Muse

So how did you two love rats meet?

Oh, it's a fun story. I was working on this project tearing down a condemned bar called the Desert Rash. I went in to meet with the contractors, and Diana is sitting at the bar drinking a seven and seven and seven.

Seven shots of Seagram Seven in Seven Minutes. It's Diana's morning drink.

Oh, that's right. It was very early in the morning. Well, this little spitfire finds out it's me who's closing down the bar. Next thing I know, she's got a knife to my face. I would have been scared if she hadn't been the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen in my life. So how did you and Eleanor become friends? Well, let's just say that we lived in the same neighborhood. Oh, what a fun way to say a normal thing, right? TV-TL! Thank you so much for letting us rap. Don't hesitate. Feel free to clap. What's your question?

How much milk do I have to drink to be big enough to be a quarterback?

Drink as much milk as your little belly can hold. Wait, what? So what was the exact question? Don't worry about it. I'll move on. It's all fine.

so fun be cool get out there and don't forget to be yourself all right hello good morning and

welcome everyone to a wednesday edition tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live excuse me america do you mind my name is luke burbank i am your host do it until it stops will you please stop coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where we got some blue sky peeking out oh ma pa it's just beautiful i believe we have made it through the the worst of the week weather-wise i think we're going to be getting some sunshine some blue skies some high fives and a lot of positivity the rest of the week it starts here my friends with episode 4 436 in a collector series let the fun begin the american turnaround. Remember where you were when you heard about it. Speaking of an American turnaround that we sure hope is happening, Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, spent 25 plus hours filibustering in the Senate over the last couple of days. And it was, to me, truly inspirational. And I do think that there might be an argument that it could kick something off in the positive direction. I was admittedly pretty choked up watching him sign off. But I also had some important questions for the senator from the state of New Jersey.

Did you collapse?

And we're going to get into that. Also, another Mariners collapse. Can it be a collapse if you never had a chance? Another Mariners game. And another TV commercial during the Mariners game that I've got a problem with.

You've got to be kidding me.

So we'll get into that. And we're going to talk to this guy Did you know he's the longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships Meet the next generation of podcast stars He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning my friend

Good morning, that little intro drop for me Makes me feel so young The next generation At some point, I probably was grouped in With something described as the next generation Of public radio producers

I was commiserating with A friend of mine Who's turning 40 today yesterday on the phone and i was saying to her um that i think nate bargetsy has some kind of a joke about how you're you're like the young person in the room for a significant portion of your young adulthood and then you turn 40 and you are like overnight you're older than everyone yeah and it just is totally surprising like in most scenarios that i'm in now i'm the oldest person um professionally speaking i'm the oldest person that works on livewire i'm the oldest person who

He works on TBTL.

Yeah, sure. Grandpa. Generally speaking, if I'm on a CBS shoot, I'm very likely to be the oldest person in the crew. The bosses of me back in New York are generally older than me.

But if you were to watch your show, you wouldn't be the oldest person watching. I would be a baby. I'd be a zygote. And see, that's the hack right there. You put yourself in the room with people who are older and wiser than yourself. Now, would it be okay if I take the reins here and even try to take a segue here in talking about my aging? And one of the things where you can most notice my aging is my hearing. It is not what it used to be, Luke, especially in noisy situations, right? And this is a very classic, I think, sort of middle-aged thing for a lot of people.

like one of the ways you can notice your hearing is going is when you're in a kind of a crowded bar area or restaurant area and there's a lot of sort of ambient sound going around people if there's a din i've got problems exactly exactly i think there's a show title screamed with din which is somewhere i think din there done that oh i don't know we'll figure that out i'll play around after the show see we can cook up but anyway i want to kind of segue into something that you mentioned at the beginning of the show. Didn't I, huh? I don't know. There's something there. Talking about these commercials that we see on the new Root Sports app while we're watching the Mariners game. And there is a commercial. I think it's a shorty. It's like 15 seconds long. It's weird. It's not especially high budget or it doesn't even really have much going for it. But I think it's charming that Genevieve really likes it. She finds it very relatable. It's three dudes sitting in the bar of a casino. This is a commercial for one of our local They're kind of area casinos, right? And there are three dudes, and one of them is talking about doing something to his parlay. He's going to add a leg to his parlay. It opens, Luke, in media's res, by the way, middle of the action. Oh, God, any excuse. Yeah, now we got that. Any excuse to flex. Now that that's in canon. But basically, it's a very short commercial. It opens up. It's kind of a faraway shot at first. Three guys sitting at a high-top table. one of them is mumbling something about you know changing his bet changing a leg on his parlay and then the next guy is kind of like oh that sounds like a bad bet dude and the other guy says no no that sounds awesome man you should even you should add another one just kind of ribbing a little bit and Genevieve's like you know it's like I we hang out with enough people who like to have fun with betting she finds it somewhat relatable she's like I don't know if these are our types of people but like that that kind of banter just seemed kind of very realistic to her And I'm like, yeah, that's interesting, except I cannot tell. I cannot tell what the first several words of this commercial are. And we would turn off everything. We would turn off the heat. We would turn off the –

This is what you dinks do with your evenings.

Yeah, that's right. Like, what is this commercial?

Everybody be quiet. We're trying to get the first three words of this casino commercial.

Bingo. Shut your yapper. Shut your yapper. And so we've been having – I mean, Luke, I don't know, 20 times so far. We're like, shh, shh, what does he say? and i cannot tell what he's saying and part of it is because of the way the commercial is mixed i think they're going for some reality here guy who's making poor edits on it's something michael blaustein i know he brought something to the eagles i just don't know what this guy brought to the eagles no uh now here's the problem with this setup is i've been thinking for the past week or so like i gotta get luke's ears on this because i bet you you've seen this commercial without giving too much away you you can picture this shot i'm talking about you know the commercial now i finally grabbed the audio from this yesterday and rolled it into my computer here and so now i've heard it with headphones on and i think i know what he's saying i'm quite sure i know what he's saying which kind of takes the piss out of all of this but i was dedicated to the bit before i play the tape for you do you remember what he says and did you have any of the same

issue understanding him do i remember what the opening line is yes what does the guy do he

definitely says something about uh the last leg of his parlay but you i listened to it a million times i couldn't tell what he was saying about his parlay yeah that's all i could tell you is that

it's as you've described it's three guys and one of them is kind of goading the other one to make his bet more complicated therefore less likely to uh come through i couldn't have i couldn't tell you specifically what the first few words okay but it wasn't something that stood out to you like what the hell how did they mix well i have other issues with the commercial but let's start here okay let's start here let's start with the with the sort of crowd murmur at the beginning

yeah now the problem here is i do think that you and i are listening with studio headphones on now our listeners are probably listening with some sort of headset or headphones or earbuds or air buds or something like that so maybe everybody will say well it's obvious what he said but this is what was bedeviling us i don't know guys i think i'm gonna add san fran to the last leg of

my parlay bro could you tell what he said there oh no and that's what the studio call okay good i don't know guys i'm thinking about dropping the last leg of my parlay i think he says something else i'll play it again i don't know guys i think i'm gonna add san fran to the last leg of my parlay okay i i don't know guys i think i'm gonna add san fran to the last leg of my parlay it's san

fran that and i couldn't tell that he was saying i don't know guys like this commercial just always sounded to me like a lot of faith in brock purdy yeah right my last talk about parlay and there's something about the i'm not trying to go hard on this guy or the way he talks but they did cast him and he does talk that way which is kind of an interesting voice kind of a nasally voice but they mix it and again this is just old man ears but they mix it in this crowd noise yeah and it Just break again. it's like in the middle of the action so there's no setup which is fine I like that as a conceit but it has to be very clear what you're saying I don't know guys I think I'm going to add Sam Fran to the last leg of my parlay it's just like so many words are lost there but I finally got it with headphones on

my issue with the commercial is that and I am a person who enjoys a good hopeless multi-leg parlay bet it's premised on the idea that his friend is a jerk his friend is egging him on he's like nah man you should

should I just play the whole thing

his friend is like oh no you should actually make it

you should throw another one on

I don't like the energy from his friend

it's funny Genevieve sort of thought that kind of ribbing reminded her of our friend group I don't know guys bro what? that's a risky move

no no he should totally do it you should add another

no way that's never gonna hit Snow Call Me Casino, Seattle. Anyway, there you go. I don't see.

See, you know me, and we've established on the show, I don't like ribbing. No, you're not a big ball buster. I'm not a big ribber. I'm not a ball. I don't enjoy balls being busted. Or chops being cracked. None of that. I like, I'm a very, unless I'm challenging you to a fight on Aurora Avenue, which I have literally done with our friend Camaro Kev. It's one or the other. It's one or the other. I'm either the most loving friend you've ever had, or I'm challenging you to a fight in front of tic-tac-fuck. Or I've got you in a headlock. Those are the two options with me.

