Muse

Our next caller is Pete from Manhattan. Pete, what's your question? Hey, Larry. First time caller. Adore the show.

Hey, I recognize that voice anywhere, Larry. That's my friend Peter Frampton on the phone.

Uh, sure. Listen, Tracy, I love the idea of hiding cash at work. Can you be more specific about where you hid your money?

Of course, Pete. I hid my money in the safest place at 30 Rock. Without giving it away, the place I picked is very dry and warm. Its top is hard, but its bottom is soft. And although the location changes all the time, the money stays in the same place.

If you're just joining us, we're with Tracy Jordan, who is giving guitar icon Peter Frampton enigmatic clues about a secret treasure. Stay with us. T-T-T-B-T-L

Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday Everybody's looking forward to the weekend

I don't know guys I think I'm gonna add Sam Fringe to the last leg of my parlay Right What did he say?

He said he had his head He only chopped him down because he couldn't see you no more

I feel a real need to express something But I don't know what it is I want to express Or how to express it

I am not gonna talk about myself I'm gonna talk about you And if I talk about you I think I'm gonna talk about me

We could not talk or talk forever and still find things to not talk about.

All right, they're going to run. See you on the flippy flops.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Friday edition of TVTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Oh, it might not be good for the mind, but it's most definitely good for the soul.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia on a beautiful day.

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

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You paint your bald spot? What bald spot? I don't want my whole personality to be saying, I really needed this nice day. So basically, this week has been miserable weather-wise here in the Pacific Northwest. And I guess this weekend, it may go back to being not so great. But today, on this Friday, it's blue sky, green grass, It's just a perfect day. And I'm just going to say it. I needed this. I've already embarked on one questionable landscaping project before the show today. That's how geeked up I am in the words of Bad Baby. That's how geeked up I am to get out and do some yard work and stuff on this blessed, beautiful Friday, which is also episode 4,438 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. i watched everybody's live with john mulaney last night now i wasn't watching it live because it's on wednesday nights on netflix but i was working on wednesday night so last night was the earliest i could see it and i was watching it and i'll write it and we'll do it live it was an interesting experience because it represented some of the best tv and then some of the worst tv i've seen in a long time it was the best of times it was the burst of times speaking of a blursty things or blurs days or fleurs days anyway we're doing the birthdays on friday today it's like when you were a kid i don't know if you grew up in a house like this but i think sometimes in the old burbank house maybe there wouldn't be wouldn't be any food around and my mom would say we're doing breakfast for dinner it would and we'd be very excited oh we're gonna have breakfast but at dinner time that's kind of what we're doing today we're doing the blurs days but we're doing them on friday so it's very exciting i'm also very excited to talk to this guy the longest running co-bro of the show may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships hello do you want

to go to artford not live in this hello he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good

morning my friend good morning i didn't realize that drop was so long i only hear the beginning

of that i grabbed the wrong one but then we both delighted in the sound check so we went with it i

want to um ask you a question at the beginning of the show hopefully not torpedoing everything that on the agenda, but you heard that intro tape that I pulled from 30 Rock. 30 Rock was a show that aired in the early 2000s, early to

mid 2000s. It now airs in four-second increments on this podcast. That's the number one way you can stream 30 Rock is by listening to TBTL.

I think that if you took all of our shows and rearranged them, you'd eventually end up with a full episode of 30 Rock. It's like Memento. I guess I sort of say that sheepishly because it's like, it's, you know, I feel like I should feel more pressure to bring more fresh audio to the show and freshen up the intro packages and then when I do create a new intro package and it's more 30 rock I feel a little sense

of disappointment in myself that I am not going far enough. I do not share your sense of disappointment. I'm delighted in that. And the thing is, I think of myself as a real kind of 30 Rock head, and I have no memory of that scene.

Well, that's what I want to ask you, and also though, so my plan was to ask you if you can figure out that riddle, and I'll help you along with that here. Oh, yeah. I'm very intrigued by that. But then, in me looking up the actual quote, because I could sort of paraphrase it for you, and I'll set it up for you again here ai at the top of google says something that i find deeply disturbing and incorrect about that quote so i want to get to that as well but let's start with the quote itself um that so what's going on in the plot there is some of the crew at 30 rock are looking for as you heard a secret stash of money that tracy morgan hid somewhere and so they're trying to find it and the clue that tracy morgan gave them was it's the safest place at 30 rock it's dry and warm it's hard on the top soft on the bottom and even though the location changes

it's always in the same place god i'm so bad it's at these the only riddle i know is from like loader or the hobbit and it's the like what walks you know what what crawls in the morning and you know walks of the day or it's like i don't know it's a man it's like a oh what walks on four legs in the morning and two legs in the midday and three legs in the afternoon

i don't even think that's the one sounds like me on a bender honestly what pulls tabs at 8pm

and then walks on so by the way i have a this is such a complete this is absolutely going to torpedo what we're trying to do right now which is itself possibly torpedoing what we were trying to do in the show sheet but i'm here for it um i have what i think should be your new your new version of pulling tabs and i think it's breaking cards we talked about this with uh during the pandemic we had some listeners i think who were really into card breaks because you would never admit this andrew and by the way i want to say this and then i want to table it because i want to get back to solving the riddle also i don't think that riddle i proposed is even from loader i think it has something to do with an egg doesn't golem is there a riddle that golem is trying to solve god this is gonna my poor brother i think god walt doesn't listen to this show this would also So make him insane. Do you know that at the Pez factory, I got my dad. By the way, this is what I was being coy about. At the Pez factory, I got my dad a set of the Hobbit Pez dispensers.

Oh, that's sweet. That's great.

That was a riddle in and of itself. And I thought he was going to, I gave it to him when he stopped by the other day. And I was like, hey, dad, I got you this. He goes, oh, amazing. He goes, I have the loader ones. Oh, wow. So he already had a set of, but like, but not the Hobbit ones. I didn't know these were different things.

I'll be honest with you. I'm sort of Googling around various things here, looking up Lord of the Rings riddles and listening to you. And so when you just said that, I did not even differentiate between Hobbit and Loader. And I was like, oh, OK. I was like, wait, I thought you said you got him the Loader ones. I see.

Like, I just, I mean, I could have very easily, it would have been extremely possible that I flew from Orange, Connecticut. I flew back a set of Pez dispensers for my dad that he already had.

Well, I already have the Return of the King Part 1 Pez dispensers, but luckily these are Return of the King Part 2 Pez dispensers.

So back to card breaks, I think, even though you won't admit to this, I think you were really becoming a baseball man. Like, you got your fantasy team. I mean, you know vastly more about the current state of MLB than I do. I think I might know a little more about the state of MLB from 25 years ago, but you know so much more about it than I do now. i'm happy to i'm happy to doff my cap to you and you like you're not um you know i think you have an extremely healthy relationship with wagering which is you'll have a little bit of fun with it but it's never been something that you've struggled with but i just think this idea of like you you pay a little money and then you somebody opens these baseball cards and then if you get a good one in there like an expensive one then you have a cool baseball card like i feel like it it's it It seems like pulling tabs, but more fun for you.

Well, it would be more fun if it weren't so high stakes. You know, by the way, you reminded me of something that I need to address on the show. We are Torpedo. This has a real Friday feel to it, my boy. I apologize. No, no, me too. Because we're just going to keep on torpedoing. Like a torpedo bat, Luke. Yes. So, first of all, I do love opening baseball cards. And I just wish it was the old days. It's like I would get that kind of thrill if I could just go to a, I was going to say a Bartell Drugs, but ah, would that those still existed?

I guess really what I'm saying is you should just start buying more baseball cards, but buy like the slightly more expensive ones so that there's a chance that you'll get an L.E. De La Cruz in there, like a one of one L.E. De La Cruz. And I probably wouldn't even look for the ones that have, like, probably a high reward because I think, you know, like, I think you're going to get a chase. Yeah, exactly. I would seriously be looking for, like, the.

How about one where they have an illustration of Rango, but it's Julio Polanco.

Sorry. I would love a Jorge Polanco card. Jorge. I always call him Julio. Was there ever a Julio Polanco?

Or am I just being vaguely racist there by forgetting his name?

But you know what? Somebody wrote in. So I do, I already explained this on the show earlier this week, I think when baseball cards came up, I said that I bought like kind of about a hundred baseball cards from across the years from some guy who was selling them for like a dollar a pack at a yard sale where they were all Mariners players from back in the day. And then I guess last year, a couple of years ago, I alphabetized them. And you were talking about Gorman Thomas, I think.

Yeah, Gorman Gorman.

I'm like, let me see if I, because they're all alphabetized. I was like, oh, let me see if I have him. But then on the show, because I'm, again, talking to you and not using my full brain ever, I guess, I'm looking up in the G's. I'm like, nope, no Gorman Thomas. And I got an email from a very sweet email from somebody today that said, hey, you might, but you just like, you know, check under the T's. Check those T's. Probably be under the T's. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right. We do things by last name. But I just checked right now. I do not have a Storm and Norman, unfortunately. Is there anything else in the T's? I do have this Kurt Stilwell that I found. This is not Mariners related, but I found this on the ground on a walk with Genevieve. I think it was last summer. And so I send a photo of this to my Royals loving fans whenever possible.

I should go like in. Where is it? I guess it's in my basement. I have an old shoebox. I mean, it's like the classic. I have an old shoebox that I've been carrying around. 48 years old. I've been carrying this around with me for 30, however many years since I moved to college, probably. of baseball cards that I collected. Now, I was not the kind of kid who had them in the folder. I wish I would have. I did it just in a shoebox. But, like, it would be kind of fun to get that out and go through them and just see, because I, there was a lot of them in there that I had collected because my hunch was these will be worth something. One of them, I brought this up before on the show, there was a pitcher named Jim Abbott. And Jim Abbott, what was interesting about him to me was that he was someone who was born with only a partial finger on one hand. One hand was a typical hand, the other hand had, I believe, only one finger on it, and maybe not even a complete finger. And he had figured out this incredible system where he would balance his glove on his hand that didn't have as many fingers, he would pitch the ball, and then he would quickly slide the glove onto his hand that he had just pitched from, and then he could, because the first thing that happened was other teams would try to bunt against him, and they just couldn't. Like, he just had figured this out. And I thought, this needs to be a bigger story, that we have a one-handed dude pitching at the major league level. So I've got a lot of Jim Abbott cards. I believe they're worth next to nothing. I've got some Deion Sanders. Now, maybe the re-emergence of Deion Sanders in the culture would mean something. I thought Deion Sanders' Yankees cards would be worth something because he was playing football and baseball professionally at a high level. I thought that was a novelty. I was always looking for the novelty of these players. like you know not just purely are they statistically the best but are they like are there some is there something weird about them do they have a weird mustache are they ken phelps um okay so uh let's

can i just hold on i got several things to say we're going to continue this is on me i have no one to blame but myself i went to a um white center fish sticks baseball game last year with some friends and that's a very very i don't even know like what you would describe that league as but it's mostly like kind of i think college to age players who like play just a little bit of summer ball there in um south probably like the portland pickles um a little bit like that i think um no i think the portland pickles are probably even more professional i'm not sure you've been there but this is not a place where you could even get like a boot or a bat full of beer i mean they have concessions and stuff but it feels more like there it's a high school field it feels like very very very small very tiny um great but i mean absolutely great and i'm looking forward to going

back so the the takeaway is you're smuggling in your own alcohol no they do have concessions

there i just mean they don't it's not even a big enough thing that they would be able to like source i think special bat you know beverage holders or whatever it's not like kind of a thing in that way i could be wrong you know i think somebody who listens to this show is actually

the yeah weren't we offered a chance to throw out the first pitch and my question to you andrew

would you fish would you would you throw out the first fish um uh it really depends if i could wear gloves or not i mean i definitely don't want to touch a fish with my bare hands but it should be a fish stick yeah i don't know yeah yeah i don't want to get that but either way the with a picture for the other team and i'm trying to well i i'm i'm sorry i i know i i'm online friends with the fellow who i'm thinking of who um does this for the fish sticks and i'm a little bit distracted here because i'm brand brandon brandon brandon

thank you okay i just need to get there to clear clear my brain so i can say the pitcher for the opposing team who also had a great name that i can't remember anymore the name of the team he had that same thing he was pitching and then immediately putting his glove back on because he either didn't have a hand or he did you know could use that hand yeah incredible and so what i didn't even i was like enjoying my popcorn i had a huge thing of popcorn i must have been my head was in my popcorn because i i think um hauser had to point out to me like get your head out of your popcorn. He's like, look, that guy's pitching with just like kind of one hand. I was like, oh, my God, that is a real feat.

