here, coming up for a TV story in a few weeks. I wonder how close I'm going to get to Paonia. bane says last year in my dazzling message i used the turn of phrase the beautiful biz boys oh that's where that came from that ended up being the episode title and more than that we call ourselves the biz boys all the time now we sure do yeah sure do yeah that's big that's part of the canon now it's part of the lexicon bane thank you i received what must have been my one and only jolt of social media endorphins don't get addicted to it bane it's honestly it's uh It's a it's a wild ride, but it only ends in heartbreak It's better to have one great jolt and then wean yourself off of that particular like what is it dopamine dump? Take dopamine and go home As an old 73 year old computer guy who has been on the internet pretty much since it has existed what an interesting perspective I mean I guess I I guess to a degree, do we have the same perspective?

In other words, I'm guessing he's saying who's been on the Internet pretty much since it existed. If he's a computer guy, we're talking about early Internet that we are probably not privy to.

Stuff where it's like, yeah, way before it got UX friendly enough that I was able to log on and, you know, try to meet single ladies in my area via a picture of picture of mickey mouse made out of made out of dollar signs and tildes or whatever like oh oh yeah i like news around there for a second there yeah yeah like i remember getting on new like alt like you know something.net or something.alt.whatever but it'd be anything you were into like the music of wilco or like the It was just basically these chat rooms, but it was all text-based. There was no photos.

You had ASCII art, right? ASCII art, thank you. ASCII and Yell You Shall Receive Eat.

ASCII anything. Andrew, I have kind of a big ASCII for you. But I just remember working at the Visitor Information Center and being in these, I guess, I feel like they were called news groups. But it was always the same. It was something dot something dot something. And, but again, it was whatever topic you were interested in, but then the people would create these, these, these art pieces that were just made out of, you know, the characters on the keyboard, on the QWERTY keyboard that you could use, but you could, if you were smart enough with it, you could make like Aladdin or whatever. And I'd just be looking at these things, you know, and sometimes maybe someone would make like a sexy lady with it or whatever. But so that was when I caught on to the Internet. But but, you know, Bane being somebody who's been on since probably the before that day. It's an interesting perspective as to where the Internet now is.

You know what I mean? Like, it's been probably something to behold. I've never felt comfortable with the book faces and such, generally considering them evil incarnate. Now, do you know what the book faces are? And there's a Facebook. Oh, yes. Okay. Well, Bane, you were ahead of the curve on that, realizing book face was probably not going to be. It's amazing that a website that started out rating the hotness of co-eds at Harvard turned out to be a bad thing. I don't know how how I didn't see that such a pure start. Yes, it's so great. And it's ended so well with with its with its founder. But I sure experienced what a trip that was to be a real boy, being perhaps the only 10 on the western slope of Colorado. Oh, Bobert. So now I'm getting a sense of where Paonia is. Bobert was our rep until she found an even redder district in which to run. That's true. Lauren Boebert did shortly after allegedly having overly sexual time at a live performance of Beetlejuice. I mean, it's Beetlejuice. She had to seek redder pastures. Who doesn't get horned up? Yeah, right. Watching the touring regional version of Beetlejuice.

I think the Beetlejuice has everybody got everybody worked up.

A little bit worked up, okay. Okay, live from London's West End, Sir Lord Michael Wilson's Beetlejuice, the musical. Anyway, let's see here. All I could do was corner one of my slower friends and play it for her with uncharacteristic glee as she backed away slowly into a hedge.

This is him, again, just trying to share his victory of the beautiful biz boys.

That's right. I see. TBTL has been my companion my refuge and tenuous connection to pop culture for the last dozen or so years the boys have been there to share the highs and lows throughout this time for which I am dazzlingly grateful here's to another great year well Bane we're dazzlingly grateful to you thank you and keep thanks for taking care of the TBTL outpost in Paonia Colorado and I'm sorry that when you do have your yearly moment with the show So there aren't enough people to share it with out there, but we appreciate you fighting the good fight. Absolutely. Spread the word. That's right. We'll get up to two listeners in Paonia at some point. I think that's achievable. So thanks, Bane. Appreciate you. Thanks also, Bobby. We couldn't do this thing without y'all. Hello and welcome to Top Story. i realized something today andrew and that is that you and i have as i remember on or off here had uh had zero conversation about the fact that the seattle seahawks football team appears ready to lose two of its franchise players one who is a holdover from the glory years of winning super bowls and who i'm guessing is the last active player from that roster um from the roster that went to the super bowl and uh a couple of times in a row once with a good outcome once with a less good outcome and then this kind of incredibly talented i'm talking about tyler lockett when i'm talking about the kind of the sort of legacy aspect of the seahawks so you're losing the the announcement was that the seahawks are gonna part ways with tyler lockett they're gonna have to pay him too much money based on what his actual abilities are as far as they see it and tyler lockett's just an absolute pillar of the seahawks uh for years and years and years And again, someone who is part of these really, really amazing years and is now going to be gone. That kind of hurt. But I also saw I also realized, like, I don't think it would have made sense to pay Tyler Lockett the amount of money they were going to need to pay him for the production they were likely to get from him. But it's still a sad thing because he's just been such a great member of the community and a good guy. Right. Really, really good guy. You know, but then in this on the same day, there's an announcement. so my family hawk squad is buzzing because you know my mom's favorite thing would be when tyler lockett would catch uh make a big catch she would in all caps say lock it up lock it on the hawk squad chain and that was such a nice it was a fun family bonding experience it meant things were going well it meant tyler lockett was making important catches we were all watching it my mom's getting hyphy she's saying lock it up lock it that was almost half of why i wanted tyler lockett to stay on the team so my mom could keep typing lock it up lock it into the family text chain and

And remember way back in the day, his nickname was No-E because he had Ricardo Lockett, I think, on the team as well. And they spelled their name.