I'm either looking out for you, or you have blood dripping down your forehead like Danzig circa 1985.

Precisely. Precisely. And this is in that uncanny valley of friends who bust balls but aren't trying to physically fight, but aren't being super supportive. And I don't feel comfortable, as I would talk about with my therapist, I know what either end of the pool looks like. I don't like being in the middle of the pool because I don't understand how deep it is.

Yes, and there's no walls to cling to. I don't know, guys. I don't know, you guys. I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. Let me ask you this because we've got to now talk about your commercial, which I have not seen. You said you've been seeing one during the game. But I have one more question about parlays for you because as Vives and I were discussing this, and then this came up also on After These Messages yesterday, although we didn't have the tape. So we didn't actually do this whole exercise. But Genevieve asked me what a parlay was, and I gave an explanation that I think is right. But there is one part that I think I need clarification on. When you have a parlay, that means you have a series of bets and all of them have to turn out in your favor. So I keep on using the example of maybe you say Julio Rodriguez is going to get one home run, and Logan Gilbert's going to get eight strikeouts, and Randy Orozarena will get a double. And Dylan Moore will be caught trying to steal a base.

I don't know if they offer that, but man, that would really, that would slay if you hit that parlay. A negative bet, right, against your team. The Mariners will overthrow the cutoff man two times in one inning.

Yes, the Mariners will treat the baseball as if it's covered in Vaseline.

The Benny Hill music. Yakety Sax will start playing at a certain point during the first inning.

I got to say, you're referring to the game that was played a couple of nights ago, I think. No, I'm referring to last night's game. Oh, see, I didn't see last night's game. Brutal. But two nights ago, there were so many weird fielding errors and just missteps by mostly the Mariners. But then the funniest one was actually the one. I don't think it was technically an error, but I can't remember who hit the ball. Maybe you remember. But one of our batters hit the ball out to right field, and it was a really tough, like, kind of, you know, the fielder had to, like, cover a lot of distance to try to get to the ball, and he almost makes the catch, but it bounces out of his glove, and then it rolls gently underneath the wall. Oh, nice. And the Tiger player is just like, I'm sorry. Yeah, Detroit Tigers, yes. Sorry. I always get them confused with the Pirates. Anyway, he's walking around in a circle like when I make Bingo Dizzy. He's like, where's the ball? Where's the ball?

It goes under the padding.

Yeah, do you remember this play?

No, I didn't see that, but I've seen that before. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty Keystone Coppish stuff.

Yeah, and it wasn't a ground rule double because it didn't automatically go under there. He kind of shoved it under there accidentally. Right, so it's on him to get it out. It was a triple. Actually, that might have been Julio. So here's my question for you.

It wasn't Rowdy Tellez with a triple? I don't think so. Oh, my God. Did they, I mean, did they just, like, go into a Buffalo Wild Wings and just pull the third guy at the bar out and put a jersey on him and say, go forth?

I want him to be so good, so bad. I love a Rumbler.

Have we learned nothing from the Vogelbach era?

I did, and it's that I deeply love Vogelbach, and I would die for him.

That did create the greatest meme in our friend group that Kamero Kev made of Vogelbach having a bathroom accident.

And the only Mariner shirt I think I ever had was a Vogelbaum shirt. Anyway, all of it is... say parlays in order to get any payout you need to have all three work out for you right you don't get a lesser amount of money if you get two out of the three the whole point is it's all or nothing or are there some parlays where it's like well it'll pay off real big if all three legs come in but it'll still pay off a little bit if two legs come in my understanding of the parlay is that

all of the legs have to complete in order to collect but there is a thing that happens sometimes where if you have a parlay, you could parlay who's going to win the World Series, who's going to win the Super Bowl, during the same calendar year, or maybe not calendar year, but the next time that event comes up. Who's going to win the U.S. Open would be the first. Yeah, you could string together a bunch of stuff. And what happens to folks, because I see these guys, it's called a sweat. When basically you have a parlay that's like, well, any bet that you're just really hoping comes through and you're watching it, but it's often associated with like, you've got most of this bet And now you just need the New York Rangers to win the Stanley Cup and you're sweating it. And what will happen is the online betting institution will offer you a buyout of your bet. Oh, sure. Let's say that you've got, particularly when it's a large amount, like let's say you've got hundreds of thousands on the line. Like you could win $300,000, but DraftKings is offering you $100,000 right now. Yeah. And the 15th leg on the parlay has not come through, but you could get money without them all coming through. and there's these whole tiktok accounts of just like a guy holding a phone up videotaping a different guy who's decided to let it ride until to see if the lakers win the whatever you know what i mean yeah um by the way uh those those betting apps are this is probably not shocking information but they have been pulling extremely shady moves on people lately who've won big bets they have it somewhere in the fine print that if there is what they call a clear error in other words, they put out a percentage on a bet that they say was mistaken, and you take the bet and you win, they're allowed to not honor your bet, which is such absolute BS as far as I'm concerned.

Wait, because of their miscalculation of the odds?

Because of their miscalculation of the odds. In other words, if they put something out, and it's an advantage to the better, and you bet it, and the thing comes out the way you bet, they reserve the right to not pay you because of what they call a clear error clause. Why is that legal?

Why is any of this legal?

I mean, great question. You know, if you want to understand where I fall in the discourse around this stuff, I don't know, a year ago, two years ago, me and our friend John Goodwin did a TV story about how, like, basically sports betting is going to be legal in every state because of a Supreme Court decision. And we go to the, what's it called, Cirque Sportsbook. We talked to Brent Musburger. It ends up being, I mean, we did throw in some of the drawbacks I mean, we certainly mentioned that there are people who have issues with gambling But it was just basically like a, wow, this is going to be a whole thing You can bet on your phone And then I think a week ago, on the same TV show I work on Ted Koppel did a whole piece on The dangers of online betting Where he just talks to online gambling addicts And people who ruin their life over it with these sports apps So it's like Luke comes in and goes, get a load of this sports book And then two years later, Ted Koppel is like It's the scourge of American life

Well, people remember You as the more serious journalist here I still think you have the upper hand

Ted Koppel is oddly Stylish in real life, which is not What I expected He's got some pretty good fashion And he's also quite robust I remember watching Nightline When I was a kid And thinking Ted Koppel was Not a young person at that time And then I was like, I bumped into him In the head office there at CBS I mean, I bumped into him a number of times. I was like, this guy's kind of got, dude's got some flair, man. He's like a pretty stylish guy, and he's keeping it pretty tight.

I don't mean this as an insult to him or to you or to CBS, but I honestly did not. Oh, wait, he's ABC?

He's like a special correspondent or something for Sunday morning.

Okay, he's coming in every now and then and doing Sunday morning. He's not a full-time CBSer.

I think he gets to do what he wants when he wants. So he comes He generally does He should write a sports book Yeah, exactly We've decided that Luke Made a clear reporting error And we are retracting the story That he put out there Alright, speaking of the Mariners broadcast I have not seen this commercial multiple times I only saw it yesterday And then I texted myself about it And this is the commercial I don't have it in front of me And I don't even remember the name of the company But it is a guy Who is He's in his bed And he is looking, he looks like he's just having absolutely delightful sleep He's on his side and then he rolls over and they say When you have sleep apnea, I'm paraphrasing here When you have sleep apnea, getting a good night's sleep is a real treat And this guy is just having, just, he has a beautific smile on his face of the incredible rest that he's getting and then you look over on his nightstand and he's got a c-pap machine and it's like the such-and-such c-pap machine gives you a great night's sleep now my issue with the commercial is the guy does not have the c-pap apparatus on his face like would that a c-pap machine could sit on your nightstand and just magically give you a great night's sleep i mean the drawback of the cpap machine and i know lots of people use them and lots of people have great results and i may at some point need to avail myself this is no shade on cpap machine or cpap machine users but this is this commercial should be illegal you should not be able to show someone who's enjoying the best night of their the best sleep of their life because of the cpap machine and choose to not represent the most onerous part

of the CPAP machine this is bananas I'm trying to figure I want you don't know the name of the company do you because I'm looking it up here how is this I mean honestly like I'm trying to think

I should have I knew I was going to talk about it I should have thought of a kind of an analog to this or something it's just like it's it is it literally should be illegal it literally should be illegal because because it might give a person the idea that they put this thing on their night stand and then they just get great sleep and that is just manifestly not the case and like putting

your math book under your pillow and hoping you're going to be prepared for the test tomorrow

exactly it'd be like a kumon ad that promises great test results and it just shows the person in a casino drinking kumon is always funny by the way well i think the kumon i think the kumon logo is one of the craziest things i've ever seen it looks like a confused child yes why I mean, I guess this is the before picture. Like, if this is what your kid looks like, bring him in. But it does not seem like a sort of a person who has now become more aware of what the information is. Anyway, I just, I was so mad about this CPAP commercial. I mean, you can hear it in my voice.