I had two hands and two feet and was cut from the Nathan Hale baseball team. Senior. That's where my abilities lie. Okay.

Okay, now just cleaning up some things here. Riddle me this. We're moving back. It's the riddle of the Sphinx that you were thinking of, what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening. Andrew, when he's on a bender. That is from Oedipus Rex. It's Oedipus who has to solve that riddle.

Okay, and then is there, does Gollum have to solve some kind of, I feel like there's a riddle that Gollum is trying to solve, or maybe it's Bilbo. The fact that I would mix those two up, they represent really different expressions of the plot line. Okay, so let's get back to Tracy Jordan.

There are five riddles. I will not bore you with them, but I'm on Cliff's notes right now, and there are five riddles that Gollum asked Bilbo in The Hobbit.

Hey, okay, I'll take it. Give the man a Pez dispenser.

The weird thing is, oh, they do have the answers here. We're going to save this for another time. I'm going to try to run these other riddles by you, but let's go back to 30 Rock. Now, you've got to remember, I'm bad with riddles, too. I find this kind of riddle telling a little bit, I don't know, even that Oedipus one, like the Riddle of the Sphinx. I wonder why that's called the Riddle of the Sphinx. I don't know. I'm also in my head about how I'm saying Sphinx.

It's a weird word, okay?

I think I'm hitting something too hard there. I'm not sure. But remember also that 30 Rock is a comedy.

Exactly, it's Tracy. We're dealing with Tracy Jordan here. So that's why I feel like I'm not trying to solve a real riddle. It's going to be like, it's Kenneth. You know what I mean? I feel like, is it Kenneth?

Yes, it was Kenneth.

The thing that threw me, my first thought was it would be Kenneth, but then I was like, how is it hard on top? I guess his skull? His skull, yeah.

And even though the location changes, it stays in the same place. Now, I don't remember exactly where. At some point, Kenneth hears this and he's like, it's me. I'm the safest space at 30 Rock. And I think he finds it in his coat or something along the lines of that. However, Luke, when I typed into Google, because I wanted to have the actual quote in front of me in case we needed it while you were kind of doing the intro of the show.

And what did AI tell you that you didn't like? I wrote into Google.

Here's what I wrote directly. 30 Rock, dry and warm, safest place, location changes. I'm like, that should get us there. And then there's some people who quote that on Reddit or whatever. But the very top of the Google results now, the A.I. overview from Search Labs, as it's called, says this in the 30 Rock episode, Larry King, Tracy Jordan describes the safest place as dry and warm. It's top is hard, but it's bottom is soft. And although the location changes, it's always in the same place, which is a euphemism for his own anus.

Is the A.I. thinks that Kenneth has the treasure in he's boofed?

No, I think AI thinks that Tracy Jordan has it in his own anus. It says, which is a euphemism for his own anus, which means like somebody, maybe somebody wrote that on the internet somewhere and AI believed it. I don't understand where it's getting this, but like I am getting more and more AI intrusion in my life. Now, I had that. I mean, I guess I invited it in when I went to the chat GPT to help me kind of sort to help not even help me with my fantasy baseball draft, but just to tell me that I did OK with my fantasy baseball draft. Then I got into a fight with it, whatever.

But then and then, by the way, it was proved ultimately correct.

And then the player that player is out for the player that had insisted was out for the season. I said, no, he's not here. The headline saying he's ready for opening day. And then before opening day, he got hurt in spring training and is missing. a big chunk of the season.

Could you ask that chat GBT the lotto numbers for this weekend?

Good Lord. So there was that. I don't use Yahoo Mail very often, but I do still have an account because it was my very first web-based account. And so I use it for certain things and it's kind of a legacy account and sometimes I use it when I'm signing up for stuff, this and that, whatever. I use it to test our TBTL newsletter every week. And they have added some AI features to it that make it unfrigging usable. It is now like trying to summarize emails at the top so you don't have to read the email. And it is so unhelpful. It is summarizing the TBTL newsletter, but it doesn't know. It's gibberish. Like it's trying to combine the 10 of the week with whatever bullshit I wrote at the top and then combining it with a hey dummies and a recap of the week. Like AI can't summarize all that stuff into a coherent message because it's not coherent. It's a whole it's. I have different – it's like – and in order to turn this off, I'm like I go into settings, all the obvious places it should be. You can't turn it off unless you go into your profile. Like it is so buried so deeply how to turn this shit off. I am so just insulted by the decision to use this and how much real estate is taking up in my email. Exactly.

It's taking up more – it's becoming a pop-up ad. It's huge. Like which one uses Gemini? Is that – is that Gmail? Is that Google?

No, I think Gemini might be, is that Microsoft or is that Google? I don't know.

I feel like there's one of these products that I use. Google, Google. They're trying to put, like, half the screen will be this Gemini thing, trying to, like, do some bullshit that I don't want it to do.

But anyway, but also, let's just get to the fact that, and it's just so wrong. Like, this is not a euphemism for Tracy. I'm smarter than the AI.

I knew instinctively it was Kenneth. It thought it was Tracy Jordan's backside.

And also, like, I just don't need AI in the morning putting the words euphemism for his own anus in front of my face. No, nobody needs that.

I've bumped up against the edge of the modern digital world today two times. I was trying to listen to two different—on my little jog, I was trying to listen to two different New Yorker stories that are on the New Yorker app. Because, you know, if you go to the New Yorker app, every story that they've printed, there's also an audio version now. But 90% of them, I'm learning, are AI-voiced. Then, like, you get lucky. Like, the Primo ones, like Ronan Farrow has this incredible expose about actually quite terrible, terrible case in Johnson City, Tennessee. That gets, like, a real read. And there's a, I found this other one that got a real read. Not by him, but by a professional human. I was trying to read this. Jill Lepore will read. I was trying to listen to this Jill Lepore article about backyard gardening and this particular figure in the backyard gardening movement. But the AI voice, it was just killing me. I probably listen more closely or because of this being our job, I'm a little more picky about it. Then I switched over to the great writer, Catherine Schultz, who I'm a huge fan of. And Catherine Schultz had written a piece about basically her and her partner's experience of being sick all the time because of their babies. And it's a great piece Like the writing is awesome Per always But at some point The AI called it the Aegean Sea Instead of the Aegean Sea And it made me irrationally angry I was like this is a knowable thing It's not the Aegean Sea Like fix this Sergei Brin or whoever's in charge of this

You know what I discovered yesterday That I thought was pretty interesting But I had forgotten about it And now you're reminding me of it. And I'm wondering if it's worth bringing up on the show. But I had to bring it up to somebody. It might as well be you all.

Yeah. Might as well be for people paying good money to hear this. That's right.

I was using voice-to-text in the car yesterday, as I almost always do. If I'm driving somewhere, if I'm picking up Genevieve, I'll just say the trigger words from my Google device to wake it up while I'm driving. And it makes a little beeping sound. And then I say, text Genevieve Haas. That's right. The computer's got me pronouncing my life partner's name incorrectly just so they will understand me. So they're training me. How they get you. Note that. So I say, text Genevieve Haas, and then the robot says, okay, what is your message? And then I will read my message. In fact, it's bad now to try to put the punctuation in there. I used to say, I'm at 45th and the Ave now, period. I should be there in about two minutes or something along the lines, right, of that. And now if you say punctuation, it puts the punctuation, it spells out the word period or question mark. It just kind of infers from your voice what the punctuation is, which is easier, except it gets it wrong a lot. And so now it's training me again. I kept saying, I'm going to pick up the cat now, and then I would go on to another sentence. But I kept putting now at the beginning of the next sentence. I could just tell the way it was reading it back. and i i realized oh what i have to do is say i'm now on the way to pick up the cat like and now i'm rearranging how i'm saying words yes in sentences so that the robots won't misinterpret me but here's what i really found interesting i'm not even there yet i'm not even there yet folks talking about this cat stuff i said i'm going to pick up some more cat food the vet gave professor bananas some pate and she seemed to like it bananas doesn't usually like pate the machine understood that I was saying pate but when it read it back to me it read it as pate so I thought that was weird it's not like I typed in pate and it didn't recognize it so it's calling it pate because of course it's spelled p-a-t-e right with I think some special little, what is it, an accent over it or something, I can't remember

yeah maybe over the e but it's weird that the devices can listen recognize the word pate spell it out itself but then when it spits it back to me mispronounce it as pate right like

again like it's this thing is you know it's it's how smart is that it is so smart and yet it's like butchering i literally turned this is why i was irrational i just turned the you know the article off at that point. I was like, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to deal with this robot mispronouncing the Aegean Sea to me. Like, I'm better than that as a listener or reader. So I turned it off. Plus, it was time for me to go take a quick shower. What happened was there's, like, I have this thicket of bamboo. I'll tell you, for years I've been a bamboo defender on this show, because I think bamboo is very cool, and bamboo is a very unpopular plant with people Who in my experience don't even have bamboo But they've heard oh that'll run on you That just goes everywhere once it gets started And I'm like okay but also You know it's not like Okay so you have to take an afternoon Every year and you have to trim it back That's one afternoon out of your life and you have this kind of Cool plant that's a nice privacy thing etc I've got this thicket of bamboo I will tell you It is kind of running But

You mean when you say running you mean under the ground It's running roots You're getting rhizomes

I think they're called rhizomes you're getting these basically shoots are popping up yeah in like it's encroaching into the grass part of my yard at a rate of about three inches a year and all that means is I just I would have to trim those little Those rhizomes those little things that are coming up and then I just have to do that every year But really what happened was there's a there was a giant boulder that was in my yard somewhere and when I was having a guy do some you know excavating and kind of creating this little kind of roadway so that whatever boring but this he moved this big boulder with his like scoop and he put it he's like where do you want this I was like just put it kind of with the bamboo and now what I've done what I decided to do this morning I was like on the treadmill in this room and I'm just like staring at this thicket of bamboo that has this huge boulder kind of right in pushed into the the perimeter of the bamboo and i thought i bet you i could trim out all the bamboo around it and create a cool little alcove and then maybe later what i'll do is get some kind of piece of wood and and figure out a way to like drill into this boulder and make a little bench like a zen garden bench in the bamboo i've been staring at this bamboo and thinking about this on every jog for the last six months and for some reason this morning because i thought i had a little extra time i got out the you know the whatever you call it, the, what, trimmers? No, the pruners. And I just went to town on it. And it's pretty cool, actually. I'm actually very stoked about it. But anyway, that was, I don't know why I brought that up other than to say I was in the midst of doing that when I decided I am no longer listening to this New Yorker article read by an AI bot because I find it insulting that it doesn't know how to pronounce a G-N-C.

Now, I thought you were going to have the fellow who was helping you with this boulder. I thought he was just going to roll it up the hill and then have it roll down the other side and then roll it back up. Oh, Sid? Yeah. Sid-sifis? Yes.

