Muse

You were born in Brooklyn. Yeah, I was born in Brooklyn. So you lived in poverty? My mother used to cash in milk bottles to help me go to the movies.

That's good old-fashioned poverty. Those are the kind of people that I don't tend to want to even mingle with because I'm afraid they're not bathing as much as you'd like. Did you bathe?

Yeah. Well, we did in the kitchen sink. We had a little kind of a kitchen sink tub.

You're often included on the list of all-time great comedians. How did that happen?

And what have you done? Are you saying that you, for one, don't agree with that?

Oh, no, no, no, no.

What are you saying? I mean, you're putting it in a way so that all those people who thought I was funny are silly and wrong. and you've got a better take on...

No, no, that's...

Do you know what that's called?

That's called paranoia. And it's coming... And you know what it's caused from? It's being not that clean and poor as a child. This has been absolutely so much fun. This is the craziest f***ing interview I've ever done in my life. That's why they call me multidimensional. TBTL! Well, well.

here we are I want to congratulate you for being on time well it's really kind of simple see I speak into this and my voice is instantaneously transmitted out where it's heard by well over a hundred people you sound like you might be a

little bit jealous babe no and I I know a little something about being jealous because people have been jealous of me my entire life this is the place to get

But something so different, so beautiful, the quality, it's unbelievable.

My headphones on, and here we go. I'm so excited.

Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

This isn't what happened last week. Have you all got amnesia?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Are you sure? Mm-hmm. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty and rain-soaked Columbia. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. It's a really active place this morning. Had a CBS Sunday morning crew here in the studio at 7 a.m. today, moving everything around. and I had to practically tear down my whole little TBTL setup so that it wasn't showing up in the background of the interview we were shooting. I was interviewing some people that are in Florida. There was a film crew there. There was a film crew here. Anyway, it's all back together now, and we are ready to bring you episode 4,439 in a collector series.

Let the fun begin.

I don't know if we have talked about this on this particular podcast, which is allegedly and officially not a sports podcast. So I don't know if we've mentioned that baseball's back.

The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd. That's right. Baseball's back.

And we're not going to be talking about the major league variety today, because why would you? Because that is a dark, deep pit of sadness, if you are a Seattle Mariners fan. But we've got an update on a different baseball project that brings only joy to the world, and that is the TBTL Little Sluggers. They had their first game this weekend. Can you verify? Can you give me some 4-1-1? I'll tell you how that went. Also, I will tell you and Andrew how it went when I went to the ophthalmologist on Friday. You'll shoot your eye out. Things got more intense than I was expecting and also more tentative. It was both more intense and more tentative than I maybe totally wanted it to be. I'll explain. Just right after I introduced the longest running co-bro of the show Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships He's the soulful rocker who brought the rock and roll edge to the Eagles

The soulful rocker from New Hampshire

He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now Good morning, my friend

Good morning, Luke I don't think I can do the show today Alright I'm sorry I just, I can't I'm using a temporary audio board until my new one arrives and there's something going on that I literally can't even explain to you what I'm hearing on my end, and it's driving me bananas. It would drive a normal person not bananas. A normal person would be fine with all of this.

Some other fruit.

But something just sounds off in my headphones in a way that I can't quite explain, and I think I'll get used to it, but I feel discombobulated, and what I would like is for you to do about, let's say, a 75- to 90-minute monologue. Easy. And then I will, I'll just adjust the settings as you continue to talk. How does that sound?

Okay, how about this? I'll start.

And I should have, you know what, dang it, Andrew, I should have had some kind of a special music for this. Let's see. I'm going to kill mine. Maybe, I don't know. This isn't really the right music, but I'm just going to play this anyway. Coming up Saturday, April 19th. So the wrong music.

Jalapeno. Jalapeno. Jalapeno. Jalapeno.

We will present to you TBTL Tradio. That's right. Saturday, April 19th. I think the exact time is TBD.

Well, I put in the newsletter 10 a.m. Oh, okay.

Well, it's not TBD. It's been deed. Listen, I'm trying to fill 90 minutes, man.