I want to see this. I need eyes on this commercial. We'll see if they play it again, okay? But I just need to figure out, like, is there any explanation for this at all? What, what, what, do you find it? I just know. No, but what I do have is a CPAP machine.

What I do have is, this is going to take so long. This is ridiculous. I can log into FuboTV where I am recording all of the Mariners games, and I should be able to. I'm sorry. I am trying to do this on the fly.

Well, while you do that, let me say I am jealous of that. That's one thing the Root Sports app doesn't have. I think you can go back after a game and watch their archive of it, and I don't know if it contains the commercials or not, but I can't record or rewind. If I want to re-watch a play, I can't rewind my Root Sports app. I'm needle-dropping here. I'm trying to get through. You can't needle-drop. You need to scrub. Scrub, scrub, scrub.

I'm sorry. I'm scrubbing. I'm scrubbing. I'm seeing a Les Schwab commercial. I actually like the Les Schwab get more with less. I think that's a clever little bit of-

Oh, it's got a question named Les. Because we include America's best tire warranty in every tire we sell. So you get more unbeatable warranty, less charging you extra. it's why we're more than proud to say you get more from less oh you know what i need to do

andrew i'm sorry this is this is getting so close i need to time stamp when i texted myself we're leaving all of this in by the way i want to be very you know what i need to do

start doing show prep is you know what andrew you know what no i'm the one i'm i know uh let's That's a real calling.

No, no, no. Okay. 7.06 p.m. Okay, this is helpful, Andrew. I texted myself at 7.06 p.m. about this ad. Okay, all right. So we know that it was a half hour into the game, right? All right, nice, yeah. Because the game starts at what, like 6.30?

6.40 now, I believe.

So that's pretty good.

By the way, I'm just going to fill a little bit more time while you scrub for that. We won't play the commercial now. I'm very much looking forward to talking about this on After These Messages. But there is a commercial, and I want to say it's for a local institution. I'm not even exact oh it's for a bank it's for getting a loan or something and it's about a guy who's building a time machine in his garage and his neighbor comes over with a cup of coffee and he's like you're building a time machine have you seen this commercial it is maybe my favorite commercial right now certainly locally it is so good yes okay well more on that later it looks

like you might have found what you know I'm trying to I'm at the 37 minute mark I'm seeing a jack in

the box ad I'm I also wonder what about those tiny little tacos the size of like a you can just eat them like in one bite tiny tiny little tacos in the i mean one of my big problems historically

with tacos is they take two bites yeah and we've been able to we've been able to get that down i'm also you know what you know what's making this um also difficult i think this might be a 15 seconder so it's especially yeah by the way uh just because i'm like uh killing time here and i'm watching a commercial break right now just re-watching last night's abortion of a baseball

Oh, God.

Oh my God in heaven, it's rough. Did you, have you noticed that Amazon has, so I have a lot of thoughts about the Amazon pharmacy positioning commercial, like the positioning of the Amazon pharmacy commercials because I listen to a lot of shows on Pushkin right now, which is the Malcolm Gladwell network, and they're clearly heavily funded by Amazon, and all the commercials are for the Amazon pharmacy, and it's all commercials. They're so leaning into the negative. It's like basically like, it's somebody's interior monologue as they're in the waiting room of a pharmacy and somebody is, like, sneezing near them. And it's just basically, like, everyone sucks and is gross, and why would I want to go be around them? I'm going to just have Amazon deliver my meds. Interesting. I don't think I've noticed that. But then they've got the TV version, which is this woman who's on a flight, and she is, I think she might have, like, a urinary tract infection or something, and, like, as narrated by the thing. And she's on a flight, but she's on the Amazon, like, the Amazon pharmacy thing and she's going to get her meds delivered to her hotel room. The idea is you could be on a plane and realize you're having a medical situation and you could, you know, have the meds waiting for you when you get to where you're going. And then she looks over and the guy next to her has, like, his shoes off and his socks have a hole and his toe is sticking out and she's just like, ugh, gross. It's just like, for some reason, maybe I'm just so anti-Bezos right now, I'm just like, can we, like, not lean, can you have an entire ad campaign across multiple like media landscapes where you're just being like everyone sucks in the world so

stay home and order your meds from amazon uh do you have 15 seconds on the headline i saw this morning about amazon making a last minute bid to acquire tiktok oh i actually meant to i didn't

know that that was i did not know that that was in the office at all i just saw the headline i think it's a pretty breaking story um yeah let's talk about it i mean let me just give you my like two second take on the possible again whatever ban of tiktok etc i don't actually care now it's really weird it's like i was pretty i was pretty bummed the first time around i was watching it i was literally on tiktok when it went away when it closed up for all 12 hours i am uh i i literally don't care if tiktok goes away which is uh which is surprising to me and if amazon bought it would

Would that make you even more reluctant to open it up? Yeah, me too. I mean, not that I never open it up, but I told you the other day I was sort of thinking, oh, you know, I sort of missed some of my parasocial relationships on Instagram. Maybe I should see what those folks are doing over on TikTok. I never followed through with that because taking a phone out of your pocket, it takes a lot of work.

Yeah.

So I never did it. So obviously the temptation isn't that great for me anyway. But then I saw the headline today, Amazon said to make bid to buy TikTok. And I'm just like, oh, you know what? You can have that. Like, that's good. I'll just go from not having it on my home screen to deleting my account altogether. I've got one video up there, which is, I believe, an overdub of my face over a TikTok of a riverbed that my friend made. I just wanted to see if I could figure out the technology of combining two TikToks together. What do you call that? Is it a duet or something like that? Yeah, or a stitch. Maybe it was a stitch. I don't know what it was. But either way, Amazon can have that.

Yeah, that would be, that would, honestly, it being bought by Amazon or it going away are the same event in my mind for me. It's just like, no, thank you. Okay, I'm not going to be able to scrub to this commercial, Andrew, but what I can do is find it and play it for you on tomorrow's show.

Okay, that sounds good.

I can at least identify who the, you know, who the offending parties are with this CPAP machine. I can at least get the brand name, and then we can.

Yeah, because I need eyes on it, I'll be honest with you. And again, it's not a, this isn't a doubting Thomas situation. It's just like, I just want to see, is there any other context? Are there any clues? Is there a chance, and this is a stretch, is there a chance that the CPAP system is a system where you wear it every other night? That doesn't really make sense.

Oh, my God. That would be, I mean, first of all, alert the press because that might actually help me. I might get that. I don't know. Like, if you could wear it every other night. I can't. You know what commercial I have located, Andrew, though? and I'm happy to tell you. I think I'm going to add Sam Fran to the last league of my par life.

See, even hearing it there again with you playing, and I'm like, wait, what did you say?

Anyway, I'll find that for tomorrow, and we will properly shame. Oh, the other thing that was wild last night was they brought Gary Payton on, the TV broadcast, and I want to apologize to the listeners that don't care about Major League Baseball or the Mariners. I know it's very Mariner-heavy right now.

Don't worry about it. It's a short season.

Well, I promise you, this will ebb because they will, I think, continue to just absolutely stink on ice. And then I'll watch fewer games and I'll have fewer thoughts. But here's what I'll say. There is a thing in the preseason of baseball, the minor leagues, where there's a lot of time to fill and a lot of it is pretty uninteresting.

And they regularly bring people in. There are also kind of doldrums during the game. There are parts of, you know, maybe, I don't know, parts of the season. Let's say your team is already kind of out of it. I don't have a problem with them bringing someone into the play-by-play baseball booth for an inning. I had a problem with them doing it in the third inning of the sixth game of the season and therefore totally abandoning calling the game.

Yeah, I really have issues with that too, especially when they bring him in too early or if there's too much going on in the game.

It was, like, still the critical juncture of the game, and it didn't help that I think Detroit was, like, putting more runs on the board. But they got Gary Payton in there. Now, listen, I'm a lifelong Seattle Sonics fan. The Gary Payton, a.k.a. The Glove, provided some of the greatest sports moments of my life as a kid. So I like—I'm pro-Gary Payton. But they brought him in to talk about absolutely nothing that I could tell, and he just—also, no offense, peace and love. Ryan Roland Smith is one of our TV guys, or as Aaron Goldsmith calls him, Hyphen, which I think is a pretty good nickname. But the guy's Australian. Great. Good for him. There's nobody who has a less relevant take on the legacy of Gary Payton than Ryan Roland Smith. He was chasing kookaburras somewhere when Gary Payton was locking down Jordan.

He was eating those stinky melons. Thank you. Durians. I believe that's another country, but okay. Oh, that's right. Is that Thailand, maybe?