I'll never forgive Ricardo Lockett for not driving through the pass because he was the person that was part of the interception against the – it's like you're going to throw to a Lockett but not Tyler Lockett at that point in the game.

But he had an E on his name. He did. No-E. Then you had Tyler Lockett come in. No-E. No-E. I don't know. just thinking i just remember me and my friends way back in la my seahawks friends in la talking about no e

And I just happen to remember that right now. It was flooded with memories.

So that's always a sad thing. And football is very much this way because it's such a physically what's the word I'm looking for? Deadly sport that like the difference between being someone who is valued by the team and like, you know, a critical part of the whole thing. And being someone who the team does not have much use for is often like one season because it's just so incredibly hard to keep doing this. So it happens a lot in football. I was a bit bummed. I was not surprised about Lockett. And then like an hour later, the announcement comes that D.K. Metcalf, who's the whole other end of the spectrum, which is to say he's still very much in the prime of his career. He is a physical specimen, unlike any other. And he is a player who, when used properly, seems almost impossible to stop. He wants a trade. So we go from we're losing the legacy guy that we all love, who's just been around forever. And we're also losing what I would say is still somewhat the future of the team in like two hours on one day. And yet, and my phone is blowing up, my girlfriend, who is not an active follower of NFL news, is like, are you okay? She's sending me, she's getting updates about Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf. And she's like, how are you doing, Jay Piven? I'm like, it's how you live in Jay Piven, okay? Please listen to the show. stop just reading the descriptions to find out if i'm okay to find out if i'm in a ditch somewhere but um anyway that's how big of a story it was of course my family text chain is melting down everyone's talking about it and i realized i didn't even have any super strong feelings about this to the degree that i would want to put it on tbtl necessarily or that like i needed to like download with you or or the or the criminals really like i just didn't feel like you and i

We did talk about it a bit the day of, yes.

Did we talk about it on the show? No, it was off air.

I think the news was sort of breaking during the show, so we would take a break and be like, oh, more news.

I think it was pre-DK, too.

No, it sort of happened during two breaks during the show.

So then the DK news came through also?

We didn't talk about it a lot. We're just like, man, what is happening? I do want to ask a question, though. This DK thing, like he's requesting a trade, it doesn't mean that the team has to trade him, But it's the idea that like, well, if you don't trade him, then he's just not going to perform.

He'll just it's the weirdest thing about the I mean, the way that the I'm I've explained Bitcoin. OK, and now let me explain the NFL. No, NFL contracts are really they're really weird and they're really bad for the players because what they basically the way they usually work is we will agree to pay this player a whole. Let's just say you're a DK Metcalf. We agree to pay you all this money, but also most of it's not guaranteed. So we actually don't have to pay you all of this money. We pay you some of this money as a bonus and some of it is quote unquote guaranteed. But then there's a bunch of it that's in, that's why they cut Tyler Lockett because they owed Tyler Lockett all this money unless they cut him and then they owe him no money. And it's because this is how the NFL deals with the fact that it's a deadly sport is like you promise people a bunch of money and as soon as their bodies can't continue, then you just go adios. But also tied up in that is if you are like DK on a long-term contract where you are getting guaranteed money you can request a trade which i've never i can't think of a time where a high profile player has requested a trade and they haven't been granted the trade because the idea is and it's kind of funny because this is a professional business there's tons of money on the line you would think it's the kind of thing where you could say as the player i'd really like to play somewhere else and the team says well that's kind of a you problem your job is to show up and catch footballs when we throw them to you and yet that's never how it plays out it's like as soon as somebody invokes the magic word of i want to trade then it becomes well we can't have somebody here who doesn't want to be here with 1000 of their heart and am i wrong in thinking

that this is happening a lot more in the nfl now like just in the last couple of years right because like the nfl has not been known for like a real player empowerment league this is the kind of thing you see in the nba a lot and the nba players kind of have more leverage yeah those are those contracts are locked down and so they'll you know request trades or or um who was our boy out of miami who pooped his pants the other day that we were butler jimmy butler kind of made a big stink to get out of miami so to speak um hey that's right i didn't even i didn't even realize i was rhyming those words um but uh anyway yeah tenacious andrew it sort of seems like um it sort of seems like we're starting to see more of this in the nfl or i haven't been paying attention

i think we're seeing more of it because i guess because it's working but again it's just a funny thing to me because it's like you sign these legally binding documents that everyone is held to but then it's like that uh the silo it's like don't say i want to go don't say i want to go go above ground because if you say

I want to go above ground. You have to go above ground.