You know what's better? Me not playing audio from my end. Once we got rid of that theme music and you and I are just talking, I'm back in the groove here. Oh, good. Back in the New York groove. It's just audio I play from my computers, apparently, was really throwing me for a loop. So what I need is for you to shut up for 90 minutes, because I have a monologue.

I love how quickly that went for, you know, that was basically like, I'm throwing you a life ring. And then as soon as you pull yourself up onto the boat, you strangle me and you steal my boat. TBTL Tradio coming up 10 a.m. West Coast on Saturday, April 19th.

I heard about that thing on the AM radio.

Now you probably, if you read the newsletter, and I mean, you'd be a fool not to, You know some of these details and the plan here, but if I understand, and just so I can remind myself, this is a chance for the tens of listeners to call in, in the classic Tradio style, which is a very folksy kind of radio show that exists in a lot of particularly rural markets, usually on a weekend morning or weekend afternoon, where people will call in and they'll say, I'm looking for this or that, and if anybody has it, I'd love to buy it or maybe even receive it for free from somebody. And then also people call in to say, I've got a bunch of this or some of that, and I'm looking to get rid of it. I'm looking to sell it or give it away or whatever. And we're going to do a TBTL tradeo so you all can call in 206-414-TBTL and trade goods back and forth over the TBTL airway.

Yes. Now, a few things that I'm going to be a little, I'm going to be a little, I don't know, school marmish here a little bit. Let's go over some of the rules. These are going to be helpful to folks, but they're going to be a little bit specific. Too loud and too specific. For people who are not familiar with this style of radio or tradio or swap shop of the air, the tradition is that you just call in and you let people know what you got and how they can contact you and stuff. So the key thing here is to remember we're not setting up anything where we are helping you guys connect. The only thing we're going to be doing is doing a live episode of TBTL on Saturday the 19th because we thought Saturday would sort of befit the moment. And we're going to stream it live over YouTube. You go to YouTube. Oh, nice. That's how people can listen along and call in. And if you just look for, you know, I almost said after these messages. Don't go to after these messages YouTube for this. I do want you to visit that during other times. But during this particular time, go to Too Beautiful to Live on YouTube. and you can listen to our live stream, watch our live stream, and then you call in, you say, I got the snowblower for sale, I'm looking for $100, anybody is interested, and then you have to leave some sort of an email or a phone number that you're willing to give out publicly. We are not connecting people behind the scenes. Once we stream this thing live, that is where our watch has ended, if that makes sense.

This is basically Andrew and I in a meeting talking about what we want our level of responsibility to be.

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything. as a career oh i was hoping it was the long one because that's like four minutes long at some

point christopher guest starts talking about artford and lols so the things that people

should keep in mind is you should have some sort of contact information that you're willing to give out over the air that's really important um be specific we are only taking calls related to this topic if you just want to call to say hello that's very sweet but we're not doing that and also i think we're sticking to goods i got a couple of nice um and luke maybe you want to Maybe we have this meeting on the air, but somebody had suggested, like, oh, well, I can, you know, give away this service or that. Somebody said free long hugs. So anyway, I would probably avoid that. Let's just keep it bricks and mortar here in the classic tradition of swap shop radio. You have an old audio board that you're looking to get rid of, but you don't want to give it away. Is that something that took from the headlines of your life? I don't know why it just came across. But also, we are, and I believe this is part of the tradition, if you're looking for something, this is where it gets a little bit, this is where it could get a little bit dicey, Luke, because everybody's looking for something, right? I mean, I believe that's a song.

The Traveling Wilburys. Everybody's looking for something. Yeah. And so if you have something very specific. If you have something specific that you're looking for that you have a reason to believe the audience might have it, that's great. Give us a call and say, hey, this might be a long shot, but I'm looking for the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy in its original box. If anybody has that, I'd love to grab it.

Is that something you had or have?

I'm looking at it right now, dude. Oh, okay. That's the reason I had to – I'm just, like, looking around my office. But do you have Voyage of the Don Treader? I do. I believe that's book number three. It's in the box. Yeah, it's in the box. I got it for Easter one year, I think, which is appropriate enough. Yeah, with C.S. Lewis's – you know, my dad –

Given to me by Aslan himself. My dad reads C.S. Lewis every morning here.