East yeah yeah but like I'm sure they have them in Australia I'll go with it like uh like it just was it was a weird thing like somebody said well Gary Payton is willing to come into the broadcast booth and also Gary Payton was like I forget the I mean I literally could go to this because I do I think I had do I am I still there no did I x out of this I could actually go to the tape if I wanted to Gary Payton he's got a son Gary Payton Jr. who uh who is a basketball player I think he plays for the Golden State Warriors he played he also played at Oregon State they're just trying to come up with things to talk to Gary Payton about and Gary Payton they asked him about his son I'll actually give Gary Payton senior credit on this they asked him something about his son and he said like well first thing he said was something like the effect of I just told him there's only one Gary Payton and it's me wow tough and he goes and you know they go they go like something like do you help him out with his career he goes I tried at the beginning and we were estranged oh wow like a gp was getting kind of raw yeah and then he was just like he was describing uh some kind of a film that's in the offing that i think might be about a high school basketball player in the state of washington i think she might be native american gary payton referred to as her as indian it's like it was like you've got you're working on a film you're the executive producer of a film about a basketball player goes yeah she's this indian girl i adopted i'm like what part of the world are we even as a person from the nation like the country of india are they native american what do we it was a very unhinged conversation for the third inning uh for a meaningful section of a game in still a meaningful part of the season for the seattle mares you could hear aaron goldsmith trying to be like and uh telez uh telez unable to uh field that as uh you know so and so rounds the bases it's like get carrie

peyton out of here yeah yeah i didn't i again didn't see much of the game last night so i didn't hear that particularly but that will drive sometimes they do that luke on the radio or you don't even have the visual the visual the visuals to go along with it like how are you doing like call the game now i did see something yesterday and it is funny how my stance for the longest time has been anti prank anti april fool's day yet two days in a row i'm the guy who brings up april fool's day pranks but i did see something that they showed near the end of the game yesterday when i finally had a chance to turn it on and it was hearkening back to an april fool's day past that uh an event that took place apparently in the kingdom but it was actually a prank pulled off by the visiting team the blue jays did you see this and do you have any context

for it no i had switched over to watching adolescence again whatever that's called Is that what the show's called? Adolescents.

So this is before I was paying any attention to baseball, so I don't know these names.

I was busy muting Durs and switching my content to adolescence.

So I should know these names, but I don't really have a lot of context for them. But here, see, I actually- Frank Tanana? I was hoping that you would know about this because I'm looking for explanation here, and now I'm going to be explaining to you what I know, and it doesn't help. But they showed a flash of this during the game yesterday, like a flashback, back to 19, I want to say 92, maybe? or maybe it was 1990 and the Blue Jays were they must have been playing the Mariners because they're in the kingdom and they're in the visiting dugout and then prime Kelly Gruber years okay at some point Joe Carter drives out onto the field in Derek Bell's SUV now this is in 1990

era SUV yeah big green SUV and the big on the kingdom like on the field on the field and I don't know exactly when this happened during the game or like you know in which innings it happened in between but apparently it was an April Fool's Day joke where they made it seem like they were auctioning off Derek Bell's SUV to somebody in the crowd and the whole thing was orchestrated I get I'm trying to read this and talk to you about it at the same time and apparently it was Joe Carter who was actually driving and they kept showing Bell in the dugout just like, what is going on? Why is my car being driven out onto the field? And we apparently have some audio of this from the actual day. This is from Facebook, so it's really hard to play Facebook audio, but let me see if I can do this here. They're driving it on the outfield.

Is this the casino commercial again?

I don't know, guys. I'm thinking about the green Jeep. San Fran on my party. Yeah, so anyway. No, dude, you should totally. I'm confused about this whole thing. I'm reading about it here on the MLB website. It says, I'm going to read this, but unfortunately it's not just the facts, and that's what I like. It says, you can't mention Joe Carter without bringing up his Game 6 World Series-ending home run and Toronto's win over the Phillies in 1993. But if you were really paying attention to those early 90s Blue Jays teams—

Was that off of Mitch Wilde thing? What's his name? The reliever for the Phillies? I think he got rocked that series.

Can't help you. You know that Carter has another claim to fame. It was this prank that sent rookie outfielder Derek Bell into an emotional tailspin. Bell watched— Who was a rookie?

That's why this happened. Yeah. There's a big, like, messing with the rookie's culture.

He looks so confused. It is really adorable to see him. He's like, his mouth is hanging open. He doesn't know what's going on. Bell watched as his money green Jeep was driven around the Toronto turf. It says Toronto turf, but they kept saying Kingdome. I'm very confused about this. That would make more sense, because why would Derek Bell's car be in Seattle? That's what I, but they played it last night, and I swear they said the Kingdome, and maybe they were just playing it because they were doing a roundup of pranks or something, but it was during a Mariners game. I swear it was the Kingdome. So I don't know. I don't understand. Was there ever a time where the Blue Jays ever had to use the Kingdome as their home base? Were they out of there?

Maybe when the Skydome was being built. I don't remember that. I also would be really surprised if the Mariners that this seems like a thing that would have had to happen in Toronto because Joe Carter would have had to go to someone who handles the wall and say hey could you do me a favor and like I'm gonna drive a car on the field I feel like the Mariners ground crew would be less

receptive to that that's exactly why I was so confused is there any chance but the thing is I heard them say kingdom yesterday maybe was it Ryan Roland Smith because yeah maybe he was chasing a kookaburra yeah because it nothing but but just so you know even as they were saying it I was like this doesn't make sense why would this happen on our home turf and they didn't show any mariners they only showed um blue jays so you're right like i'm there with you that it doesn't make any sense it'd be kingdom and so i don't know maybe uh i just misheard it but i don't know why they were also playing this during a mariners game but whatever right i guess because it's april well

here's what i do think is starting to happen andrew they're already realizing there's going to be a lot of dry innings yeah these mariners they're they're like what do we have that's alternative content yeah what what can we start to uh sort of supplement the broadcast i feel like i can hear it again i don't i'm not trying to talk about sports i'm trying to talk about how i feel about sports i feel like i can already hear it in aaron goldsmith's voice that he's kind of like there's a sort of a grim realization even whatever six seven games in for him that like this could be a long season yeah this could be a lot of like you know eight down for the i can't do an aaron goldsmith impression but it's just like a person i think regretting the fact that they didn't take the job in st louis or wherever that was cincinnati or something uh because uh i mean not really but yeah it was st louis i think yeah but like uh just the i i could i hear in his voice this like this this this creeping suspicion that this might be a rough season well you know what

i think probably happened now i don't think i realized that and i i don't have any evidence of this but as you're talking and you referred to the sky dome i'm like oh i don't know that i knew the blue jays played in a place called the sky dome and maybe they said sky dome and i heard kingdom and that's why i'm so confused because none of this makes sense you're absolutely right But I do think I found me.

Maybe better audio of it. I don't know. Nobody should trust me, by the way. I understand. I understand why you and the listeners are like, don't do it, Walsh. Don't do it. But this is apparently from the MLB. And it must have been Sky Dome. I'll bet you a million bucks I heard Dome. And that's how I got confused. Okay, so it's the same footage. Whoa, they got the announcer in on it. That's why you know it wasn't the Mariner. Dude. I love that. That is an incredible prank. That is an in.

I didn't realize that they got the PA announcer on it to actually award it to somebody.

Somebody they announced the winner. Yeah.

That's next level. And even though it's kind of mean, I'm impressed. That took some organization.

Yeah, exactly. And, again, just seeing the guy's face. And I just sort of feel like 1992 April Fool's Day jokes do not bother me. It was really the 2000s that killed April Fool's Day for me.

That's so much better than a hot foot. Do you know about a hot foot? I don't know if I want to know. Baseball is a very pranky sport. It's the prankiest of the sports, honestly, as far as I'm aware. Because there's a lot of downtime. There's just a lot of sitting around. So a hot foot would be you would use bubblegum. You would somehow use bubblegum to attach a book of matches to the foot of an unsuspecting teammate. And then you would light it on fire. And then they would just be sitting there and they're just like watching the game. And then they start to smell something burning. And then they look down and then they've got, you know, something on fire on their foot. And then they dance around to put it out. That's called a hot foot.

Did you see my wildly popular Blue Sky post last night? I mean, we're up to over 50 likes here, Luke.

Dude, that's probably more than I've ever gotten on a Blue Sky post. Let me, hold on. Let me link up.

I said, get out the rye bread and mustard, Grandma, because I'm an emotional eater and this team is killing me.

Okay, on the subject, this is not a story about baseball announcing. It's a story about the Howard Stern Show finding out who Dave Sims is.

Good, I'm closing all tabs. I'm locked in.

Yesterday, I was driving into town and I was listening to the Howard Stern Show. And on that show, they love to say, hey, now, which is inspired by the Jeffrey Tambor character, Hank, on the Larry Sanders show, who's the announcer on a Tonight Show type of show. And his saying, his phrase is, hey, now.

Hey, now.