That's how the AI pronounces it. Sid-sifian. It's Sid-sifian.

That's right, yeah.

What if your name was Sid-sifian?

I feel like there's a good, I feel like there is a decent, I guess, company brand name in there if you're in the boulder removal business, potentially. Yeah. And it's a very specific business.

Do we want to open this Pandora's box of the CPAP commercial just in the interest of, we have a lot to talk about with Mulaney, but here's the thing, okay, listen, can we, can you put one minute on the clock? I just want to close the loop on this because it was a big, one day I was complaining about it to you, the next day I couldn't find it, I just feel like I would like to, you know, just basically pay this off a little bit But I was complaining, I think, two shows ago. Okay, you're on the clock. Okay, thank you. I was complaining about an ad I saw for a CPAP machine that—

Yeah, baby!

Whoa, okay, calm down. Wow, okay. Wow, thank you.

Okay, you're about a quarter way through your time.

Andrew, do you want to experience an actual nightmare? I'm trying to dial this audio up, which I just should have grabbed in advance. and because of the vagaries of TikTok, which is where I saw it, by the way.

TikTok is tough to play audio from live until you get it set up.

Whereas usually Instagram, the problem is it's muted. Yeah. I guess TikTok's new thing is that it's unmuted, but guess what? Because I'm on Chrome, Chrome is trying to make me solve a puzzle before it'll show this to me. It says select two objects that are the same shape.

I've been getting that too with every TikTok link you send me. I'm like, why?

And I'm like, you want to talk?

about trying to do a trying to do a math puzzle while I'm talking to you and trying to play CPAP tape not today Satan you got two seconds okay okay here we go and you're out here's the audio when you have sleep apnea good sleep is a turn-on with a CPAP so it's called resmed this was the commercial I couldn't find yesterday it's called resmed and what's happening is the guy is out my complaint was that he was lying in bed I misunderstood the commercial slightly to be that he was having a great night's sleep but the thing i was mad about was that they didn't show him with the c-pap hose and apparatus on his face which is the uncomfortable part of using a c-pap machine when i saw the commercial again and sent it to you i realized no i guess the premise is he wants to have sex with the c-pap machine but in both cases i still feel like it is it's very very uh it's it's it's misleading to sell me a c-pap machine and not show me the part of the CPAP machine that's going to present me with the worst part of it.

Yes, so I'm still I wouldn't even just say as confused. I think I'm more confused now that I've actually seen the commercial because you described it to me as a very short commercial where a man is resting peacefully and the CPAP machine is sitting next to him on his table, but he doesn't have any of the tubes or anything hooked up to it and it's like, oh, that's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. It's not like, oh, this machine is like a humidifier or dehumidifier that you can just put next to you you have to wear the tubes right and so you said that I'm like yeah that does sound disingenuous but now you've shown me the commercial you sent this to me yesterday and I'm more confused he's as you said still not wearing those apparatuses except there's sexy music and he's is he tossing and turning and he's looking lovingly at the CPAP machine but again no tubes he's looking at a little box a little digital box that I assume the tubes plug into. What is the point of this commercial? You sleep more easily when you're having wet dreams about your CPAP machine?

Listen, as a person who had a wet dream every single night of his life between age 13 and 20, you don't sleep better, okay? It's a whole problem. But no, I think, here's what I think. I think that they wanted to make a commercial where they created a positive association with this CPAP machine and how it's going to really make your night better, but they don't want to show you putting this hose on your face because that's the part that sucks about the experience and so maybe somebody was like well why don't we just show him having a great night's sleep and then maybe somebody else said well that's kind of that's a bald face lie and they said well what if we just make it like he's like the joke is because it says you know when you have sleep apnea getting a good night's sleep is a real turn on that's the voice over in the commercial he's being turned on by the CPAP but he's not turning on

the CPAP machine I don't understand it it's so like is he are we seeing a man who can't sleep because he he hasn't put on the CPAP machine yet like what are they selling me here and did they

kiss Andrew and did he and the CPAP machine kiss like mayhem and that guy's wife and I'm on the

ResMed website now and they're showing all kinds of photos of this like very like kind of modern looking very you know pretty cleanly designed yeah CPAP like device unit then and they you know show you the the smartphone app right next to it to really indicate like how and they're showing all of the photos of all the different devices they sell none of them are showing any tubes or any masks they're only showing the the tabletop devices which yes look cool now it does say right at the top or near the top what is a cpap device and it says a cpap device is a machine that treats sleep apnea by delivering air through tubing and into a mask to keep your airway open while you sleep so i wonder if they're putting it there because of legal reasons there's nothing else on this website that indicates you have to wear this thing it looks like a dehumidifier you know like a modern clean looking like little device they're not showing anywhere anybody wearing or even even tubes sitting on a table or anything like in severance episode seven whatever cobell is carrying around working on cpap harbor right exactly cpap's neck to visit her old hometown. Anyway, I'm going to get my ether without this tube. I am I am boggled by the commercial. I still don't know what the joke is or what the selling point there is. I don't understand what they're doing other than lying.

I think that they're lying. I think what they're trying to do is create an association in the mind of the viewer that is this machine plus sleep apnea equals an enjoyable time in bed. Like, what they're trying to do is create the association that you will have a more pleasant night's sleep, even with your sleep apnea, with this machine. But they do not want to admit that the way it works is you put a hose on your face and blows air down your throat all night. They're committed to not—this hose erasure is as extreme.

and thorough with this company and i i think it's i think it's inappropriate i'm furious about this

i'm going i'm on their website now and i am i'm looking at like all the different tabs and when you go to sleep health you see a very young woman with like kind of cool headphones like she's going out for a jog or something with a cute little hoodie show a guy who's you know he's a little bit tired in the morning in a very nicely brightly lit um you know home there's a there's a very young cool looking woman just smiling at her cell phone there's all kinds of people doing every There's a guy having a great breakfast in the morning and smiling at his phone while he reads the news because he had slept so well. Nowhere does it show anybody using a CPAP machine. This should be illegal. Literally illegal.

Literally be illegal. Okay, good. We got that out of our system. Thank you.

Sort of. I'm still fuming. I'll shut up, but I don't know if it's out of my system. Hey, how about this?

Class action? Class action lawsuit?

You know, I just got a postcard for a class action lawsuit because apparently my data was part of a big breach. But you know what? I threw it away. Like, does anybody get anything more than $1.50 out of a class action lawsuit?

I've gotten a couple from, like, Verizon and stuff. And, like, I don't know. I mean, this was from – It ain't mesothelioma money. I'll tell you what, bud.

Yeah, right. This was from – also confusing me was from the Fred Hutch Cancer Center, which I've never had any business with. But I just wonder if they're part of a medical organization, an overarching organization that maybe shares my info. But that was another thing, too. So I'm like, why am I getting things from Fred Hutch?

Yeah.

But I threw it away. So anyway, if that pays out like $500 per class action individual, I will be very bummed. But I don't think it's going to be $500.

Well, you know who the lawyer who's on the case for it is, right?

Oh, please stop.

It's so unfair to, after something like this, to blame people in the backseat or say they deserved it.

I won't stop. I'm sick of consoling parents, but I won't stop until this stops.

I'll do it until it stops. Will you please stop?

Will you please stop? I always forget the will you. There's something about the will you please stop.

It's deeply North Dakotan to me. I love it.

We was hoping for some razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody razzle dazzle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These generous, wonderful folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough, and that is what keeps TBTL happening during these incredibly unstressful financial times. And while the sun is shining and the hay is being made and the calf is fattening, we have these people to thank for the fact that this is still a thing that can happen five days a week. Folks like Madeline Kanai in Chester, New Jersey.

New Jersey. Now, when we met Madeline for the first time, I believe we met Madeline and some friends in Arizona, in that basement of that bar.

I think, boy, what a memory on you, Walsh. What a memory. In fact, I believe this is referenced in Madeline's message. Madeline says, co-bros, I don't know what I'd do without your daily banter and hot takes regarding CPAP commercials. God, how did you know, Madeline? It's just amazing. That's crazy. That's serendipity. They bring me so much comfort, and they guide me out of the dark mental places I've been finding myself in recently. C, colon, new admin. I see they have a new admin person at Madeline's work. It's really tearing the joint up. Through the years, I've leaned on you through major life events and engagement and marriage. A baby? Congrats. That's a move from New York City to Phoenix and a move back to the East Coast. The adoption of three rescue dogs and four chickens. I'm reassured knowing that you'll continue being by our proverbial side as we continue our adventure. Now to Minneapolis. Boy, oh boy. That makes me look stable and rooted in one place. That's a lot of moves, Madeline. Hopefully that's a nice soft landing there for a 10. I mean, I'll tell you, I was looking, for some reason on my, I don't know if it was TikTok or Instagram, I started to get, like, real estate tours in St. Paul, Minnesota. I was like, man, I could, it's a beautiful country out there, Minnesota. You know, the winter's a little tough, but I could see that being a soft landing for all of us, maybe. Because of the Tens community, this move doesn't feel so uncertain. I'm filled with excitement as I connect with the Minnesota Tens. Nice.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Like, there's so many Tens out there. That's great.

That's awesome. And because of the community you've built over the nearly two decades, you've been cranking out these podcarts. Thanks to you, Andrew, Luke, and John, for continuing your mission and your answer to curing global...

loneliness the world is a better place because of you oh wow how amazing that this is our job and madeline is supporting us is paying uh our bills and is telling us nice things like the world is a better place because of us the tbtl world is a better place because of you madeline oh

absolutely yeah madeline you are the you are the model of a 10 thank you for everything you do appreciate you maestro on your mark on your mark get set get set now ready ready go i wanted to get into some uh gilbert and sullivan patter there uh-huh the very very model of a major gentleman no i knew you i knew you'd get closer than i would that's not i just heard but still pretty far away it's still frisk closer i just like threw the word model out there i'm like

let luke clean this up hold on let me see what i can do here um the very the oh gosh this is

gonna make there's a modern gentleman yes yeah oh thank you i was forgetting about modern we have

got some gilbert and sola heads out there that are just like they're throwing their pinafores

right now we call dave ross can we get him on the line man you are that guy's retired now modern

military major the very model of a model of a modern major gentleman but there's one more

major it's not general modern major general general general you are the model of a modern Major General. Look it up. Are we there? Did we do this? Hold on. Okay.

I didn't know we were looking this up. Model of

a Modern Major General.

Well, Gemini doesn't even know what this is.

A Modern Major

Gemini. It's Tracy Morgan's butthole. Yeah. Let's see. I am the very model of a Modern Major

General. Hey, we were putting in the second person. We got first person, second person messed up, but we ended up getting there. And honestly, in a more sort of poetic, musical, lyrical way than even... From the Pirates of Penzance,

this is the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera from 2022. Credit where credit is due. Nice. Maestro?

Again, well, I wasn't ready for this. On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Couldn't remember if we'd done it. Now ready. To reload the muscle.

That takes a while. Well, that's what I, I mean, I know I've said this many times on the show. This is my entire take on gun control, which is why people tune into this, which is why Brant Severson in Moraga, California is donating. Who had this on their bingo card? I feel like any gun that was available when the Founding Fathers wrote the Second Amendment, you should be able to own. And I would wish you good luck with that blunderbuss.

Should you be allowed to use a blunderbuss that you made with a 3D printer, though? A ghost blunderbuss?