I keep forgetting about that. I told you I read the books forever ago. Now that makes me actually want to reread the books. But I should check. What's the platform there that that is on? It doesn't matter. Why am I asking that?

Blimpy.

I can look it up.

I think it's on Blimpy. Dubu. Is Blimpy, are they still making subs? I don't know. That's a really good question. The Blimpy, I feel like they could have put a Blimpy right in next to a Pudge Brothers. It really locked down the questionable naming.

When I think of Blimpy, I think of them and The Wrap and Roy Rogers as restaurants that you only see along the side of highways, right, when you're on a long road trip.

Yeah, I feel like Blimpy must have franchised or something, because there was no Blimpys in my life, and then they were kind of everywhere. And now I feel like I don't see many of them. So back to this whole football thing, like considering the reaction from everyone in my life and just, I'm sure Seattle sports radio is going completely nuts, you know, as well they should. I'm sure that all of the Seattle radio, the Seattle media, this is some huge deal because again, the Seahawks were not, as I remember it, like an offensive juggernaut as it is. Like this is almost like, this almost feels like it puts them potentially into rebuild mode. like they do have jackson smith and jigba who's very promising so that's you know exciting or whatever and then as you point out i am this is coming back to me now we do have jake bobo so build around bobo and and smith and jigba and the good thing about bobo is it's only 80 bucks a month well that andrew actually brings me to my theory i think that fubo tv may be slowly kind of putting slowly changing the nature of my relationship with the seattle seahawks football team in that i'm not like i'm just kind of i'm i guess i would say that i'm i don't know i'm ambivalent isn't the word agnostic maybe i'm just kind of like huh all right well i guess we'll see what happens like i'm not like bummed about it i'm not excited about i have no overly strong feelings about what is now a huge huge question mark around this football team that i do get pretty into generally speaking and in years past it has been a central part of my life and i think it has to do with fubo because last season i probably watched what are there 17 games

now how many games do they make these people play it's was it 17 weeks 16 games with the well it

It used to be 16 games, so I think it's 18 weeks with 17 games. I know they added a game, which the players were not happy about, right?

That makes sense, because it's an odd number now, yeah.

But, like, of the 17 games, I probably, like, sat down and, like, you know, blocked out my whole afternoon and stared at the screen for, like, let's say, eight of them, which might sound like a lot to normal people, but, I mean, it used to be 16. And the preseason! like it used to be this was a high holiday for me and I know what I'm describing is a journey you've been on for kind of a long time with your Sunday pop-up and just other things but like I think because I have this way that I can watch it on my phone it means and I've kind of de-emphasized it in my life as a thing that I had to build the whole day around and also it's nice because then for Becca it's like Sunday doesn't have to be like well I lost Luke every single Sunday you know for 17 Sundays or whatever it is during the during fall in the winter it's like no we'll go do stuff we'll go shopping we'll just live our life and then I will also kind of low-key have this game on in the background and if it gets close maybe we'll boot it up on the television or we'll kind of sit here in this like Nordstrom waiting area while I watch how this third down play goes but then I'll just put the phone back in my pocket and keep it moving like the fact that I don't that i have a way to watch the game to some degree but like basically kind of like half watch the game but get enough of the info i think it has shifted my actual emotional relationship with the team and i guess it's a good thing but also it's a little bit sad for me like it feels just like this the nature of my relationship with with the seahawks is changing a little bit i totally

disagree with you okay and it's weird that i would say that because this is your life in your feelings and i'm telling you that i disagree with you but i i do disagree i don't think it's the fubo thing i as your friend and somebody who has been kind of our relationship to football individually has been sort of evolving over the years because of different life is it the drinking i think no well i don't know but i think it's your lifestyle has changed because we saw that i i saw this and i think we even talked about it um i i think your relationship relationship to football was changing and evolving before you got fubo i think fubo has now given you an opportunity to sort of check in remotely here and there more than you were maybe even the season prior to that I think

it's because you're traveling i think a lot of factors and i i am going to write the show description luke and andrew talk about how becca is ruining luke's love of sports so you know she

only reads the description let's see what and i'm not gonna mention it let's see what the response is okay i don't know i love this i don't know i love this relationship depth charge you're gonna

drop no but i i do think that a lot of factors i mean so many factors in your life have changed as have mine and like let's go way back i mean this doesn't uh back in my day um you know like when you and i were watching football together with a group of friends i mean listen so much has changed since then but that was like it was we'd all get together on a sunday we all lived in the same town we all lived in the same town it was boozy it was pizza-y it was you get rolling on this with bloody mary's in the morning and it goes until the then it just keeps going until you fall asleep on sunday night and like there was that i mean so many things have changed You aren't in your traveling. So, yeah, you have a relationship with Becca now. You live in a different part of the state.

You are traveling so much and doing work on Sunday is often a way that I'm able to get from point for basically from being gone to back home, which means that's the football gets kind of obliterated.