So they say, hey, now, on the Howard Stern show constantly. It's how they greet the callers. It's part of their lexicon. Well, Dave Sims' home run call is, hey, now. Oh, yeah, right, of course. And it was so crazy for me to listen. Dave Sims, if you don't know, was the Mariners announcer, one of the Mariners announcers for the last, I'm going to say, like maybe seven to ten seasons or something. He just went to the Yankees and is now the new Yankees announcer. And like Howard Stern on air musing about if Dave Sims is saying hey now because he's impersonating the Howard Stern show. It was it was the agony and the ecstasy of me listening to that, Andrew, because I was like, he's been saying it for years. it's all he's ever known i went full d'onofrio like i was just like i was like ah i was also the the show had been over for hours but had i been listening in real time i would have been calling him like everybody's live with mulaney because i was just like dude has been saying hey now forever i promise you he's not ripping you off and howard stern i guess to his credit i'm gonna put in quotes he wasn't like upset about it or like this guy's stealing from us he was like if he got this from us we're stoked about it but i was just like to hear a bunch of people who have no idea what a dave sims is yeah kind of and they were playing tape of him you know calling because it turns out he's had a lot of opportunities to break out his hay now with the yankees this

season yeah yeah he had one or two or twenty opportunities over the weekend uh and so they're

just playing dave sims and again i felt very i felt very possessive of the dave sims experience

now okay a couple of things on this first of all the the howard stern thing i that you've mentioned that hey now thing before and of course i know that from my occasional dip-ins to listen to that show i mean it's usually how he begins the show i think over that music that i know that i've said this to you before i know you hate that american nightmare music is that what it is american nightmare uh the rob zombie for some reason it really worked like it really puts me in the mood for that show it's weird like i would never listen to that song but for some reason like i uh i hear that and i love that it's it's sort of pumping up howard sort of so anyway i don't have that issue with anything comes hey now but anyway one of the things that i like about that is you and i i have like a lot of deep insecurities generally in my life and a small insecurity about the show with Because so many of the – when you and I are talking like, well, what can we put on a T-shirt? You know, when we have the business boys together with Sklaroff and we're like, what can we put on a T-shirt? What are some things – and it's like, wait, was that our joke or is that just somebody else's joke that we just keep saying over and over again? Yeah. Or some other cultural reference? And can we really like – I don't know. Is that really ours, you know, like to put on a shirt or something? And so, you know, I mentioned at the last live show we did in Seattle and the crowd all started singing along to, you take a taco, put it in, I'm messing it up. Whatever the 30 Rock.

You got cheesy blasters.

Cheesy blasters thing.

Thank you, Meat Cat.

And our entire audience is singing along with it. And I'm like, oh, my God, we're all vibing together. I'm like, that's not even our joke. That's just us playing 30 Rock tape. But what I like about that is there's a long tradition of that. And Howard Stern, basically, his whole hey now thing, people think of that as a Howard Stern thing. He thinks of it as a Howard Stern thing. But really, that's not even their thing. It was him just imitating a joke from another show in the 90s.

Well, and the thing that was also killing me, we've shifted away from the Mariners portion of the show into me relitigating the Howard Stern show for our listeners. The thing that was making me crazy was they kept talking about it being the greatest contribution that Gary Shandling had made to their show. And I kept saying, well, it's Jeffrey Tambor, really. Like, it was the Larry Sanders show, but it's like, it's like they were, this Tambor erasure.

Why would they expect him to give anything to their show at all?

Well, I don't, I mean, look, here's what I do want to say. I don't want to get into criticizing when they're making small talk and they say something. I feel like I'm wide open to that same criticism on this show. But it was just a funny thing, like, at no time. Now, listen, Jeffrey Tambor's been kind of, you know, he's had a lot of questionable behavior. in the past 10 years that he's been called out on, et cetera. So it's not like, I don't know. I don't feel that bad for Jeffrey Tambor, but it was just weird that it's like the character, Hank, who says, hey, now, was totally not ever mentioned. It was as if Gary Shandling's character was the one who said the catchphrase. I thought that was kind of weird.

You will not stand for this Tambor erasure. No. One last thing on this topic, and then we can thank the Dazzling Donors, which I'm sure you want to do. But you've probably caught some wind. I think there was even somebody. Have you? I hope you haven't caught my wind, by the way. I was going to say. Woo! You probably caught some wind about this little interaction on a recent Yankees broadcast with Dave Sims and his new broadcast partner, Susan Waldman.

Oh, I heard about this from Goodwin.

Yes, he mentioned it on the, by the way, congratulations to John on his recent marriage. I think what's been two, three years now?

I would say maybe four. Maybe four.

I just like to, every time he mentions his wife, I like to congratulate him on his marriage. I saw that. I like that. I like that bit. Hey now. We've got to really lay into that. But anyway, or lean into that. But anyway, so Susan Waldman has been calling Yankees games for a while now. I don't know much about the Yankees broadcast. I do know that some Yankees fans I know who will remain nameless, I don't think are big fans of her, and we're not big fans of the duo of her and who's the famous guy that Dave Sims replaced. Anyway, Susan is still there. Dave Sims, our former Mariners broadcaster, is now a Yankees broadcaster. And after, let's see here, scoring 13 runs during a Yankees matchup, this is what she said to Dave.

Oh, look at this. By Jazz. Are we going to get a hangout? That's out of here.

Another hangout for the Yankees. They're killing Milwaukee. It's 13-3.

You're not going to know what to do with this. Your old team didn't score 13 runs in a month. Rub it in. Be nice. Welcome to the New York Yankees, Dave Sibbs.

He talked over time. She said your team didn't score 13 runs in a month. Yeah, wow.

Okay, a couple of things. Did she just get done hosting Book Talk on WNYC? I've never heard this person, but I guess I assumed she was more in the, let's say, Angie Mentink kind of variety, which would be like a relatively young, a person who's kind of up on their, like Angie Mentink has forgotten more about baseball than i'll ever know like i i'm a big fan um and and i don't mean to gender this but i just it's it's an interesting thing still in this day and age uh to have a a woman um in in the you know in the play-by-play booth i think it's great i think there should be more of it but i that's not what i was expecting that person that woman sounds like someone who would be complaining to her doorman uh that the amazon deliveries are being left down the hall from her unit like she does not sound like a sports person to me i think just from having the i'm also very

triggered by her shitting on the mariners for no reason absolutely i mean i knew her voice because i think even though i usually even if i am listening to a yankees game i don't usually choose that broadcast maybe because i was i don't know why but i don't know during the summer i'm mowing the lawn there's no mariners game on it's not unlike me to put on just some other random game and so i'd heard her before so that

didn't come as a shock to me but your your assessment though i would agree with you probably the first time i heard her i was like oh yeah i didn't i you she does have almost a public like she should be sharing like maybe her um her recipe who is it on npr who always shares her recipes on

thanksgiving oh lynn not lynn rosetta casper no no oh oh susan stanberg mama stanberg's relish

She's got a Mama Stamberg's Relish vibe to her, absolutely.

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll say that that's good because it takes all kinds, and it's probably, you know, credit to the Yankees. It sounds like they were sort of in front of what, again, I hope is a growing trend of including everyone in the broadcast booth. I mean, again, it shouldn't just be old white men. And young women. It could be white men of any age, Andrew.

Yeah. And she's 78, it says, too. I mean, that's pretty impressive.

But that being said, must you go out of your way to make a joke at the Mariners' expense? This is very triggering for me. I was triggered when I saw it in the text chain, but I'm more triggered now having heard the audio. Because it's just totally unnecessary. And it confirms everything about the sort of small market versus big market thing. And just the fact that the rich seem to get richer in Major League Baseball and the teams, Los Angeles and New York, that have the most money, they get the best players and then they win the most games. And it's just like, it's very predictable and it's very frustrating to be on one of the teams that is not on the winning side of that equation. And to have basically 78-year-old Joffrey Baratheon just go out of their way to step on our neck for no reason, you know, no thanks.

Now, I don't know if there's a glitch in the line.

That's a really odd—I love that I compared her to a boy king. I was trying to figure out what the— I don't know. I was trying to think of the worst person I could think of, and Joffrey Baratheon came to mind. I apologize.

Did you say—did you say must you, or did you say— Mustard!

Andrew, just so you know, I've also got that sound effect on standby in case— Like, each morning— Mustard!

Mustard!

Mustard off. You just brought ketchup to a mustard fight, Andrew. Every day I go through my little audio drop board here on my computer and I kind of X out. I get rid of the drops from the previous day and I put in the new ones. But today I did not throw away mustard. I just dragged it down to a lower section so that I could access it if needed. Because I felt like that may loom large in the show for the next few weeks. Do me a favor.

Can you play your – I think you have the ability to kind of like fade on the fly, right? Can you start that at full volume and then duck it under my audio?

Yes. So I'm just going to start it and then signal me?

You just duck it pretty early on.

Okay.

I don't know, guys. I think I'm going to add Sam Fringe to the last thing in my parlay.

Perfect. That's audio gold, my friend.