I just think I mean, it's like it's good luck reloading that musket or whatever that shoots like a little metal ball in a not very straight line

I'm sorry, Brant

I'm sorry to drag you into this debate this toxic debate Brant says, I'd like to put in a plug for mentoring younger people appreciate it so much and the mentor can also also learns so much in the process the workplace uh is obvious if you have experience but i just recently retired so i'm finding other ways to make myself available to share guidance and just generally support younger people linkedin is a good place and it's easy to label yourself label yourself as available to mentor i always feel like i'm rewarded with good karma so perhaps others would enjoy mentoring younger folks as well brant what an interesting idea yeah that is interesting i feel like you're really good at that andrew like the times that i've you know seen you i guess it would have been more in la than other places but like i feel like you have you're a good manager and i think you think about managing and mentoring and kind of like you know helping people along in their career arc you think about i feel like you think about that more than i do or you did but when we had normal jobs you know i will i was just trying to go get my eggs during the news break at 8 0 5 a.m i do like you know i don't know if there's a big

difference between mentoring or training i'm a very pragmatic kind of person when it comes to like kind of big picture life advice or long-term planning i actually don't have a good brain for that and so i don't have a lot of advice to give but i do love like in the in the situations where i was in a workplace uh throughout my career i would end up being the default person to train somebody in a new system whether it's a new audio system or just the process of booking a guest or a show like just like the step by step i like make you know one of my first job well maybe not one of my first jobs but one of the major uh modern general jobs i had

When I worked for my dad was putting together technical manuals sort of and stuff. And so I think that maybe that – like I'm a very orderly person, A, then B, then D, then C. I'm not good at reading.

As long as you're not looking up Gorman Thomas.

Yes, exactly. What a show to brag that I know the alphabet. But anyway, I do sort of – my mind moves in a very linear manner. So I do like to kind of try. I haven't had the opportunity to do that in a long time, but maybe this is it.

Yeah, well, Brant, thanks for the idea, and thanks for the financial support. We really appreciate it. Thanks, Madeline, as well. Thanks for making TBTL possible today. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right. I know that TBTL, along with playing very brief moments of 30 Rock over the course of weeks and months and years, along with that, we've also become apparently the number one Everyone's Live with John Mulaney recap podcast. I don't know how much the listeners care about this, but it's big in my world for some reason. Wednesday night, I could not watch the show live because I was doing an interview down at the Tomorrow Theater in Portland. And then yesterday in the afternoon, I was up actually on Whidbey Island doing some TV stuff. And so I got home and I turned on my Netflix and I saw that there was a new recording of it. I know you're not big on watching it on delay.

I think I need to change that system, though, because now I've missed two weeks. And there's only a limited supply of these things. I either need to just suck it up and watch it on delay or make it more of a priority. because I have it on my calendar. My calendar keeps reminding me, hey, go downstairs and watch John Mulaney now. But I'm kind of like, if I'm in the middle of something, it's really hard to get myself just to stop and then go turn on the TV. I have to be in like a in-between-things mode.

So I turned it on last night, and the top of the show was, I thought, absolutely sublime. I guess we'll call it the monologue.

Is this the thing that you and Chris sent me this morning? Yeah. So good. It is flawless.

Do we want to play some of it, or do we want me to just describe what it was

try to do it briefly well maybe do you have it there can you start the tape i mean it's 10 minutes long and i will say solid 10 minutes i was late dialing up today because i started watching it five minutes before our dial-up time and i could not stop it it was flawless from a narrative arc start to finish so it'd be kind of hard just to sort of kind of needle drop and scrub through i'm just gonna start playing the beginning and we kind of run out of steam

uh or whatever we'll uh we'll see we'll see how this works okay mother let me tell you about the

week i had we had a something very special planned for you this evening that we had to scrap very recently i know but listen i'm just as mad as you are though i have way more information

by the way this is neither here nor there but he is not wearing a sport coat for this he is which is a new look he's always had a sport coat on every episode and now he's just wearing very trim yeah he's a very trim uh fit individual would appear but he's got like a nice collared shirt on and a tie but i thought that was also interesting sort of in the way that like when they had the musical guest a couple of weeks ago be like the first thing that happened it's like Normally, it'd be like, well, no, this is the show where you wear a suit coat. You've been wearing a suit coat, or you've been wearing a sport coat, you know, every single episode of this. But now you're just gonna not have one on, which I think is great. I like that they are not, they don't seem to be precious about any part of the show. Like, what, whatever's been happening doesn't mean it has to keep happening that way, which I just kind of like.

Tonight on the show, we were going to announce that Richard's pet tortoise had died, and that Richard was very sad. This was a bit, don't worry. Richard doesn't have a pet tortoise but we're gonna say he doesn't that it died and that he was very sad and we're gonna be like oh my god you know no one should outlive their pet and it'd be very you know we play it very serious then we're gonna be like how can we possibly pay tribute to this dead tortoise here on our show then ding dong the doorbell would ring I'd walk up there I would open the door and it's bone thugs and harmony and they were gonna say our tour bus broke down, and we heard you guys are sad. The setup didn't even make sense at all. But then, in honor of the tortoise, they were going to perform Crossroads. If you're not familiar with Crossroads, it was an enormous hit that Bone Thugs in Harmony had in 1996 about their friend's tragic death, and I cannot overstate how hugely popular it was with horned-up junior high kids at Catholic schools to grind with each other during the Clinton administration.

Tell me what you're going to do when Judge comes for you by the way i believe they're from cleveland i think they are yeah they're from the cleave now what i think is is is interesting about this is they did there's clearly i don't know if it's mulaney or his head writer there's somebody there who very much has the same kind of like 90s hip-hop sensibility that i have because they did a bit that just absolutely died like two weeks ago where they were setting it up like it was sort of a maybe it was there some sort of holiday where we honor the military or something that happened a couple of weeks ago you think i would know they basically set up this thing like they were going to honor like a u.s military person and then instead from the from the no limits army i think it was silk the shocker maybe they brought

it was i was totally unfamiliar with this with this piece of it's like a whole like yeah like

that song make them say oh no no no no that's like the no limits army i think that's like um uh is it master p anyway like there was like this thing called the no limits army that was just putting out like you know and there's like 30 people who are ancillary members of the no limits army and they would do these like that make them say huh video they're like dunking basketballs but i think there's like a tank that's sitting in the middle of the like gym or something so they bring silk the chakra and they like present him with a flag and literally nobody knows what's going on except me i'm like oh it's because he's in the no limits army well they meant they said

no limits army at some point during the thing so i guess if you don't remember the videos or if you

weren't like tracking no limits army in the 90s it's you if they have to tell you it's the no

limits army they've already lost you i think i mean i guess i thought it was i mean i well i'm the exact i can tell you that i wasn't lost and i had no idea who he was like it was live the whole show was has that awkward energy to it but you enjoy the bit i thought it was i thought it was incredibly ballsy i'm like this is knocking on the door of sort of i mean i had no problem with it but i could see somebody who's more sensitive being like where he's he set it up like we want to honor those in uniform and then this rapper comes out in camo from the i guess 90s early 2000s i don't know the era but again like from context i was like oh my god yeah i thought it was funny and super super awkward and i thought that he what was his name silk touch no that's

silk the shocker i think that's right so that's the thing you're not allowed to do at the massage

parlor anymore silk touch is i believe a um enchantment you can put on a pickaxe in minecraft but yes silk the shocker actually sounds more dirty to me but anyway um yeah no i i feel like i had no context for it but they did a good job of making it funny universally i thought

well well i didn't get the sense that the live audience was like was was it felt to me like it kind of died in the room that could have just been my my um you know my perspective on it or my read i find it interesting that after that now bone thugs and harmony are way more well known probably at least to a certain group people than like the no limit army but i thought it was interesting that they were going to do another 90s hip-hop kind of like you know thing where they bring somebody else in because again my my feeling around the the the military one was it kind of flopped a little i mean i love that they did it it was deeply awkward yeah i remember that like

it was more like titters in from the audience like kind of where is this going yeah but so let's let's kind of recap what we've heard so far in just like the first minute of this and why it's just so again I did not even see this clip of tape until right before we started recording and it had me immediately it gripped me immediately and it kept me to the very very end I could not turn this thing off and the setup is so brilliant like first of all just saying take you behind the scenes here the original like kind of just a small idea of the joke is Richard has a tortoise that died and it's like it's so sad when you outlive your pets that it's so funny because obviously tortoises live forever i mean it's just so right like what a good what a great pet it's so good and now we're in the like okay well how do we get how do we get out of this little bit well it'd be funny if bone thugs come by and sing this song that was he's absolutely right like A weirdly horny song About a dead young man Well dead people Dead people

I think each verse is maybe And the video I remember Just like people disappearing I guess that you know Or like kind of graying out And then like I don't know if they got wings Or they go to heaven It's a very serious topic for it to be Like you said such a pop hit And something that was probably being played At high school dances I mean it is a memorial song It's a funereal song, really.

Yes, absolutely, yeah.

Okay, so that's where we're at with this, and continue millennium.

We really want to make this happen. I am so committed to making this happen. We reach out to a contact we find online for Bone Thugs-In-Harmony, and we schedule a Zoom with their manager. Three weeks ago...

My writers and I get on the Zoom with just the manager. Let me be clear. The members of Bone Thugs-In-Harmony, that is Busy Bone, Lazy Bone, Crazy Bone, Wish Bone, and Flesh and Bone, are not on the Zoom. But the manager assures us that they're really into the idea and want to do it, and they really like the script. We're in business. I mean, I could already picture the Emmy in my hand, you know? Best I don't even know. but the manager then says hey you won't get all five of them one of them is not available i ask which one and i'm a hundred percent serious he says busy bone which makes sense that he would be the hardest to schedule if you had said lazy bone can't be there i'd be like is Is he busy or does he just not want to do it? Apparently, Busy Bone, they say, rarely performs with the other bones. Okay, I take him at his word. I was fine with that. I had such confidence in the bit working and I had such faith in you, the audience, for either not caring or not even realizing that one of the members was missing.

Now, by the way, Andrew, my thought on this whole thing is, did this really happen? And this, to me, is on the side of the ledger that it really happened Because if Bone Thugs and Harmony were in on this, if their management was in on this, they would not, like, allow Mulaney to kind of slightly neg them by basically saying most Americans would not be able to pick all of the Bone Thugs out of a lineup. And, like, it wouldn't really matter if you didn't have all of them there. This is a slightly, you know, this is a little bit of a diss because it's just kind of saying, like, you know, you know what I'm saying? So I'm, like, looking for any kind. And then there's something later that I think is evidence that it might be made up.

too. Oh, really? For what it's worth, and I'm always looking for people to be like spoofing me or whatever. I'm very defensive about that stuff. I just also believe it because this is a full 10 minute long monologue that I feel like they were like, we now have a 10 minute hole at the beginning of the show. Like, what are we going to do? And so, well, let's just tell the story. When judgment comes for you. Yeah, so I felt like, so that alone, I truly believe

this. We're off to the races. Production, production, production. First sign that something's out of the ordinary. We ask for their sizes so that we can provide wardrobe. They said, we've got that covered. I say, okay, I say, sure. We then speak to the audio department here at the show. And they say, hey, after they ring the doorbell and enter, they have to pull out hand mics. Can you make sure that they have pants with back pockets? Okay, so this gets back to the manager. FYI, they gotta have pants with back pockets to pull out the mics. The manager says, the pants we bought don't have pockets. If you want pants with pockets, you should get some yourself. Okay, weird. On Thursday of last week, just this past Thursday, I checked back in because they had not signed their contract yet. The manager says, in order to get there next week, we need $2,800 cash of just running around money. He says they're in the middle of a tour and it's not so easy to just dip out. I check online. They have a show April 19th in Inglewood and then another one in June, also in LA. But this is what they need and I'm happy to provide what our talent needs. And they needed the cash by Friday. Um, okay, I don't want to get into like a tax thing so I would ask that this next part of the story not leave this room I had the cash had to come from me like I couldn't pay it through the show budget okay so now I need to withdraw $2,800 okay a few years ago in an effort in an effort to safeguard my sobriety I set up certain uh uh measures right i set up a system where i cannot have at any time more than 300 cash unless i alert certain people by the way you could get a decent amount of coke for 300

dollars just might want to crank that number down malaney you know now you're in my head about like

the verisimilitude of this what do you think of this idea that it yes it couldn't come through

the show but this is the number one red flag for me i still i want to say on balance i think this is real. I think this might have been fabricated because it's a funny story which we're gonna hear. I'm gonna let this part play and then I want to I

want to get into that with you. So on Friday I call my wife Olivia who is in New York and I say hi how are you? And I say I need to get $2,800 cash and I need it today.