There's that. It could be a travel day for you. But also, if it's not a travel day, you have so few days to spend with Becca. I mean, this is my observation. I could be wrong about this. but you you're doing you're trying to prioritize spending time with people that you care about because you realize I'm not I am on the road so much I think I've been seeing your relationship to football change before Fubo then you got Fubo and then you're like oh it was kind of fun I could watch on the plane or I could watch over here and then put it in my pocket I mean I don't know if I'm part I don't know if I'm splitting hairs there but that's kind of how I see that's really

interesting you might be right sometimes we are the least able to actually observe change in our own life because we are kind of the ones driving that bus or something and it's people other people observing us that's more accurate i could totally see that yeah maybe maybe that has been the case and and i just didn't quite realize it um although i'm trying to yeah you were listening on the radio

last before fubo you were telling me well i was traveling here and i was i tried to catch some of it on satellite radio and you were like yeah i heard the second half of that game yeah i remember

a lot of times also being on an airplane that would be uh taking off and like i'm trying to listen on sirius and i and it has a buffer yeah of like i remember there was this one game that was an insane game and it was down to the last like three minutes and i knew that satellite radio had buffered maybe three minutes of it and then we take off and i'm just like please god can we have some finality before i run out of because now there's it was like one of those small planes it doesn't have wi-fi so like i'm just like please gods of serious satellite and i think they didn't and i think i like landed and i think it maybe even had a good outcome but yeah okay well let's just say i i take your i take your observation as being very potentially accurate it's weird that like it's weird that i feel a little a little like wistful about the whole thing let's say it started two years ago let's say it started three years ago whenever whenever this started kind of and i think you're right i think me living alone me living in another city i'm not with i don't have a crew in portland of seahawk fans that i get together with it's i don't know if i'm if i if i miss just like because here's the thing when you care about a team as much as i cared about the team in the the height of it when they win when they do something like win the super bowl it's just so euphoric or when they're winning like i think about that game against the green bay packers the nfc championship game when we had like a you know i think it was like a one percent chance of coming back and we did the the joy that i felt at the end of that game is in the top 10 joyful moments of my entire life you were also in the arms of brock huard in the arms of a huard actually not that was oh that was a different game against the niners where richard sherman tapped it over to tapped it over to uh whomever it was that was the crab tree game yeah that was us in that was that was that was we we no no please but that was also that was i put that in the top 15 if brock hadn't lost his wedding ring suspicious right very suspicious um you know it would have been top 10 but no like i guess the thing is i don't know if i'm if i miss caring so much about it because when it goes right it's so euphoric but it can only be that euphoric if you're also devastated by the bad outcomes it's like you in my experience you have to go so all in on this thing that you you you take the the the crushing lows with the crushing highs i don't have the crushing lows anymore you know what it feels like is the way people describe being on an antidepressant like you the lows aren't as low and the highs aren't as high yeah and that's kind of where i'm at with with the seahawk football and and I miss my old life a little bit but then I also wonder do I just miss my old life do I just miss

being 10 years younger and living in Seattle and having my life just a little bit more mapped out for me like I just kind of I just had a I had a kind of a a sort of is the word um proscribed proscribed no I just had sort of like a thing I went to Cairo in the morning and did the show probably with you and then I went here and I went there and we had these events and I just my life felt like it was kind of it was kind of spelled out for me kind of mapped out for me yeah and the The joy that I felt in a lot of those events around the Seahawks and around drunken karaoke and stuff, it was just one kind of lifestyle. It's very different than my lifestyle now, where now I'm just like, I live alone. I travel constantly. I'm a little more disconnected from certain things.

You live alone in a pretty remote area, too, at least as far as—

I live alone in a pretty remote area. I do appreciate that my neighbor does fly a 12 flag every single Sunday. There's a game, including the preseason. That's how disconnected that— That's how I find out there's a preseason.

Does he fly it upside down when the Seahawks are in distress? I'll ask him. When the trade news happened on Monday, did he fly it upside down?

Go ask him if he can start doing that. That would be so dope. Anyway, so yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe Fubo, hey, maybe Fubo's a way back in for me or something.

I wonder about that, yeah. I want to say one other thing. I do think it has more to do with your life kind of changing and evolving, and I think mostly for better, by the way. Yeah, in a lot of ways. But regarding especially kind of football, like probably, whatever, I don't want to get judgmental on that for either one of us, but because maybe someday we'll both get more into it. I would say one other thing, though, that could be a factor, because I think this is a whole stew of various things as time marches on. The Seahawks, while not bad right now and are kind of interesting, and I think you're with me, like we like the quarterback, Geno Smith. I think he's got a very interesting story. He's an interesting guy. Yeah. But he's still like we are in a transition as a team. I don't know why I'm saying we are. I don't know if you know this, but I'm part of the team now, Luke. Big news. They're bringing me on board. Big is true. They call me the new DK Metcalf, Luke. Our bodies are both specimens, but just different kinds of specimens.

Science wants to study both of you for very different reasons. Although you wouldn't be, would you be like the third Walsh, which one was it, Walsh or St. Ignatius that had Stefanski? It wasn't Stefanski.