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 rattle you know andrew sometimes we come into these dazzling donor messages and i feel a little bad because of whatever the content is that has preceded it like this is where we thank people who are donating a truly dazzling amount of dough each month to the show this is voluntary i know times are tough out there and these people are saying yeah but i'm gonna prioritize some money for tbtl sometimes i feel a little like maybe Maybe we've under-delivered. I think that that mustard-slash-casino commercial thing you just orchestrated, I feel really, really proud to be citing the donation of Angela Barrera of Corpus Christi, Texas, because of what we just did. I think that was high-quality content, and I think Angela got her money's worth today.

And that donation allowed me to buy this computer where I captured that audio last night off the Root Sports app. So thank you for making that possible.

Thanks, Angela. Angela says, thanks again for another year of audio friendship. Continued success in your second year of independence. 17 years in, and I still never know what to expect with TBTL. Cobros in space? Maybe. Great question, Andrew. Would you, if, I don't think it'll be offered to us, particularly with our recent comments around Bezos, but if we had the opportunity to go into low Earth orbit, If we could somehow go to space, would you do it?

I wouldn't go on a SpaceX rocket. Sure. I'll tell you that right there.

On principle or because you don't trust it? Both.

Yeah.

It turns out all the private space stuff is run by absolute tools. Yeah.

I mean, honestly, I certainly wouldn't go on a Boeing spacecraft because they leave the folks up there for nine months.

Wait, that's Bezos. Bezos is Blue Origin. So SpaceX is the stupid head. Yeah. stupid head as you said stupid head and the other one you know it does that's our new morning show talk about us um i actually i want that to be that's a decent show title stupid head and the other one it really is um but uh it raises the question for me i'm deeply scared of heights right but would i feel a fear of heights in space i feel like it would be a different fear

yeah different sensation yeah right i mean could you do you have a fear of heights when you're

flying i have a fear of flying when i'm flying no yeah no i don't have a deep fear of flying i do get nervous and part of it is me understanding that i'm very very high up in the sky and if something could go wrong but i feel like it's not i can't let me here's where it's different because i'm all over the place here but i swear there's a difference when i'm in an airplane and i look out the window i don't get the butterflies in my stomach that you would get like on my roof of my old that i would get on your roof or even in a place that is like completely contained like the top of the space needle where you go up there and you literally couldn't fall yeah i got freaked out up there when i took my folks up there when they were visiting like 15 years ago i was fine i was fine and then all of a sudden i was like i'm not fine i'm gonna be in the in the gift shop which was like right in the center it's like i need to be in the center of the space needle and not like Like, that was a triggered fear of heights. When I'm on a plane, I have some anxiety about airplanes. And also, like, in 2025, maybe not the worst thing to have some caution around getting on a Boeing Max. But anyway, it's a different kind of concern. It's a different phobia, if it is a phobia.

Yeah, there must be a term for the fact that when you're 20 feet off the ground, like if I were to be up on the roof of my house, which is what I'm looking at, which is let's say the peak of it is 30 feet off the ground. If I was working up there, I would be very aware of the fact that I'm 30 feet off the ground or maybe if I was 80 feet or when I climbed that tree for that story and I was like 200 feet up, I got the fear because I realized my entire life was being supported by this climbing rope. And if something were unexpectedly to happen to it I would just, my life would be over And that just got inside my head But you don't, at least if you're me I don't feel that feeling at 30,000 feet I have no fear of being 30,000 feet off the ground I have a lot of fear, well not a lot I have a decent amount of fear about being 200 feet off the ground And I wonder what the sort of psychological explanation of that is

But the thing that makes me especially sexy Is I'm also afraid of enclosed spaces Uh-huh. So that, I think, honestly.

So, like, the Space Needle elevator is kind of like your nightmare.

The Space Needle elevator was fine. Oh, because that's an enclosed space that's high off the ground. Yeah, but it's more like we're really getting close to that far side where they hang a guy in a tiny box over Manhattan with a bunch of snakes in there to help him get over all of his fears.

That is the actual, by the way, that's the actual therapeutic approach. It's called exposure therapy.

That's right. but um no i mean like i can get claustrophobic if i was in a very enclosed space like for example i've never had like an mri or something like that but with the way people describe that i'm like yeah that sounds that sounds a little triggering for me yeah definitely um i i don't i am not

claustrophobic but i think i could see i'm looking into it i'm considering it as an option if that makes sense like well i for some reason i started to get when i was looking at more tiktok i started to get a bunch of these videos that were basically like animations of caving disasters if that makes sense so like basically like a weird almost like maybe ai generated voice some somebody had figured out how to write i think an ai program that went and basically like scoured the written material for stories about people who become trapped in a cave but not in like a big cave talking about a crawl space i'm talking about like you're like you you have to almost like exhale so that your your lung capacity or your lungs you know what i mean that kind of i read jack reacher i know you're okay the first book of that jack reacher people get stuck you know like in these very very awful positions where they're like upside down and and they can't you know the blood is pool it's it's it's horrific stuff but a bunch of this content was getting generated that i'm pretty sure might be ai where like someone wrote a program that said go find a story about a horrible caving incident animate it and then narrate it and then release it in chunks on tick tock because it's very non-naturalistic the read of the people like the voiceover of it maybe somebody wrote it all and then they just added like a robot voice to it but all that is to say i was seeing a lot of that for a while and i really had to start nexting it because it was getting inside my head like as a sort of like as a sort of phobic worst case scenario like you could not

pay me enough to mess with that stuff like I do not understand the appeal

there is very little that I remember from the movie interview with a vampire but the only thing I remember and I'm trying to think I did not read the book right I don't think I read the book so I must have read this I believe so and I don't think I read the book so this must have been from the movie which I must have seen once a long long time ago I'm guessing even when I was in college but I believe that tom cruise maybe plays a vamp in that yes tom cruise brad pitt i believe i think there i don't know how much you know about vampires but they're immortal and i believe that tom cruise is i don't know if he's la stat or not but at some point because he does something bad as a vampire other vampires i believe sentence him to being buried alive essentially in his little in his little coffin-y thing but it's like for a long time I want to say like 100 years or something like they put him in his coffin then put him in a wall people who know this world probably are are just just just pulling their hair out absolutely smashing that little doll of me that they got from a fundraiser years ago that's totally fine by the way that's why we made him plushy you can't break him um but anyway I just remember like that really getting in my head like I think I saw that movie in college and I could not stop thinking about the idea of being in such a tightly enclosed space and forever and just basically forever because you're immortal and i believe spoiler alert i'm gonna give everybody a second here i believe he eventually does get out

there's a twilight zone that's a sort of a version of that from the 50s this guy signs a deal with like the devil where he basically can't die and he's very smug about it and he like it's he his whole move this is such a weird like rod serling kind of thing this guy becomes immortal and his whole move is like falling down on the subway tracks and getting run over and not dying and suing the subway he just has a stream of people coming into his like office to give him settlement checks because he just goes around doing things that would kill a normal person and then not dying and then suing the company that like runs the bus or the whatever i don't that's so funny because

and i i know i've told this story on the show before so i will not go into all of the deep details but i remember telling you this story to the point where we looked it up and i found the actual comic book online the full story but my neighbor when i was a kid um gave us she was like older than us and so when she went off to i don't know college or wherever she went she gave us a whole huge box of archie comic books and most of them were archie or the world of archie josey and the pussycats that kind of stuff but then there were a couple of randos in there and one of them was the only Twilight Zone comic book that I had ever had at that point. And it told the story of this bad guy who was a poacher. He was somewhere, I believe, maybe in Africa. Oh, right. And he was an elephant poacher. And while he's, I believe it begins with him being chased. I wonder if there's a term for that. It literally begins with the action of him being chased by, like, anti-poacher patrols or something. And as he's running away, he runs into some, you know, some sort of wizened old man in the woods somewhere in the jungle somewhere. And the old man gives him this talisman and puts it around his neck. And he says, if it's time for me to take this off, you will not die if you have this around your neck. So the old man gives it to this guy, the old man dies. This guy keeps on running, but then he eventually, spoiler, and again, three, two, one on this. And then he accidentally like falls off of a giant cliff. And the law enforcement that were chasing this poacher look down and they see his broken body on the rocks down there and they say, should we send in, you know, should we call in some sort of, you know, doctor situation? And the other one's like, no, nobody survives that. Let the birds take him. And then we get a close up of the guy still alive at the bottom of this ravine. And he knows he will be there in his broken body forever. Nobody will ever be down there to take this talisman.

Oh, and it's, I see. Oh, because his body's broken, so we can't even take it off.

He can't do anything. He's just destroyed, but will live forever in this state.

Well, okay, so what happens to the guy in this Twilight Zone is he eventually gets sentenced. He kills someone, or he does something. I think he kills someone. And he's just like, whatever, judge. Like, go ahead, give me the electric chair. And then the judge gives him life in prison.

It's always that. It's always that, right?