And she said, what is it for? And I said, it's for Bone Thugs and Harmony. Well, only four of them. $700 a bone.

So that, I do not, I mean, listen, a show with this level of production and this kind of a budget, there's petty cash. There's $2,800 that the show would, I mean, that would, I can't see any universe in which that would be on John Mulaney to pay that money, even if he's the executive producer. Like it just, that's just not how any of that works. And it feels like a setup to make the joke about asking his wife if it's OK for him to have. And also, I mean, I don't know what that looks like, but is it like Olivia Munn has to call the bank and say, I authorize him to withdraw this amount of money? Like this part of the story does not check out for me.

I actually kind of believe just and I think you're more familiar with his backstory than I am. I don't think I watched the full special that he did about his whole, you know, addiction and sobriety and everything. But, you know, it was real dark and he was in real deep for a while. So I honestly believe that he might have strictures on his finances. I believe that part.

I believe that part 100% that that's real. But what I have a hard time believing is that it somehow fell on John Mulaney to go get the $2,800. Like, for instance, let's just go with the idea. John Mulaney, who's the host of the show. So he has a lot of things going on with this. that he i'm the idea that it would fall on him to go like go to the atm to get the money like that wouldn't be something they would send the co-executive producer to do a behind the scenes how about the uh you know the lawyers for the show how about the accountant there's a million people who would go get this money out of their or out of some kind of a fund before they would

send john mulaney down to like to call olivia munn call olivia munn in new york to be like

He's standing at the ATM on Gower and trying to get money out. This part does not check out for me. I still think this happened, but I think it has been maybe augmented for comedic value, which is something we should consider doing once in our life.

I'm not taking up that burden. I would say also, and I sort of clocked to this early on, but it was kind of like, I don't care. Like, I also think that he's probably not as in person in these meetings as he's making it sound.

I don't think the initial meeting with Bone Thugs and Harmony's manager is something that John Mulaney sits in on. But I don't do that for Livewire.

Yeah, exactly.

And I'm a much smaller fish.

Yeah, but I mean, but that, I mean, I could believe, but I also sort of, and maybe this is just because I kind of want to believe it, or at least want to believe the narrative that he's set up here that I'll just go along with it, is this idea that he is doing something really weird here that is very much an extension of his personality, even more so than, like, The Tonight Show or something. Like, obviously, the host imprints on that, but it's a legacy that you come in and you take over and you can drive and you can put your own, we'll call it stank on it. But, like, what he's doing here is, like, I mean, with his whole show, is crazy. Like, and it's very, and it feels like he could potentially be the madman running this shit a little bit more hands on than maybe you would if you're just like, I don't know, get me Janine Garofalo for the B segment. You know what I mean?

Yes. Yes. I think you're totally right. I think that he is way more involved in the minutia of this show than any Jay Leno or maybe even a Conan O'Brien, you know, when he was doing that kind of The Tonight Show or whatever, a Letterman, certainly. Like, I totally agree with you on that. Here's what I think happened I think this really happened And we'll sort of skip ahead here I think the story he is telling Is a real story I just think John Mulaney was not as central to it As we are being led to believe But it's a great story And I'm enjoying it And I love that they're airing it out And I think it's a very smart way to air this story out And she's like

John, you know I love you If you want to tell me something You can tell me it And I, in an effort to calm her down Said, you don't understand I have to have this I have to have this right now I get the cash out of the bank all right then I hear forget the $2,800 cash just give us all the money for the appearance up front I said I can't do that I cannot give you all of the money up front I can give you half okay because I totally respect and I empathize that you sometimes show up to a gig and you get stiff but I can't give you it all up front I can give you half you just have to sign your contract I don't hear back. Two days ago on Monday, I am told that Bone Thugs-In-Harmony, booked on this show since the first week in March, are in the studio all week and cannot be on the show. But he's like, don't worry. We can get this all wrapped up and be there next week for blank, blank dollars. how much do you think that the original fee was going to be $15,000 half up front how much do you think they asked for on Monday they asked for $100,000 I absolutely love the specificity of this

and I absolutely believe all of this by the way I very much believe this really happened

$100,000 half that day I said there is no way I can do this I said there's no way I can make that happen. And then I said, very uncharacteristically, you have disrespected me and you have disrespected my show. I brace for an apology. I don't get one. It turns out there isn't a sorry bone. two hours later he writes back we can get this taken care of for 75 000 i was like hey you screwed me over and you screwed our show over and i won't forget this disrespect now i didn't tell you all this just to air the dirty laundry of what it's like behind the scenes of a show okay many guests have shaken me down for a couple thousand dollars and then canceled last minute

it happens all the time i i think that's a meta joke that is very funny actually and very subtle because like they've only had 10 episodes and i promise you zero guests have shaken him down for but i mean that's the joke but i i i love that that was the joke i think that's very subtle and

funny i'm telling you about it because i'm genuinely worried after a little investigating I have come to believe that the man I was talking to was not the manager of Bone Thugs-In-Harmony. In fact, several sites list a different person. Also, Busy Bone is scheduled to appear at all upcoming shows. So it appears it isn't so hard to get the fellas together. I'm concerned now that I never had any direct contact with Bone Thugs-In-Harmony. As you know, on Everybody's Live, we always keep the phone lines open for people to call in about our show's topic. I want you to know the phone lines are open right now on this show. The number will come up on your screen. I would ask that you or if...

Oh, okay. This now is making much more sense, Andrew. I'm sorry. This is a personal journey I'm on. I'm watching this clip as we're playing it. It's on TikTok, and the phone number is showing up as Mulaney is talking. When I was watching last night on tape, it said, phone's not open. And I thought that was another meta joke.

Oh, it's because you were watching the tape version. I was watching the tape.

I was watching the tape on a Thursday night, and I thought that their new joke was just going, the phone number will appear on your screen, and then it says, phone line's not open, or phone's closed or something. And then it happened later in the show. He gave out the number and it said, phone's closed.

Because you were watching on tape delay.

And I just thought their new joke was to like never give you this is like, I'd believe anything from this show at this point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But that makes a lot more sense now. It was just because I was watching it as a delay. But anyway, he goes on to basically like say that the he says, you know, if you know Bone Thumbs and Harmony, call us or get them to call us. And also basically he says that the manager, this person pretending to be their manager could have actually probably gotten more money out of them. Yeah. Just not $100,000 or $75,000, but like—

And slow-walked it a little bit and held them over a barrel by like getting—

Some of them there or some guys who pretend to be bone thugs. So now one thing that you pointed out in the text chain with you and me and Chris was like you're fascinated by— Let's just go with the premise that this was not really their manager. You're fascinated by the fact that this pretend manager was saying Busy Bones is not going to be there.

Yeah, right. I'm like, OK, the whole thing was a scam. Why would the manager go through the trouble of saying, well, I can't get you all five. I can only get you four. And maybe it's very smart. Maybe it's really smart. Exactly. Like you were I always think about the story you tell about how you actually called a scammer back and you were you had just woken up and you had gotten some notification about some like we're going to renew your your subscription to something that you didn't even remember paying for in the first place. But you said, like, if that was a lower dollar amount, you wouldn't have paid attention to it. You would have let it roll. If it was a much higher dollar amount, you would have known it was a scam. But like they just found this this specifically like three hundred dollars is my exactly and my activation point. And, you know, we and you know, when somebody pretending to be a sheriff called me and knew my name and number the other day, like there's these little things they can do to really make you feel like, oh, no, this is actually happening. And maybe that's why he was kind of saying, I can't get you busy bones.

i don't know i think there's an also i think there's another possibility which is i think that this person that they called was at some point in the orbit of bone thugs in harmony ah yeah that's but did not have the access that they once had yeah and so that's how they came up on the internet search and probably or maybe they had just lied to someone and overstated their friendship or professional association with bone thugs and maybe they thought like well you know i'm not going to turn this money down and now i've got to set about trying to actually get a hold of these guys and get them to go do this thing my guess is that if this person had had direct access and again i don't want to count bone thugs as money but my sense would be that it would be a big deal for them at this point in their career to be on that show and it's in los angeles i get the sense they probably live in los angeles a lot of them because of where the

industry is i'm sure even mentions that the two shows they have coming up this spring summer are in L.A. They seem very L.A.

And I'm sure Bone Thugs does just fine on the circuit they're on, which is probably playing casinos and stuff. I mean, dang, if they came through town, I might even trade in my Don Felder tickets at the Cowlitz County Fairground to get me, or the Clark County Fairground to get me some Bone Thugs tickets. So I'm not trying to act like Bone Thugs and Harmony are on hard times, but I do think that they... Finger bones.

He could be one of the members of the band. Finger bones.

Exactly. The bone who brought the rock and roll eggs.

The man who brought the rock and roll eggs.

The bone thugs in harmony. So I have a sense that the person that they were in contact with at one time had had some sort of association with this band, but maybe no longer did, but was going to just try to fake it until they could make it, and then they couldn't make it. Or at some point, they just like, maybe they called bone thugs, and they said, hey, you want to go do this thing? And they said, how much does it pay? And he was like, $15,000. They were like, we're not going to do it for that. And then that's, I don't know, that's my theory. Now, again, not to be no fun, but I also, I have the theory that I've already stated, I don't need to restate it, which is that this all happened, but it all happened to a mid-level producer and not John Mulaney. And they realized, rightfully so, that it's a much more compelling story when John Mulaney is at the center of it. There's just nothing about the way that television shows are produced, even with what we've said about Mulaney probably being much more hands-on. there's no way that John Mulaney is the person who's in charge of this negotiation on a day-to-day basis it just does that part does not check out

you could see it up level though to a degree that he shoots off an email or two or is looped in because he's going to be the name you know I mean that happens with you too on the shows you work on I know well we're trying to get this guy hey Luke could you send a note you have some connection to this person or whatever so I mean I could definitely see him having some you know sort of hands in the tape in this in some way um given everything that i i'm presuming about his relationship to this kind of personal project but certainly the like john mulaney trying to get twenty eight hundred dollars you're right that that that um does raise some i guess red flags for me now i want to share something with you so while we were listening to that again twenty eight hundred dollars i need i kind of just one from seven free how many fubos is that i uh i wanted to see if there's any update on this yet because I wonder like eventually like it would be really cool if next week like he has a response from Bone

I have a feeling that's the next part of this story

but anyway I have something that's going to make you angry here Luke and this is no longer a story about John Mulaney and it's not a story about sports it's a story about the media here are the top five headlines when you type in John Mulaney Bone thugs

Seattle Times you won't believe which thugs John Mulaney had an issue with this national comedian had an issue with. With these thugs. With these Harmony guys.

So here's the deal. Four of these headlines are great. I'm going to share all of these with you, okay? The Daily Beast says, John Mulaney admits to falling for deeply embarrassing scam. All right, good. Stereo Gum. John Mulaney claims Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's fake manager tried to scam him.

That's the headline. Claims. Not admits. Admits. Oh, I see.

Sure, yeah.

Presumes the story is true as told. Claims is the modifier that I want.