Mike Varel? I think it was Varel, and that was Walsh Jesuit. I only went there for one year when I was a freshman.

Okay, but still, you would be joining a long line of Walsh Jesuit football players to make it to the NFL level.

Actually, let's look that up for a second. But anyway, what I was going to say was I also think that, like, it might be different if we were smack dab in the middle of the Russell Russell Wilson era. Like, even if all of your life things were the same as they are right now. I mean, I think it's mostly just where you and to a degree I am kind of in our life right now and all the various factors. But also, it's kind of a decent time to be sort of not checked out, but just kind of a little bit arm's length, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, like, what is the medicine that you take to when it kind of evens you out in the highest? SSRI. Yeah. Whatever kind of blocker. It just sort of seems like, yeah, it kind of makes sense. Like we're transitioning. We don't know. We nobody really thinks that, like, Gino Smith is going to take us to the promised land. Right. Like we're all you're right, abiding our time a little bit.

It's kind of like they're not they're not particularly great at anything. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, you're right. i i wonder it's impossible this is impossible to know but like yeah let's say that this is we rewind to when we're like you know going 12 and 4 and winning the nfc west and going to the super bowl two seasons in a row like am i able to am i checked out am i sitting in sky harbor airport and like like listening to it on serious satellite on a front on a saturday a sunday rather what do they play on is it it's every given saturday right even thursday i believe it's i've been waiting all day for saturday night right that's the song i'm pretty sure but like yeah like if if this is peak russell wilson era and the legion of boom am i like am i scheduling my flight on a sunday such that it's also when they're playing football or am i moving heaven and earth around my cbs assignment to make sure that is not happening and i think probably everybody loves a winner right so if we were just like if we were just world beating i probably would be

more engaged with the with the content the list of graduates from walsh jesuit high school in cuyahoga falls ohio to go into the nfl uh is manageable it's only about let's see it looks like seven players long can i go through this with you tell me if you know these people yeah

If I can say what team they played for, any of them. I bet you most of them I don't know.

We're going back. We're starting with the furthest back, which is not that far back, if you consider the history of the world, part one. 1987, it looks like this person only maybe had one year in the league. You're never going to get this. I don't think. Steve Fitzhugh?

Steve Fitzhugh.

I might be saying that incorrectly. The last name is spelled F-I-T-Z. That's the easy part. That's the Fitz. than H-U-G-H. I'd say Fitzhugh.

That's what I would say. I'm not familiar with the work of Steve Hay. Hey, hey. If the shoe fits you, okay, does it list his position?

Yes, it says here Denver and was a defensive back, if I know what DB stands for. But that was way back in 87. Now, this is 98 to 2000. We're skipping ahead by more than a decade here. Kevin O'Neill.

Kevin O'Neill. Well, wait, that's not – no, it was Kevin O'Connell. That's the coach of the Minnesota Vikings, right? So, yeah, Kevin O'Neal, I don't know. Boy, they do like the Irish last names coming out of Walsh Jesuit.

I don't think – oh, born in Twinsburg, by the way. I don't think there's going to be a lot of players on this list that we're familiar with. But this person – did I mention, by the way, Fitz U played for Denver for that one season? Okay, and then Kevin O'Neal played for Detroit as a linebacker. okay 98 to 2000 gotcha then what about and i'm curious if you know this person tom lapinski brady tom brady exactly uh tom lapinski i'm gonna say

fullback tom lapinski fullback does not bring a bell all of these players had like one or two

seasons and they're all like fullbacks linebackers or these are like positions where it's i mean even

by the standards of the nfl especially hard on your body i could see it being a thing where like if you're just willing to run into a brick wall you could catch on you know in an nf and you were decent college player you might be able to catch on with an nfl team for a season or two but then you're likely i just saw a headline too that was like washington commander's defensive you know the the anchor of the commander's defense bobby wagner says he's staying put and i'm i go bobby wagner is still playing an important role on a defense that almost went to the super bowl like why did the seahawks not want bobby wagner was another contract thing was it a money thing maybe but it's like it's like bobby wagner has not he is not uh what's the word he has not drifted he has not uh you know said drifted easily into that good night he's my guy is like anchoring the commander's defense still and wants to stay there and they're going to keep him.

And did I hear that the commanders might be making a play for Miles Garrett too? Is that like the number one place where Miles may end up? Like they're going to be good next year. Okay, now we have Mike Vrabel, the aforementioned. Now he played for 13 years in the league before he was a coach. He played a lot of places. I believe he was a Patriot, notably. I believe he played for Belichick. kansas city uh those are now what about connor cook luke that name rings a bell to me connor cook let's see here was a let him cook let connor let him connor hinkley ohio uh is where he was born apparently 2016 to 2016 oakland i'm guessing a backup quarterback in oakland you get any

playing time at all trying to get some reps behind marcus tuyasasopo um let me see here

games oh 17 games no oh no no one game i think maybe possibly i can't drop a seven there well it's a little confusing to me is a 17 game average is something that they average out but i think he might have only played one game and then they kind of like math it out um okay this is such a bad idea what about bobby hoyer um it's not bobby it's andrew hoyer isn't it uh i thought oh brian hoyer Brian Hoyer.