It's like, no, no, you don't get the sweet relief of death. The only problem with that, theoretically, is let's say they do give him the electric chair and he doesn't die. What, do they release him after that? Like, what was his plan? Right, right. That is a good point. All right. I'm king of the world now. Well played. You're the new president because you survived the electric chair. Back to Angela's message. Angela says, co-bros in space? Maybe. I'm in either way. Good luck to you.

all kwapla which is Klingon for success I looked it up man oh I was I was tempted to try to act like I knew that I was really considering playing it off and going which I believe is Klingon for success would you have bought that would you have in any way bought that I knew what the Klingon

word for success no I don't think so although you did shock me there a little bit my question though is so what we've learned about Klingon is you don't need a U to follow the Q so that's a different So would it be potentially Kapla? It probably is Kapla. You know, it's likely that it's Kapla. We're trying to figure this out here.

Thank you, Angela. However you say thank you in Klingon, we say that to you, our friend. Appreciate you. Maestro?

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattles down.

Look who it is. It's Shira Fidelli. Hey, Shira. Eugene, Oregon. Thanks for the pronouncer, Shira. I would have definitely gone She-Ra.

Yep, and I'll bet you a lot of people do, which is why Shira is so good spelling out her name phonetically.

Shira is probably, yeah, probably said Shira, and then fatally, like wounded, Fadelli, is in Eugene, Oregon, where my girlfriend is going to be running a marathon, I believe, in a few weeks, or in April at some point, which is very impressive.

What's happening with your, you're doing half marathons?

I am not, Andrew. Here's what happened. You know, I switched. I mean, you can tell how buff I've gotten with lifting bicycles over my head.

Could you put a shirt on, please?

No, I can't, Andrew. You're just going to keep on applying that petroleum jelly? Now that I'm ripped, I'm allergic to shirts, which happens to a lot of guys, actually.

What's with the bongos?

All right, all right, all right. I did foolishly commit to trying to run a half marathon every month, and I think I did it for one month of the year. maybe two months and then I shifted over to doing this weight thing which I'll have I'll say I've stuck with it but it's drastically cut down on my running um and so I'm now like a long run for me would be in the neighborhood of like seven miles I did in Central Park recently but that is not enough for me to be up for running 13 and a half miles uh once a month so I have basically bailed on that plan um and I'm just trying to let like be okay with that I'm trying to just forgive myself for uh for my foolishness and you know who who forgives me is shira in eugene oregon who says thanks luke thanks luke and andrew for getting it right and for getting it wrong both can lead to a lot of banter filled fun oh that's an interesting idea so in other words when we get things right that's kind of a payoff and then when we get things wrong there's also kind of a payoff there because it sends us on some kind of a weird as uh i think it was mr bame my science teacher bill bame who uh did believe legitimately the earth he was born in the dark right you merely adopted it he merely adopted the notion that the earth is 7 000 years old can you imagine a science class where the teacher believes the earth is 7 000 years old i feel they just everything after that is just it's just a it's just a crapshoot we've misread one of the more fundamental things about life on this planet which is the age of this planet but he used to call them bird walks i remember at the beginning of the year he said don't get me on any don't try to get me on bird walks because when i go on them i'll never come back to the topic so what do you think we did all year get bill boehm on a bird walk so anyway when we go on bird walks shira enjoys it i guess i'd love an update on gus in the band experience okay this is our friend p fletch's son gus who's like a like serious serious band kid and participant in a serious band

He's a jazz man, yeah, and plays with the school. So I reached out to Phyllis yesterday because Shira wanted to know. Let's see here. It says, what's going on with Gus and the band experiences? Phyllis still driving the equipment truck. Now, I didn't even know that that was a thing. It was news to me. I texted Phyllis yesterday. I didn't tell her it was for air, but I did tell her it was a question from a listener. So I think this is all above board. She says, what a fun question this is. um gus's high school band hasn't needed me in that capacity but i did that for his middle school band and i loved every parade i still volunteer as a band mom quote unquote band mom but most of it is uh ever further i'm sorry farther behind the scenes like making sure parents get emails and the right stuff goes in the newsletter and also uh she got to serve pizza one time and championed or chaperoned to football games and organized a silent auction so um so phyllis is out there is still being um very very supportive to the entire band experience if i remember right

gus's band maybe he's moved on from this one but for a while he was i think it might have been the robert eaglestaff band the school robert eaglestaff and they were like their a coordinator was putting

them uh in some like the person leading the band had them doing some sweet ass moves yeah we're getting videos of that stuff anyway um shira says thanks imaginary friendos life is better because of you well life is better because of you shira and the show is better because of you because without your support there would be no show and then how would you find out which commercials are annoying during the seattle mariners that's right you don't even live in seattle like how would you know about what's going on exactly you'd be like totally in the dark on that but instead you're in the light, the light to this TBTL. Thank you so much to both of our dazzling donors today for keeping TBTL going. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Our top story today, Andrew, is the Cory Booker, I didn't hear it called a filibuster, but I have just, I thought that, I mean, maybe because he wasn't actually preventing, I mean, he was low-key delaying a piece of legislation, But he wasn't, I mean, I've always thought that when somebody gets up and they just talk for as long as they can, it's referred to as a filibuster. I did not, I didn't hear that term being thrown around yesterday. So maybe for some reason, technically it wasn't. But it was, in fact, the longest speech in the history of the Senate. It was over 25 hours. What I thought was really cool about it was, you know who had the previous record?

Strom Thurmond.

Yes, in defense of the Civil Rights Act. Oh, wait, no, it was opposing the Civil Rights Act. like just one of the most unredeemed piece of shit history of political characters in the u.s history strom thurmond uh had the previous record and it was replaced by a black man uh it was just there was something very sweet about that there was also i i saw when i was seeing some stuff when cory booker went up and and he said look i'm going to try to talk for as long as i can and i thought well this will be nice we'll see what he can do and then i forgot about it and then i went to bed and then i lived like an entire day andrew and then i was coming home and actually becca texted me she was like we love cory booker and i was like he's still doing that and then i popped on my television when i got home i watched my msnbc by the way this is why i'm paying for the one the one click experience i just walked into my house i turned on the tv there it was and he was in the last let's say 20 minutes of it and i i have to It must just be because, like, I just, I need something to feel somewhat good about. I need to feel like somebody out there is trying to do something at a high level or trying to spark some sort of a moment. Because, again, this was purely ceremonial. This did not change the outcome of anything. It was just a person saying, I am going to do what I can in this moment to draw some attention to this. I also thought he was quite eloquent. I couldn't believe how eloquent he was at 25 hours, Andrew. A big theme of his remarks revolved around the late John Lewis and the term good trouble, which people might be familiar with. And he wrapped this thing up very eloquently and in a pretty strong voice. Like, I'm just thinking 25 hours. I mean, we did a 24-hour episode of TBTL, and I was a mess by the end. I mean, I was literally, like, astrally projected out of my body by the time we got to the rebar. like so I don't know how he was doing this but another thing so anyway I think it was really incredible and I along with the Wisconsin Supreme Court outcome yesterday which was you know Elon Musk throwing literally throwing million dollar checks at people and the the the I don't know if they are Democrat or Republican I don't know if judges have party affiliation there are just considered conservative or liberal or whatever but the the person who we were hoping would win one in the Wisconsin Supreme Court which is a pretty big deal despite elon musk's attempts anyway all of that i feel like this cory booker thing again maybe it's just like when luke raley gets a home run and i think this is where the mariner turnaround begins it was something about cory booker making this very impassioned speech and doing this very impassioned thing and then uh in florida there were a couple of congressional races that the republicans won but the democrats made up a lot of ground from the last general election and then the thing in Wisconsin. And then looking at the New York Times today, and I forget the exact headline, but it was something to the effect of, you know, Democrats have a lot to be excited about

from the outcome of yesterday. Yeah, did it say something about give Democrats hope or something?

I saw that same headline. Something to that effect. Of course, because of the New York Times, they also had to then sub-headline it with things are still dire for the Democrats. But heaven forbid we have five seconds of joy. But it just was, what I was surprised by was that I started crying at the end of Cory Booker's speech. which again i think speaks to how desperate i am for anything that feels positive yeah i was not expecting to be as emotional as i was at the end of that speech yeah and just somebody and by the

way i was not following this very closely i know i told you that off air i don't know if i said that on air i kind of i'll be honest i'm pretty you know not that plugged in so i kind of didn't realize it was happening until it was nearing the end and i started to see some some buzz about it um but i will say yeah i mean i think that you are feeling what a lot of people are feeling because there's just been like and you know again as somebody who just admitted he doesn't follow the stuff all too closely there's a lot of anger at like chuck schumer for just saying you know saying well there's nothing we can do and and and you know and and letting that that budget go through and before he launches a book tour and like optics are a big part of this And when people are just feeling like everything is burning and just thousands upon thousands of people are just being laid off or just going into work to do their good job that they're probably not even getting paid enough to do because they're working to make the world a better place through science or education.