Good point. You're right. Even that Daily Beast one about admit, maybe that's a little bit drinking the Kool-Aid that John Mulaney is serving. But then you have, well, Barstool Sports. Great. John Mulaney tells the story of how a fake manager for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony tried to scam him. Tells the story. I think that's fine. Huffpo. John Mulaney spills the tea on how a fake Bone Thugs-N-Harmony manager duped him. Okay. All of those, I think, are serviceable. The A.V. Club comes around. The A.V. Club. We love the A.V. Club. I thought we did. We love them. Well, good, because we can talk about this with them if we're in a relationship. John Mulaney has a bone to pick with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. You don't like that? He does not have a bone to pick with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. He has a bone to pick with a scammer. They just wanted to use this terrible, obvious wordplay. There is totally...

selling out on the reality of

what you're going to do when punment comes

for you I mean come on man literally you are misstating what even the premise of this whole story is just so that you can employ a pun and it's a lazy ass obvious pun yeah I'm angry no bones about it I didn't realize oh sorry god I'm sorry the bone sent you no you're absolutely right

you're absolutely right now Andrew if I can if I can continue my crusade to absolutely extract any fun from this show that I do clearly love I must now tell you about the theme of the show and also the very bad thing that happened right after that that had me I'm going to show you something Andrew last night I texted I sent myself an email because I did not want to forget the chain of events because sometimes it can be easy to is there writing on that

that just there's right I know I know because of the light

doesn't jump there's believe me it's I wrote it in lemon juice so you got I basically was like, I've got to document this so that I don't mess parts of it up tomorrow. So the theme of the show, you know, each episode has a theme. It was squatters. Okay. Now, what I know...

You know what? I guess I knew that because our friend, who knows somebody who works on the show, said that that person reached out to them and said, Hey, do you have any stories about squatting? It's an upcoming theme on the show. I didn't realize I was getting a little... I thought that was an old show. The prophecy was foretold. I didn't know I was going to get a little insider info there.

And here's the thing. Here's what Mulaney says at some point after his Bone Thugs talk, but before they get into the couch portion of the show, he says, we're talking about squatters this week, and he goes, I don't mean people who are homeless. I don't mean people who are trying to find somewhere to live because they have nowhere else to go. And what Mulaney is thinking about, which he didn't actually even express very clearly in that moment, he disclaimed, he said, we're not talking about homeless people. We're not talking about people that are, you know, trying to just stay out of it. Desperate to survive. Desperate to survive. Yeah. We're talking about this other weird subset of people who, and I'm sure Mulaney got obsessed with these people because it's a weird story where, like, somebody figures out that there's a house that's unoccupied or the people are away, and they go in there, and then they file this, like, cascade of weird pretend wills and deeds and paperwork, and they can sometimes effectively tie up the question of who owns this house. They'll change all the locks, and the person who owns the house will come back from their vacation, or they'll come visit their rental house or whatever, and they'll be like, what the hell?

What is Randy Quaid doing here?

Exactly. The Starwhackers will come home, and they will find that Randy and Evie Quaid have taken over their home and created this paperwork nightmare that takes months and years to untangle. It's a weird topic, but it's a topic I can get behind, potentially. So then they get to the first two guests, and they love to do this where they bring out a couple of, well, in this case, it was a little bit less, you know, in the other ones I've noticed, they'll bring out a celebrity and then someone who's an industry expert.

Yeah, who's like not trying to be funny or just like more of a straight interview.

Not trying to be funny, not trying to give anyone the worst day of their life at their job. Horse cock. But this was not the case. they brought out the first two guests on the topic of squatters was uh was a wanda sykes and john waters the the great director john waters who i'm a huge fan of i think a date with john waters one of the greatest compilation cds of all time and i love his movies i love him i've interviewed him um which tells you that i love him andrew so john waters comes out and sits down and uh and the first thing that happens is malaney goes um to wanda sykes he goes uh are you from maryland and she says or he says are you from baltimore asked her some questions she says well i'm from the dmv which it means like the district of columbia maryland or virginia they kind of call that general area the dmv and malaney seems like i don't know slightly confused by that he's not quite tracking and he goes um so then he just kind of goes right over wanda sykes never a great look when you're talking to like a woman of color on your national television show just kind of like next her i felt it was a little weird did you notice and i'm sorry to interrupt but

in the one episode that i saw which was two weeks ago now there was also a lot of awkwardness with um the sort of positioning when the people come out to sit on the couch and both times the women involved it seemed like they were they were put in sort of awkward positions because like it seemed like mulaney knew ben stiller better than he knew like well certainly the woman from the cruise ship and so like he kind of like ben stiller has to like step in front of this woman in between her in the camera, and she has to sort of get out of the way so that he can hug his friend, the host of the show, while she's sort of, and then I think when Quinta Brunson came out, it was something sort of similar as well, even though she's obviously famous, but it was like, there were two times where I feel like the women were almost, like, physically not pushed, but moved out of their space so that the friends, so that Kroll could say hello to his best. best friend, Mulaney. And both times I was like, I'm not saying I'm I'm calling for anybody's cancellation, but I'm just like, well, let's be a little bit more aware of mindful and aware of like sort of how this is looking. And because it just sort of felt like a little boys club.

Yeah, it was. It struck me as a little odd that he asked a question of Wanda Sykes, but then didn't really like really wait around for the answer. And then he just goes right to to John Waters. Well, you live in Baltimore. Do you live in Baltimore still to John Waters? And then John Waters is like, yes, I live in Baltimore. Now, if I was one of Mulaney's producers, I would have said, by the way, here's the thing you could talk to John Waters about. The bathrooms at the Baltimore Museum of Art are named for John Waters because he donated a bunch there. And he asked, they said, do you want a building? He said, no, I would like the bathrooms to be named for me. I think that's kind of a funny detail. Easy, like talk show banter. Right. And I know they're not trying to make the typical talk show, but like, let's put this in Mulaney's head. Let's let him know one dazzling deed about John Waters and Baltimore. Then I think he says something I think Malini says something about squatters But then John Waters says I know I'm going to get in trouble for this Because you're supposed to call them one kind of thing But I just call these squatters I just call them chuds And then he goes on to define Cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers And you realize in this moment If you're a careful viewer That nobody has explained to John Waters That we are not talking about unhoused people We are not talking about people with mental health or drug addiction We are not talking about people who are living in Presumably, in John Waters' experience in Baltimore Abandoned buildings Because John Waters goes into this thing about how People are living in his friend People broke into his friend's building he owned And you can't get him out But again, not in this very specific way Of people that are all sort of fine and safe and okay And have decided to try to steal a house But in a like, again, a person who's probably unhoused, who's like in some, you know, abandoned rental of some friends of John Waters. Basically, John Waters goes on like a very, very bad look, kind of like shitty description of people who my point is this. John Waters has not been prepped whatsoever about what what we are and are not trying to talk about in this segment.

And the fact that nobody tough thing that he's asking for to like he wants to open up the phones on a very specific topic where the vast majority of stories around this would be more like somebody who's struggling with, you know, addiction or like just looking for survival or something. I mean, what do you want? How many people have how many average people or even guests have even stories about this? I'll tell you what. Again, I was talking to our friend whose friend works on the show and the person reached out and said, do you have any stories about squatting? And our friend said, are you talking about, like, the living in somebody else's space or are you talking about the exercise? And I was like – Well, I could talk about squats. Well, that's what I said to my friend. I said to our friend, I'm like, well, would you have a story about either? And she was like, yeah, I would have a story. I would have a story about the exercise. I could do – but, like, who's got a story? I mean, I'm sorry to cut you off. No, please. It's a good point. But what is – and, again, I don't think this is an accident. I mean, I think Mulaney is trying to make things awkward. I think he's refusing to give in to the traps and the tropes that make these other shows kind of unwatchable, like these style of shows unwatchable to people like me. And I really do appreciate that. I'll bet you people are warning him like, hey, that's not a great topic. And he's saying, I just want to do it. You know, like I do appreciate. I mean, I love that about the show. But also in this case, though, as a producer, I want to say, like, what do you want people to call? You think there's a lot of people in the right. You couldn't get that great of calls about cruise ships where like probably two out of three Americans have been on a cruise ship or at least have driven somebody to a cruise ship. You know, like you how what do you what are you expecting the phone calls to be?

And this, Andrew, thank you. This brings me to my moment of insight, my my moment of clarity around this show and why there are so many things that don't work. And it's because nobody who works on this show has produced a talk show. Certainly, they've never produced a public radio call-in show. They're comedians. I'm sure that this show is staffed with their favorite, funniest friends who are comedians and who maybe worked on a sitcom or maybe worked on a comedy special or maybe worked on Tim and Eric or whatever. But what none of them have asked themselves is, who will the callers be? They need to hire us or some other people that make talk shows to ask the question, how many people are going to have a story about squatting that isn't a story about a person who's obviously experiencing homelessness or drug addiction? Like, this topic is far too nuanced for us to make it the topic for the show. and also whoever

as the segment producer, how did somebody not get to John Waters and explain to him what this was and was not? He also then turns, I think John Waters, I think it was John Waters said that Wanda Sykes, again, weird optics, have you ever squatted? And then Wanda Sykes, in the only funny joke that occurred during this segment said, well, my parents might have told you that I was squatting after college. It's like, good save, Wanda. I don't know if I'm turning to a woman of color and asking her if she's ever squatted it either i mean maybe i'm just too sensitive about everything but like i think that the the issue with the show is that nobody who is making the show happen including john mulaney has ever tried to produce a talk show or even a radio talk show or anything so they're not asking these questions so they go up there with this very very bad plan of that topic i do think the topic is a

huge problem there and again i i i understand and i'm making a lot of assumptions about this show But the assumptions are based on what I like about the show, which is they don't want to let it slip a little bit like you don't want. So what's the opposite of this? It's the when the producer goes in and says, what are your three stories? Yes. And then how can our host set those up? And it's like all like so fake. And it's just like the most, you know, it's the worst of this type of stuff. Yes. I'm talking about Fallon. um so and so then mulaney might be like well okay uh how about this as a topic and maybe somebody says i don't know if it's a great topic like or or here waters has a story about this like don't tell me that i don't want to know because then the show if we start letting it slip a little bit then the show the next thing you know it's like i'm getting too prepped and so i sort of love what i assume and again this is all assumptions but i what i love is the stubbornness of yes avoiding too good of advice you know but I do think there's also sometimes a happy medium and I feel like I've been through this even professionally obviously not on such a grand stage but as a producer sort of saying like well we really had like in produce in like producing or I should say like sort of planning to launch a brand new talk show there were certain ideas that I was just obsessed with like I really wanted a talk show on public radio that was mostly the type of like kind of chat that you expect from a public radio talk show but i wanted music breaks i wanted to play two cool modern songs or just something that the host wanted to play let's take a break some kind of bail a fleck probably right but it was kind of modeled after what they do on some shows on the cbc which is really cool they just mix music and talk in a way but it's not like zoo crew talk it's like smart public radio style talk but also hey check out this song and it doesn't even have to be new it could just be the host saying i've been listening to this a lot lately and it's from the talking head second record or whatever like it's just like play a song and then come back and say you know we're going to be talking to the mayor after after this song like i you want to be somewhat careful tonally but it's absolutely doable i truly still believe that's doable i no longer work in public radio and they said they'll never hire me again but there were people who were just like listen this isn't working this isn't the vibe if you're going to do it it's got to kind of come naturally from the host the host isn't into it you can't have a producer forcing musical breaks into something it's not so we had to say all right i give up on that one it to me that was a really big one that was going to be sort of a it was really going to be sort of a guiding light of the the vibe of the show that i was trying to make and we had to give up on it and we ended up making a show that just sounds like every other public radio show but but but at a certain point you have to say if if the if it's not working you gotta like kind of rethink it a little bit or at least like find some things around the edges and say yeah okay we can find another topic that doesn't totally sell us out yeah because i think also with their show and