Yeah, he went to Ignatius. He's an Ignatius guy. Well, why are you giving me the list of people I don't know? Help me. Well, you asked for Walsh Jesuit. No, I asked for Ignatius. I said, oh, no, you know what? I got confused. I asked which place was from. Oh, I thought you'd said Ignatius. I got confused.

You just sent me. You just said the worst thing you could have possibly said. Wow, that's really saying something. Because now I want to know Ignatius grads to the NFL.

Yes, this is, okay, we know Brian Hoyer.

Okay, Brian Hoyer, St. Ignatius, Cleveland, Ohio, Alumni Process. This is a much bigger list. We're not going to take as much time with this because this is even boring me back to death. Brian Hoyer so far is the only name I recognize on this list. You got Darian Canard. That sounds familiar. concurrent like that's current i should say oh um lean eichenberg 20 i would remember that he helped with the invention of the nuclear bomb right i think so huge i can he was like the guy i can barbie summer i can barbie summer what a time oh there's oh boy you have liam eichenberg and tommy eichenberg both they must have been brothers or something um draymond jones oh yeah Yeah, Jamon Jones, Seattle Seahawks. Seattle Seahawks. Brian Hoyer played everywhere, including Cleveland.

Right now he's playing in Seoul, South Korea for the Seoul Dolphins.

Weirdly on the baseball team. Jake Ryan, Dan Fox, Jacob Bell, Anthony Gonzalez, a wide receiver for Indianapolis.

Yes, that name I recognize.

I couldn't tell you where he played, though. I don't recognize any of the other names on this list, and I'm not going to go through them, assuming you do because you have a lot of like um i don't you know oliver luck the other luck oh so that's houston 1983 to 1986 that was a long time ago actually no i think i think that's

andrew luck's dad no shit really and i think he became the commissioner of the usfl or something like really yeah i believe if that unless andrew luck has a way older brother my guess would be Oliver Luck is is Andrew Luck's father and and and was had a like an important job with a league that wasn't the NFL.

Yeah, he is the he is the father of Andrew Luck, and he is now currently executive director of the United Athletic Conference, which is part of the NCAA. But I'm sure you're right. XFL. Yeah. XFL for a while.

Oh, yeah. Home of He Hate Me. Huh? The XFL let the players put their own names on their jersey, and they famously had a player whose name on his jersey was He Hate Me.

I forgot about that. I caught a little wind of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so I want to go back to your feelings. Can I just say, that was a really bad idea on my part. No, it wasn't. I loved it. We didn't know any of those names.

First of all, I asked for it. You asked for it. It got us. You asked for it. First of all, I requested this. I enjoyed the heck out of it, and it got me to where we were all hoping I'd end up, which is yet another he-hate-me XFL reference. I regret nothing. Back to the feelings.

Okay, here's what I want to do. While we're back, well, here's the deal. I want to ask you a question, which could be a pivot to another conversation that maybe the listeners and we don't even want to have as the show grows long on a Friday. But I do want to stay in the sports zone, the sports zone here for just a second. Your feelings about football we've explored. Would you say your feelings about baseball, specifically the Seattle Mariners, have grown deeper in recent years? Yes. Yes, right? So there's a lot going on here.

Since the pandemic. I think, well, actually, with an asterisk, because the pandemic stuff was so weird with, like, nobody in the stadium. and I think a short was the season shortened to like since there was a period I can't exactly pinpoint it but there was a year at some point and I think I was living in Bellingham where I started to really particularly enjoy the fact that there's so much baseball there's so much Mariners baseball like it became a little something I could look forward to every single day and not even because they were particularly good because I haven't been for a long time But I think because I do live out here alone And there's a lot of lawn to mow And landscaping to do And I don't know just summertime activity This place that I live is really pretty ideal For like nice warm weather That's sort of the whole idea of the thing So there's something about knowing That there's going to be a Mariners game And that I'm going to throw a couple shrimps on the barbie And listen to the Mariners slash watch the Mariners It fills me with great joy And I think my thoughts about the Mariners and the amount of time they take up in my brain is actually, like you said, they are taking up more space as the Seahawks are taking up less space.

And I don't want to make myself a main character in your story, but also the more – it's something that I follow closely, so we end up talking about it on the show more, so it ends up being something that we do talk about more. Am I a main character in your story? I should at least be a supporter. If you're not, I don't know who is, bro. I feel like I should be a supporting – best supporting actor, if nothing else. So that was a really clunky transition, just to say, while we're talking sports and the business of sports and the news of our local teams, have you been following this Justin Turner and Jerry DiPoto stuff?

I haven't been following it other than I know what Justin Turner said, and it filled me with complicated feelings.

So Justin Turner played for the Mariners just about half a season. We acquired him right at the trade deadline last year, and he's known, I think of him first as a Red Sox player.

Oh, I thought of him as a Rocky. Wasn't he a Rocky for a long time? See, that's where...