And they're working in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest where there's not going to be enough bathrooms now.

Key cards literally don't work. Like I was talking – I don't want to give up too much information, but I was talking to a close friend of mine yesterday who's also a listener of this show, and she works for the federal government. And like she – a bunch of layoffs hit people she knew yesterday, and like every day she has to wake up and go to a very specific news service. Apparently Yahoo News, the aggregator, is good at like kind of casting a very wide net. So she and her colleagues are going to Yahoo News early every morning to see, like, what do we need to know? Can we can we log into work today? And I mean, just like that's just hanging over. There's a one person I know, you know what I mean? And it's just like and thousands upon thousands of people are dealing with this across America. The rest of us who don't have the direct connection to it. Genevieve works for a research institute. Now she works in the comms department. But still, this stuff all trickles down. Absolutely. Like it affects everybody to a certain degree. um and even those who it doesn't affect directly in any way you still you still have values and you care and you look what's happening to the country and so whether or not you want to make an argument that schumer had to do what schumer had to do or whatever like the optics of all of that was really bad and so just having somebody say like listen there is not a lot we can do legislatively and it really does sort of seem that like it's like the democrats are like well there's nothing we can do when and you know when the gop isn't is not in power they still raised all kinds of hell and made life very very difficult for the democrats and the democrats don't either have the stomach for it or don't have the ingenuity for it and so just seeing somebody do something to stand up and say and maybe when this chapter of history is written cory booker's name will be in that chapter because he took this because he he took the the podium to do this and like it just you need people to stand up in some way i'm not saying that i'm standing up in any way But we need somebody else to stand up

I did think it was weird when he brought Gary Payton up

It's in the bylaws That was a distraction

It is allowed though, the glove? Yeah, that's right Here's the thing though that I did not Realize, I believe our friend Television's Chris Hayes last night said I have some Biological questions When Cory Booker wrapped up I didn't realize you are not allowed to take a bathroom break And so I guess what Cory Booker did was he um fasted i heard this on npr this morning he apparently fasted starting on friday which also seems like in a certain way a kind of a horrible idea don't you want to go into this with this more calories yeah more blood sugar more glucose yeah like i i can't imagine having uh having no food or water in my system and then that being the starting point for my 25 hours in the spotlight and trying to be coherent and cogent, but I guess it worked for him. I don't know if I knew it was possible for a human body to not have to relieve itself. I mean, definitely, number two, you can go a while on that one, but the number one stuff, it feels like if you have enough water in your body for your body to operate, then it also would need to get rid of some of it, too. That's the most stunning part of this whole thing to me.

And you just need water if you're talking for that long.

Yes. His voice, I mean, Hillary Clinton, I think maybe it was Hillary Clinton, tweeted or wrote somewhere. Like, I think this might have been her, something to the effect of, your voice is breaking but your will isn't or something. It was actually a very nice sentiment. But I was like, I was, as a person who talks for a living, I was surprised at how good he sounded at the end of his 25 hours.

Yeah, I'm trying to think, like, what would be the ideal sort of way of getting some sort of protein while you're up there. But you can't stop talking, right? So whatever you're going to eat, you have to, like, sort of just, like, kind of pop it quickly, I would guess. Like, I was thinking, oh, well, peanut butter would sort of be good because it's a protein. Yeah, you get yourself a bunch of churros. But peanut butter would be the worst because you would need water to drink it down or whatever. It would be absolutely terrible when you're speaking. I'm trying to think, like, what would be a good, like, did he, he must have. had water up there but was just like drinking it very very very sparingly i assume i also got i

think i got spoofed on blue sky andrew on the ascendant social media platform blue sky uh my my my skeet or whatever this is called my re-skeet did not get the uh engagement that your mariners one did but uh somebody named sarah bunting wrote with less than an hour left cory booker is set to explain that begs the question is almost never the phrase you actually want. I saw that. Finish strong, boss. And I, in my delirium, thought maybe he really did that, but then I was Googling it this morning and I could find no evidence.

Yeah, that would be pretty sweet, though.

That would have been the sickest thing of all time.

That's so funny. That really stands out to both of us because of all the conversations about begging the question, not really meaning raising. Everybody uses it like it means raising the question. It doesn't mean that. It's more of a tautology, but that's as far as I'll go in trying to explain it because I don't really know it very well.

I spent much more than 25 hours trying to explain it, and I'm truthfully understanding it less at the end, but here's all you need to know. If you're saying begs the question, you really mean raises the question, so anytime you want to say begs the question, just say raises the question instead, and you'll be correct, and other pedants like us. I wish that that word pedant wasn't so close to a different word that starts with P-E-D.

You've got to be careful with it. I get epitaph and epithet. Epithet. Epithet and epitaph. Those are the two that I have to really think about. You know how you say you have to think before you say left or right? You have to envision your hands.

I envision my childhood home circa 1982.

So I have to think about it. What were you going to say?

Speaking of epitaphs, R.I.P. Val Kilmer.

Yeah.

And, you know, I didn't have a hugely strong opinion on Val Kilmer one way or the other in during his life other than i i loved the movie willow and i also thought val kilmer was a very cool dude seemed like a very cool dude in movies but this morning on my uh little uh jog i uh listened to taffy brodesser akner's profile of val kilmer from 2020 i was just looking that up i

read that back in 22 you say 2020 i remember reading that in my old apartment yeah that's what i think spectacular just amazing right because he wasn't did he was not you know i'm not trying to um besmirch his memory here but wasn't a big part of it that um he had alternative

views on medicine yeah he's a lifelong christian scientist he is a christian scientist the teachings of mary baker eddie right and um and and the thing he was obsessed with two people uh uh mark twain and mary baker eddie these were the two big influences in his life and he created some sort of like initially it was supposed to be like a half live action half movie thing about the life of mark twain that also involved a lot of mary baker eddie content but then when he went through he had a like a throat cancer which he didn't ever really fully acknowledge was cancer because of his sort of religious belief but because of that he had a difficult time speaking for the last you know 10 years of his life and so he it just became a full movie but taffy bordesser actor trying to explain this mark twain movie that that val kilmer made and was touring around that tries to reconcile the the thoughts of mark twain and mary baker eddie who were in real opposition to each other in that mark twain was a rationalist and and mary baker eddie was not and it seemed that val kilmer's lifelong work was to try to figure out a way that these two people that were his two favorites were actually in alliance on something let's find let's find the overlap of the Venn diagram. Let's find the Venn diagram overlap with these two people. It's really, I mean, you know, just anything Taffy Brodesser-Ackner writes is appointment reading, but it just gave me a whole different perspective on Val Kilmer, so if you're curious more about his life, particularly his life in the last 15 or 20 years, I would highly recommend either reading that article, or if you're like me and you're not a big reader, I would listen to it. I don't have

that app yet, because I'm an Android user. You know, this thing, I'm waiting for it to come to Android You've talked so much about that audio app. I really want that. But this is such a dumb anecdote to throw in here as we're trying to wrap up and honor, I guess, Val Kilmer. But, like, the one thing I remember, again, I read that when it came out in the Times. That would have been, you said, five years ago. So my brain is kind of mush. But I remember reading it. And also, like, he had a studio or something, right, in L.A. And I remember being like, wait, this is a part of L.A. I know. and so I remember reading that piece but also going onto Google Maps and just doing the street view thing and being like yeah I think I know that corner isn't he driving oh no she's driving around with a big piece of his art in her car and she doesn't know what to do with it right? Yeah well she

admired like an abstract painting that he made and then he gives it to her and she says no the New York Times policy prohibits me from taking this and then he tells his like business partner put this in her car and do not allow her to give this back. And isn't she

driving because it reminded me Her description of it reminded me of Arrested Development when they're driving around and Buster's big rock is in the back.

I think there's a point she has the painting seat belted in and she's just driving around with it.

Right, right, right. It's a very super-duper good piece.

I should go back and read that. Yeah, absolutely. All right. RIP Val Kilmer and a big put-up, as always, to Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Okay, that is going to do it for today's episode of the show, but I have amazing news. We're coming right back here tomorrow. With more imaginary radio, including, Andrew, a TBTL Junior Sluggers season three view. So it begins. Put me in, coach. I'm ready to play. The new outfits, I've seen the new jerseys, Andrew, and they are lovely. So we're going to talk to Coach Ben on tomorrow's show about the upcoming TBTL Little League team from the Park Rose Little League of Portland, Oregon. So do tune in for that. In the meantime, have a great Wednesday. Take care of yourselves. I'm not going to say go Mariners because it hasn't been turning out great.

We have a scoobal situation that's going to be starting pretty soon. They're ace. We're going up against their ace today.

Isn't that a Seattle U grad? Yes, exactly. Give a little kindness to your old city, bro. Anyway, we'll see you tomorrow. Until then, please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all. Go Mariners.

Power out.