i know exactly what you're talking about and i've done this well this is sort of why tbtl is a podcast now right part of why because we were you know in the early days jen and i were intentionally obtuse with the management and doing things a lot of things that were very bad radio because we were so obsessed with not becoming like every other show or whatever but like the thing with the with this show is i it can it can keep it can be very very weird still like you don't have to throw the what does pita say about babies in bath they don't care about humans at all this is my understanding this is why we lost the election pita has no feeding a fed bird for babies and bath water buddy but um uh but like you know for instance last night they had a callback so there was a previous episode where uh somebody in the audience a presumably a paid performer kind of stood up and challenged john mulaney to represent every single male height between like five foot seven and i think like seven feet or something and so they started some kind of like a fake they started with a fake thing called like height aware or something which was like because the premise is most guys don't know what their actual

height is so it was like a public service announcement about height aware but anyway so they flash back to this woman saying you know you don't have the guts to show every height going up by one inch and the idea is that there would be on stage a guy who's 5'7 sitting next to a guy who's 5'8 sitting next to a guy who's 5'9 5'10 5'11 going all the way up and then last night milani checks in on how many heights they've collected and it's just like this graphic of this of this kind of you know it's pretty good it's like a graphic of the what i think i just described a guy who's 5'7 or whatever going all the way up and all they had was one guy who was 5'8 these were like drawings faceless drawings of guys of different

height but they were filling them in to show

yeah but only one was filled in they knew one person who was 5'10 that was it that's as far as they'd gotten

none of the more average heights yeah there was one

and again it wasn't even a person it was like a CDC graph or something yeah so like that's brilliant like you can do all of that you keep doing all of it you can keep sending waymo a samo out you know do all of the weird shit but just like produce it up like hire somebody who's who's good who's done a talk show before who could say again on this particular topic this is a bad idea and here's why and like there's other really good ideas out there other really good themes that we can we can focus on and again the problem is like the bummer was and i'm not calling for anyone's cancellation but also it's like mulaney did nothing in the moment to to to to mediate what was going on with john waters john waters just looked no offense john just looked kind of like an asshole and again i love john waters but it's like and i he he was just being his sort of edgy self i mean he's a known like sort of transgressive guy that's the kind of art he makes but like i didn't like him calling homeless people chuds yeah at all like it was a very bad look and it was a look that would have been avoidable if they would have asked a few questions before or again the producer just like sits down with with john waters and says okay i know this is kind of like weirdly nuanced but like this is the kind of thing we're trying to talk about yeah and this is the kind of thing we're not trying to talk about and like just if somebody would have just given him that talk i don't think it would have ruined the show i think would have made the show better or like less offensive did they get any calls i stopped watching after that yeah because i was kind of i was really again i don't i don't think i'm that much of a snowflake but i was a little put off by the whole also it was it was by i can see my time stamp it was uh 10 58 p.m andrew which is when i turn into a pumpkin um how about

don't throw the bread out with the basket how do you feel about that don't throw out the bread

with the basket i could go i could go with it i like that it's b you got a basket baby bath water it's got to be b what about don't throw the bread out with the bath water and why yeah i just like I like the idea of you sitting in a bathtub eating a baguette.

Shades of gummo.

I was going to go more with a Trumbo reference, with a Dalton Trumbo. Wait, was Dalton Trumbo the baseball player or the writer?

That name rings a bell. I feel like it's a writer, but I don't know.

Well, there was a baseball player named Trumbo, and then there was a writer named Trumbo. And famously, Trumbo, the writer, he had back problems and would write almost— Dalton Trumbo was the writer. The writer, okay, yeah. Well, then who was the Trumbo? Because, like, Trumbo, baseball player. We had, I think the Mariners had Trumbo the baseball player. Mark Trumbo.

Oh, that name, should I look for the baseball card?

Yeah, it's under M.

Oh, wait, no, I just went through all the T's. I don't think I saw Mark Trumbo, but I can take another look if you want.

Let's see, he was a Mariner for one season in 2015.

Oh, 2015, oh yeah, these cards don't go, these are not modern baseball cards.

He had 13 home runs for the Mariners in 2015, Mark Trumbo. That would take Julio Rodriguez 13 seasons to do that.

It's weird. I think he actually got – well, what am I doing? Sorry. No baseball talk. I think he got like 30 last year. It just all happened in like a week.

Julio did?

I think so. Didn't he have 30 last year?

I don't know, dude. Listen, we need to do the Flurs days, so I don't want to flerk this up. Um, but, but like, but like the thing that's hurting me right now is that the Shohei Ohtanis and the Aaron judges of the world are just battering the baseball. And I know that like, no, but I was, I was listening to, oh, I was listening to, um, Wyman and Bob yesterday as I was driving home from, uh, from my film shoot. That was actually very fun. Uh, uh, sitting in traffic was not very fun. I really hated that. I have lost the ability to sit in rush hour traffic. Nobody likes it, but, like, I honestly was like, do I pull over and get a hotel?

Good lord.

And it was like, people do this every day of their life. But I was on 405. I was on my way from Whidbey Island back down to this area. And I was so overwhelmed by the feel. I was so claustrophobic sitting in this traffic on 405 that I literally thought, maybe I pull over and get a room and I just leave at 5 in the morning because I can't do this. I just need to, I apologize. I was way off. He got 20 home runs last year. I don't know. I know 30 is a lot, but I thought that I had heard that he had gotten 30 because I had to go back and, like, recheck myself. I always think of Julio as just, like, spending most of the season as not being very good and then having a month that's really hot. And then everybody thinks that's his real personality. And when will Julio be Julio? I'm like, I think Julio is usually not hitting the ball and then every now and then heating up to some impressive levels. But I guess just 20 last year. I'm pretty embarrassed that I got that so off.

Let's see. This season, right now, he is hitting 182 with one home run and three RBIs. I bet you those three RBIs came on that one home run. He has four hits. He's hitting 182. He makes $200 million. He's hitting 182. You're absolutely right.

he did get 32 the year before so 2023 season he did get 32 home runs and 28 in 2022 so those are

that is a lot um I I guess I just it's like I'm so mad because I feel like and this was I was listening to Wyman and Bob when I was driving yesterday and they were playing oh and then I was like they they're in some I don't know they were like doing some other thing that I got bored

with so then I switched over to Kel Raleigh show they couldn't shut up about that yesterday

That's literally what made me change the channel.

And then they kept on saying, like, yeah, isn't it amazing? He's going to have his own show. They're basically saying he can barely talk. And we all love Kel Raleigh, but he's like a very kind of stoic, Tassiturn kind of guy. I don't know. Does Tassiturn mean unfriendly? Yeah, I think just reserved. He's not unfriendly. Yeah, he's just kind of reserved. And now he's in these commercials where he's trying to act. And him saying sun-drenched grass is one of the most painful things on TV right now. Have you seen that commercial where he's sending to be a travel agent?

I've seen it muted.

Anyway, I love that man. I'm not trying to diss him, but I'm literally thinking, even though he's a really popular player, I don't think his qualities translate to being a radio guy. And then the people who are supposed to be promoting it are basically saying, yeah, this is interesting. He's not much of a radio guy. I'm like, guys, either do this or don't. Well, that was it.

I'm in the car. It's like 4.55, and they go, coming up at 5, the Cal Raleigh show. It's going to be every Thursday at five with Shannon Dreher. And I'm like, it's not even you guys. It's like Shannon Dreher. God bless. I think Shannon Dreher is great. Good broadcaster, good journalist. But like, I don't want to hear like a 15 minute segment of Shannon Dreher interviewing Cal Raleigh and trying to don't don't Cal on my leg and tell me it's raining. It's not a radio show. If Cal Raleigh has a radio show, it's an hour long. He's the host of it.

Well, you know that they do this all like they have the Pete Carroll show. I mean, they always do this on the sports side.

I know, and I find these things generally horrific.

Yeah, it's not the Pete Carroll Show. It's Pete Carroll's our guest every week during this particular segment. Then they call it the Pete Carroll Show.

But they're not even the ones interviewing Cal Raleigh, if I had it right. It's Shannon Dreher. Why? Because Cal Raleigh is at 5 o'clock on Thursday, not available generally. Yeah, so it's prerecorded. It's some prerecorded pablum. pablum like so anyway i changed changed over to 93 3 fm which used to be cube 93 of my childhood chet buchanan and eric powers to the people and it was um i was listening to softy and whoever it is softy and puck i don't know it's it's it's crazy for me to listen to seattle sports radio and hear these various voices i mean i used to be the intern on the mikey and viddy show in the morning and Dave Softy-Mahler was producing the midday show when he wasn't working at Red Robin. And he's now a Seattle sports institution. But in all of that, I was hearing highlights. I was mad at the person who does the updates on KJR because she was, she said, all rise. She's a KJR person, right? She's the KJR update person. And she goes, all rise, Aaron Judge has another home run. And she's like giddy about it. And I'm like, come on. We're not giddy about Aaron. In this house, we believe the Yankees are war criminals. Okay? Bozo did the dub. The Yankees and their fans are war criminals. We do not go all rise for Aaron Judge. Out of here with that shit. When Julio Rodriguez is hitting 184, like, don't rub it in my face. And then on Wyman and Bob, they were playing highlights of Otani hitting that. Like, the Dodgers were losing 5-0. I forget to whom. but they came storming back. This was to win their eighth game. They came back and won on a walk-off home run by Ohtani. You know what the Dodgers announcer said when Ohtani hit the home run? Now listen, I get why they're excited. It's their team. Ohtani hits this home. He's the MVP, right? He's the reigning MVP of the National League. He would have to be, right? Yeah, I guess.

Yeah, he'd, yeah.

I mean, he's a, like, he's a...

Speaking of, didn't he go 40 for 40 last year or something crazy like that or am I just throwing out crazier stats?

No, you mean like 40...

home runs and 40 stolen bases i thought so yeah i believe that i 100 so otani who is the highest played player highest paid player in baseball and also the best player in baseball and also just like he's not human he hits a walk-off home run and the dodger guy goes otani with the hit and it's over you know otani for the home run inevitable i'm like yeah it's inevitable It's inevitable.

Are we beeping today or are we just explicit? Yeah, maybe.

As we go into a heavily child-centric segment called the Fleur Stays.

I'm trying to put markers in between you, me, and Noah. I dropped one. Mulaney dropped one. By the way, I want to say I love that on Netflix Live, he starts his monologue. We didn't even talk about that. He just starts his monologue by saying, MF-er. Like, that must be historic.

Yeah. No, that's a good point, too. I like the casual nature of it. But anyway, I'm just really struggling. I'm struggling with Julio, who is our one, supposedly our one, you know, our one treasure, our one shining star. We're paying him all this money. And, like, as these other shining stars do what shining stars are supposed to do, our shining star is dull. And it's so hard to not compare it to the Otanis of the world and the Aaron Judges of the world and even the Teoscar Hernandezes of the world.

And Eugenio Suarez is cooking wherever he is now, too. I heard he's cooking. I know my favorite thing, though. So here's the evolution of how Dodgers fans talk down to you. For years and years, it was about like, oh, no, you don't understand. Like, this is all homegrown. Like, it's because of the farm system. You don't understand.

We took this land from a bunch of people who were living in Chavez Ravine. It's a good story.

In this last offseason when they just kind of went around with a money vacuum and just sucked up all of the talent in the league. and the thing was now, but it's still baseball. You just never know who's – it's always going to be – I mean, you need all the talent you want, and I'm telling you, you're still going to potentially have the Rangers in the World Series or whatever, and, like, here we are, eight games, and the Dodgers have not lost one. They're about to go 162-0. Exactly. Inevitable! You guys have to find new ways to talk down to us.