My limited knowledge of the league comes in, but I just I think I think I boy, if he didn't even play for the Red Sox, I guess I'll be really embarrassed here because I feel like that's kind of what I knew him as at some point in his career. But anyway, so he's a guy who's a bit older, definitely a veteran, came in to Seattle and actually did pretty well here. What's that?

That's where you know more about it than I do. Actually, I want to I want to mention, Andrew, not only was he a Red Sox, but I don't think he was ever a Colorado Rocky. So good for you and bad for me.

And I don't think that he was lights out with the Mariners, but I think he did what he was supposed to do. I think he was pretty solid.

He hit 264. Yeah, okay. He hit 260, which as a Mariner makes him our leading hitter.

Right, exactly. I don't know exactly what his slash line is. Do you have his – it doesn't matter. But all of that is to say he came in. He was a veteran presence. The Mariners wanted to bring him back this year. and now it sort of sounds like he went over to the Cubs for less money than the Mariners even offered him it was a you know relatively small deal like I think the Mariners might have offered him six and a half a million for a one year extension or something but he was like no and now he was talking to the press this week and basically saying you know here you have a professional baseball player who played for our team and he's speaking out loud things that some some players like hell rally have sort of said before but very very specifically saying this is a cheap team they are bananas they have they have a unicorn I think was maybe his word a unicorn of a starting rotation and they have spent zero money in the offseason to like to get some some offense going because the Mariners that have some major offensive problems and we're totally squandering the starting rotation we're like Felixing times five right now and and and so anyway now you have a player straight up saying just like yeah that he didn't say i don't want to play for that organization but he said like it is bananas they're just not going to spend any money and they're just missing their window which is sort of like opens up the floodgates and the wounds for all of us mariners fans who've been screaming that for six to eight months i think if i read

the poll quote right that he said they might have the best starting five in the history of baseball

that is a conversation i've been hearing some people having i mean that is i mean that's an

intense statement and i first of all i so i absolutely salute uh justin tucker for speaking his mind and speaking his truth turner turner but also justin tucker um is that the kicker for

the ravens oh oh oh yeah i think he's a problematic yeah i don't think he's long hopefully he's not

long for this league no is his name justin anyway it go ahead uh i i'm very glad that that justin turner has has uh weighed in on this i'm i remain really really bummed out that the mariners seem to be wasting this opportunity and then i'm also low-key kind of chuffed that he thinks we might have the best starting five in the history yeah right yeah yeah but really what it sets us up for is just more heartache because what it means is we are going to be in it this season probably in other words when you have a staff as good as our staff you will always be in the game because you're not giving up that many runs and you will probably steal a few games like having a staff this good and a lineup of hitters this bad is a recipe for us winning 87 games again and just missing the playoffs right exactly the most torturous place you could possibly be almost

nothing has changed since last year you know they moved a couple of little pieces around but they didn't bring in any big well we got polanco 2.0 yeah the polanco's coming back because they couldn't they couldn't strike any deals apparently and i think one of the reasons is players don't want to come here for various reasons and but one of those reasons more and more is becoming the reputation of this team and it's just it's going to be really really really sad if and i'm you know i'm really trying the spring training right now it's supposed to be hope and optimism i'm usually always blindly optimistic going into a baseball season because otherwise like what is even the point of all this as you and i were saying off air the other day but like it is it you know if we the fan base who are concerned about these things and justin turner are right like it's just going to be so sad to just like be squand to have another squandered season where we get so close because of amazing amazing pitching staff that is affordable right now and the window is going to close on that very very quickly and then not even like bringing in one power player to like to get us over the hump like it's going to be and again it's baseball so weird things can happen you know baseball can happen um but like i don't know man it's just really and and then when you start thinking about like you know the power that the millionaires and billionaires have in this world and then you're just kind of like can we have just one team where the where the uh or just like one sort of happiness where them where they're paying for players and and just bring us some joy mariners but no it's all tied up into selfishness and greed of the people who already have it all

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but like.

Like, Becca's got some kind of website that she can go to that, like, the design of it is so you can figure out if a corporation or an entity has donated to Republican politics or Democrat politics. So you can, like, look up Home Depot and Lowe's and see what percentage of their officially filed donations are going to one thing or the other. And it's actually, I don't know the name of the website, but if it's to be believed, it's kind of helpful, right? You can just kind of see, like, what's this company's whatever. And so after she was asking me about the Seahawks, she then sent me the screencap. She goes, is this true? And it was that same little website, and it basically was indicating that the Mariners have donated more to Republican causes and that the Seahawks have donated more to Democrat causes. Really? And I don't know if any of that's true. I don't want to be on the record. I don't know if that website's believable. But I was like, I don't know anything about that other than to say there's nothing about the Mariners' ownership that has led me to believe they aren't horrible people.