It is inevitable. That's right. Sir, you've accurately described the inevitability of the Los Angeles Dodgers being 8-0 because they have the best players at every position. this was something they were saying yesterday on the thing and then we'll blurs, I promise the Mariners pitching staff is sometimes described as maybe the best staff in baseball and the other staff that is vying for that title is the Dodgers and guess who has never even pitched for them yet arguably the best pitcher in the game, Shohei Ohtani they have the best rotation without even using the best pitcher in baseball because they would have preserved his arm or whatever

Now, I will be interested in seeing if he's still as good of a pitcher after two seasons of not pitching and that injury. I mean, I wonder why they even would.

Why would they even have him pitch?

I wouldn't. He's on my fantasy team, and I would say it almost just creates more of a headache at this point. I would almost, if he was on the mound, I'm not even sure because there's, good Lord, I keep doing this. I don't even want to talk about this, and I'm talking about it. I'm talking about my fantasy baseball team. there's still this messed up rule and fantasy where even if Otani is pitching and hitting in the same game, you as a fantasy player can only pick one. He can either be your DH or your pitcher. You cannot rack up stats on the same day for him. It's just a glitch in the system because he's the only player who does that. But it's a real, it's a real, I don't know, it's a real bummer. But I guess I'm lucky to have him at all, especially since I inherited him. So whatever. So my point is, like, if there's a day late this season where he is both pitching and hitting, I don't know that I'd choose him as my pitcher. I mean, we'll see what happens, but I think he's, like, we see what he can do at the plate.

Inevitable.

Inevitable. Glad I got my fantasy talk in there.

There's a right way to rock and a wrong way to roll You can't just listen to your soul Just remember that life I always think that's a real dog.

I mean, hey, say hello to your real dog for me, Luke, and then get some money out of that cash register and give it to the dog. Hey, everybody. The goat wants some, too. Oh, are we in severance? Hey, everybody. If you would like to wish somebody a happy birthday or a happy Blur's Day, email me, andrew at tbtl.net, the week of their blurs, and we'll read it usually on Thursdays. We had to move this segment over to a Friday today. Judy says, happy Blur's Day to my tbtl daddy and amazing daughter. Don't you love how that works? Her daughter is also her daddy.

It's like the old riddle.

It's very Chinatown, yes. That was dark. Happy Blurzay to my TBTL daddy, an amazing daughter, long-time 10. Jen, I hope the family and I made your birthday as special as you deserve. We all love your creativity, warm heart, generous spirit, and delicious sense of humor. You are the light of all of our lives. Love ya, Mom. Sweet. That is sweet. And also Jen wrote in also celebrating her Blurzay. It was supposed to be a Golden Blur's Day because it was actually yesterday, and I was supposed to be reading this yesterday. But Jen mentioned that she's going to be celebrating in Vegas at the Golden Tiki. How do you know it's a girl? My grown five is hosting a guest DJ set jalapeno. Oh, nice. Egregiously late Happy Blur's Day to Sheila from fellow Ithaca 10 Cindy. is it really possible that the last time we saw each other was on our road trip to the TBTL live show in Philly? Can't wait. That wasn't that long ago. I thought it was going to be like.

I remember that road trip.

Yeah, exactly. Who was there? I swear there was a dog in the car, though, wasn't there? Or a cash register or something?

Yeah, and then that cyclist went by. I can't wait. And then those cops, they did not like the dog riding the bicycle. Oh, you know what? I shouldn't play that. I'm taking that off the list. I hate it when there's a siren in a song that I'm listening to. Yeah, yeah. So stressful.

Anyway, so this was for Sheila from Cindy. Can't wait to see you again. We will have two things to celebrate, your belated birthday and your upcoming retirement from Cornell. And no, Luke, Sheila does not know Dave Ross. She just saw him in an Ithaca parking lot.

Okay. Isn't Sheila in Shrub Oak? We're being super specific. You're asking questions that my patootie can't answer What about Tracy Jordan's patootie?

Eric says, happy Blurzay to the wonderful Lisa of the Olympia area We all grimaced at the thought that you could actually be 52 Who would ever know by looking at you? Here's to a tremendous year from your coolest friend-o, Eric Nice Happy Blurzay, Lisa We're seeing Lisa at a Mariners game years and years and years ago now. It was cold. It was the end of the season. Chad and Amy. It was raining. It was raining. There were dogs barking. Really? Mariners were making tons of money at the concession stands. Oh, wait. Somebody bit into it too hot of a hot dog.

Yeah, exactly.

Chad and Amy say we'd like to send out a happy 66th Blurs Day to the only 10 we've ever met in the wild Todd in well we don't know exactly where he lives somewhere in the Twin Cities, Bloomington maybe let's not dox Todd here but we do know that Todd is a great guy who makes excellent choices in his life his 11 is super cool he makes excellent cocktails and he listens to TBTL does the 11 make the His 11 make the cocktails? No, I think just like we're listing the attributes of Todd, one of which is that his 11 is super cool. Also, he makes excellent cocktails. And I don't even think he uses the Keurig of cocktails, I think. Oh, really? And he listens to TV.

Don't call it that. That was me throwing my Keurig of cocktails machine out because I don't make the pods anymore.

You know what that sounds like? You know what that sounds exactly like? Something that is completely unrelatable to you and the rest of our audience. Do you remember I got obsessed with a very, very basic but addictive flash video game on my computer called The Waitress or something like that? Yeah, where you're making hamburgers or something? You have to put in an order, and then you have to grab the order. But there's all these little things, and it starts slow, and it's like, easy. Okay, this person ordered this. You go get it. You order it from the cook. You walk it back. Oh, but they want a Coke, so you grab a kind of cola from the cooler or whatever. But as it goes on, you start running out of room to throw things away. You have to, like, kind of discard. You have to clear the tables, and you have to throw cans into this recycling bin. And every now and then, the recycling bin fills up, and so you've got to call this guy from the back to empty it. And some, like, ogre-looking guy comes out from the kitchen, grabs the recycling, throws it away, and it sounds just like that.

Is there ever a sword fight between the customers? Mm-hmm.

and then off in it with, those are actually butter knives.

No, those actually sound like they could be like a spatula that you're using on a big griddle.

Oh, sure, yeah.

Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.

Yeah, absolutely. All right, you want to do one more of these? We've got Brian here.

I want to do two more because I've got a special one after this.

We didn't, hold on, we didn't discuss. Hey, Luke, we didn't discuss.

that in the meeting the music's doing a weird thing andrew it's going down that's only for

your benefit all right brian no idea brian says i was listening to yesterday's show and i took note that blursday greetings were being moved to friday this week that's right we're calling them flursdays it just so happens that my son bobby's 32nd birthday is today april 4th he's a huge mariners fan he's i'm sorry he's in he's on the severed floor sorry for your loss he is a huge mariners fan that has only known baseball pain for his 32 years happy happy birthday to bobby i love that boy let's hope his birthday wish of a mariners offense comes true hey i'm we're with

you you know we're all we're all together on this um cloudy with the chance of flursdays is that a

yeah you know maybe do we have a show title already hey can i tell you a little behind the scenes this is probably not a conversation i should have on the show but i'm gonna tell you Anyway, so yesterday we talked to Coach Ben about the upcoming Little League season for the TBTL Junior Sluggers.

Yeah, the TBTL Junior Sluggers.

And I had a lot of, I struggled to come up with a show title. And I had written down, today is my Flurs Day, because you had made that joke. We're talking about doing Flurs Days today. And I actually had that in the system. But before I hit go, I'm like, I just think we can do better. We've made so many Flurs Days and Blurs Days jokes and show titles over the years. yeah so i was thinking you know how yesterday you know how yesterday i was obsessed with the story about the kiss cam um in that commercial right yes and so i was trying to like think is there anything and i thought habeas corpus produced the body you were joking about that earlier in the week so i was like produce the kiss so i named it habeas kiss us so habeas kiss dash us and then i mean i literally had that in the system i hit go it actually published for a few seconds and then I went to publish it on the website and I thought better of it and then I put I was uploading the photo and who's the photo it's of a young junior slugger wearing the TBTL a baby-faced junior slugger Ben's son and underneath it it said habeas kiss us and I was like you know what we already had too many inappropriate conversations you totally were not going to use that sound

anymore. Thank you for not tatassing this. Thank you for not being so close to the forest that you could not see the trees. And also, I know that Coach Ben sent the link around. I asked Becca, I was like, hey, did Ben send around a link to the folks that the team got talked about? He actually did. Can you imagine if that link was like, kiss us! And it's got a picture of a child. And then you and I

talking about that kiss commercial and the implications of the family destruction.

Everything about that show from my contribution of playing the wrong tape and too loud and too specific and all that stuff. When we had, you know, I don't know, 20 or 30 new people probably dipping in. And then, like, here's the thing I don't think Ben did. I'll let you ask Becca. Actually, I'll ask her this. When people are on the show, which doesn't happen all the time. On our show. On our show. And then they share the link. And then they say it's at the 39-minute mark. That's a way of saying. Yeah. You don't want any part of the rest of this Let's get to the good stuff Let's gather around the good stuff I need to find out from Becca if he did that or not If he said hey I'm on at the X mark Or if he just basically just said like Buckle up huckle buck

Well if you were on the Stern show And you sent it And you were in like Because that show do they usually record for about two hours or so

Oh they'll go like three hours

Yeah so if you appeared at like you know The halfway mark or something Or like hey guys I was on the Stern show But you'd probably, it's not necessarily a comment on the content that comes before, but just I want you to hear me on the show. And the expectation isn't that you're going to spend a half hour to get there.

That's a good point. No, you're right. In that example, I would absolutely do that, even though I generally think, although my new love language with our friend P. Fletch is just complaining about the Stern show to her in text form. But generally speaking, I think it's all really wonderful. But yes, I would not force someone who doesn't listen to the show to listen to two hours to get to the part where I was on. Now, Andrew. We have one more Blur's Day. Hold on. We sure do. We set you up for this. This is a belated.

Oh, you didn't wait for the beat to drop. Okay, go ahead. You're new.

Was that part of the, was I supposed to?

Well, you're sort of like, there's a rhythm. Wait for it, Luke. You'll hear it. You'll feel it. Do it until it stops. Will you please stop? Look for the happy numbers, Luke.

A happy golden blurs to my actual beautiful baby brother, Dave.

David from The Basement. Wow, okay. I thought you were going for something. I killed the music. You know what? Let's just keep going. What is it?

Actually, this is perfect. This band is called Brothers from Another. Oh, okay. This song is called Tacos on Broadway.

Hold down.

Happy Blur's Day. Happy 28th Blur's Day to my brother, David. It was actually last week. I didn't know about this, David. Happy Blur's Day. Yes, and I love you, and happy Blurs, and I love your family, and I can't wait to see you April 11th when we do the LiveWire show there at Benaroya Hall.

How do all these Blurs guys keep escaping my radar?

How do all these Blurs bros? Okay, we got to go, dude. Listen, I got a lot going on, Andrew. I got to try to mow this lawn, which is a thicket, before I have a production meeting for Livewire, before I have to go to the ophthalmologist to see what is going on with my continued eye problem. Oh, really? The same thing? Same thing. My stye, my chalizad. What's going on? It's getting better, but not fast enough for me.

Live by the sword, stye by the sword.

Live by the zod. Die by the zod.

I don't know. Stye, you got to go. Well, we did it, though. We did a week of shows.

Hey, you know what? That brings us to the end of our broadcast week. Thank you so much, everyone, for spending this time with us. We will be back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you, including the announcement of what the Junior Sluggers' real name is. I'm just getting that hot off the presses, which name they went with, Andrew. Ooh, I'm excited. So we'll talk about that on Monday and I'm sure a whole bunch of other things. In the meantime, have a great weekend. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.