No, no, no, no. I'm not surprised about the Mariners thing. I'm just surprised about the Seahawks thing.

who even owns the Seahawks now is it like is it Joe is it is it Paul Allen's wife or wife excuse me sister Jody Allen still and maybe the legacy I don't know what Paul Allen's politics were I guess they were probably center centrist ish

I mean people with money protect their money

yeah although I feel like Paul Allen he's you know obviously since passed I feel like Paul Allen was in that era where the rich people either they thought they had to or they just were more their default was more left i feel like they were more progressive or at least in this part of the country maybe they were at least yeah like in those days it was like if you're talking about a bill gates it's like he's buying you know mosquito nets for africa you know

well here's a headline from 2018 seahawks owner paul allen gives a hundred thousand dollars to

help republicans keep control of the u.s house whoa okay well so i don't know if that if if now that he's gone if his sister who's who's sort of running things or whatever if they've hewed to the left i don't know if that website is actually not to be believed but mostly the thing was about like please don't let the mariners also be like deeply backing republican causes because then what are we rooting for them to i mean not the players but like the owners we're rooting for them to basically like uh deprive us fans like not do anything really to help us fans have a potentially better team and yet they like in other words let's say this season polanco 2.0 is polites out just with his knee is fixed his brain is fixed he's just he's a hidden fool and uh you know cal raleigh is the big dumper is is is having a career year and uh rodriguez is playing the whole year like he likes to play in the last four weeks of the season and it just all comes together then i guess ultimately let's say they go to the playoffs let's say they have a they have an unbelievable season and then i guess it just enriches their horrible owners who might be donating to Republican causes. Why can't the world just be simple and neat and clean and only the good people win and the bad people lose?

Yeah, why can't people just be nice? As my friend Paul likes to say, it's nice to be nice.

And I think there's enough money to go around. There's not enough winning to go around. That's a zero-sum game. Somebody's going to have to lose if somebody's going to win. But the finances of the world, of the economies, of the of the hoarding i was saying to becca the other day and i'm sure i've said this dumb analogy on on this show a bunch of times but if you just like were like studying an ant colony and let's say there was a million ants and and a hundred of those ants had accumulated all of the leaves you know all of the resources and then there was uh 900,000 990 or whatever the math is had no leaves you'd go something wrong with this ant colony first of all why have the other ants not killed the ants with all the leaves what is that i've seen them i know that i because

this was something that was going around yeah because i remember you mentioned that one time and i wanted to get the actual quotes i swear that was like a tweet or something um that like really yeah put that exactly you you would look at that you'd be like that is so messed up like

how are these hundred ants getting away with this by the way there are so many more of the other ants right right i guess i'm advocating for revolution here but it's just the fact that we as humans are doing that to each other is is uh is is pretty pretty heartbreaking honestly so i guess i can't find i mean maybe i thought i invented that i swore i saw that i invented

the idea of ants i thought i invented the idea of politics no i mean i'm sorry if i'm trying to take that away from you i swore because you mentioned that once before and i was like oh yeah i'd seen that but now that i'm googling around what i'm getting is things like which burbank's amazing innovative thought which ideology do ants follow which honestly i kind

of want to know the answer to this is are there people weighing in is it like a question of of of sort of um you know communism versus the marketplace like what are people what are the

theories on ants political system so this is a quora question so this was just somebody saying which ideology do ants follow and somebody wrote I never managed to get an actual answer, but here are my observations. I would say they follow fascism. Oh, great. They follow their queen leader.

Now the ants.

They follow their queen leader blindly and would risk their lives to say her. They're xenophobic, always killing other species, cultural hegemony. They're always expanding their territory and aiming for total domination. All right. There you go.

you know you know i feel like the mariners owners could take a page out of the playbook and try to get some domination i'm not saying full domination i'd say a little more domination a little bit of

just a little domination that wouldn't be sad as just control the zone is all i'm asking control

did you see we got to go but did you see did you see i saw the only compelling take for not having robot umps which involves it being bad for cal raleigh no really oh because yeah he does such

a good job he's a pitch framer extraordinaire yeah that's a good point it's so funny how much

i how i want the strike zone to be ironclad unless it involves cal raleigh right that i'd like a

little little wiggle room yeah all right okay get out of here i do i've got some ants to slaughter

I didn't know there was a bunch of fascists living out in my yard and in my bamboo tree, so bamboo plant. Okay, that's going to do it for this broadcast week of TVTO.

I don't know how I'm going to write the description today. What did we do?

I thought you were going to put a little depth charge in to see if Becca's reading.

Do you want me to actually do that?

I trust you to do that. It'll be okay.

Okay.

All right. That does bring us to the end of our broadcast week. Thank you for spending it with us. We really do appreciate this being our job. We'll be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you. So we'll see you all for that. In the meantime, have a safe weekend. Take care of yourselves. Oh, I'm going to G-Love and Special Sauce, Andrew.

Oh, nice. Have fun. Is that tonight?

I'm guessing you did not make it to the Seattle show. Wait, that's tonight, I think.

Oh, yeah. No, I'm not going to that. Can you pivot?

How are you going to find out if baby's got sauce or not?

How you live it, J-Pivot. I don't.

How you live it, J-Pivot is a decent show title.

I don't think I'm going to be able to make it, but I'm excited for you, for real. Have fun. That's great.

All right. See you on Monday. Until then, take care of yourselves. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to ants. Power out.