Oh, yeah? No, that's good. Does he – which one? Is it the on –

Well, it's – I don't think it's, like, it's not what Mere Christianity – That's the one I was thinking of, yeah. It might be Mere Christianity. It might be an occasional screw tape letter, but I'll go check. But but, you know, in the morning he does his I guess you'd call it devotionals, his quiet time. And he's always looking at a C.S. Lewis. That's nice. That's nice.

Yeah. Mere Christianity was looking for there. So thank you for that. But yeah. So anyway, those are sort of the ground rules. And so if you want to spend the next couple of weeks kind of looking around their house or their barn or their garage and say, oh, yeah, I can get rid of this thing. And the number will, you know, will say it a lot during the live show. but it'll be the regular tbtl voicemail line only but taking it live if you have a barn find if when

you're looking around in your barn you find like a 67 mustang with like 20 miles on it that's just been like it's under a thick layer of dust but it's otherwise pristine just dm me slide into my dms because i'd like to get that i'd like to get first wind of that before anybody else we're

already skimming off the top we're already skimming off the top this is not how it works

Well, when you said go check your barn, I think of a barn find, which is my great dream in life, is to have a barn find at some point. To get some kind of cool old boat or vehicle that somebody stashed in a barn and then, you know, forgot about it slash passed away. And then someone else discovers it and there it is just waiting to be enjoyed by a barn find enjoyer. That would be me.

And it could be Bumblebee and it looks like a car at first, but then it turns into a robot.

That would be. Does that happen in one of those movies?

I feel like it does. When you were talking about a car in a barn, I was picturing somebody shaking some sort of a big tarp off of a car, and everything's dusty around there, but underneath it is sort of this gleaming machine that's been covered, and I feel like it's black and yellow, and then it turns into a robot. I don't know for sure that I've seen this, but it feels like something I've definitely seen.

I could definitely see that being part of the—I've lost track of where the Transformer universe is, if they're in the future, and so therefore Bumblebee could be a barn find. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like, also, let's just be real. The Transformers came into our lives in the 80s, in the 1980s, right? Mm-hmm. So if Bumblebee were to be discovered, were to be barnfound, did we barnfind Bumblebee, or did he barnfind us?

Well, who barnfound who is really the thing.

The thing is, I'm thinking, well, how can Bumblebee be a barnfind Bumblebee? It's from three years ago. It's like, dude, Bumblebee's from 40 years ago

Yes, yes, exactly Like, Bumblebee could absolutely be a barn find at this point I'm pretty sure I'm right about this I'm going to stop clicking around But I'm pretty sure he was a barn find I'm not doubting you I want to know, what did the barn become? What did the barn turn into? That's right, yeah

Just everything keeps transforming into something else I really thought that the most underrated Transformer Was probably, or Transformers were the tapes the cassette tapes that would go into sound wave yeah yeah i had the that was what i was into i didn't give a two two craps about like oh megatron he's a gun that's a dude or like

you know some of the other ones even the ones on a gun that's so dumb because like how do you move

yourself around exactly well that's the thing like yeah they ran out of turn into a gun yeah Will you double-check that, please? And you're going to get a lot of Calvin Johnson feedback, the receiver for the Detroit Lions, who was nicknamed Megatron. You're going to get a lot of Calvin Johnson stuff. But I believe Megatron turned into a gun.

It looks like at times he turned into a gun. At other times he turned into a flying machine. Other times he turned into some sort of – but it looks like maybe the oldest one, the class – I'm trying to figure this out off of some sort of an online graphic, infographic on Megatron. But I do, it would seem like you would be right if you're remembering back to your youth that he turns into a gun. But you're absolutely right.

It's like turning into, and I think it was like, it was vaguely, it was like a, not a pistol, but it was like a, you know, it was a handgun.

Handheld gun, yeah.

So again, how's that getting around? Right. Someone's got to hold Megatron.

Then you need some huge monster to come pick you up and fire you like.

didn't think this through it feels more like aqua tina hunger force for some reason like it just

turns into a gun and then just falls over onto the floor just lying on its side please can you

help me that bums me out actually the lack of creativity there and i mean you just think that megatron like that's one of the two big ones right yeah like because optimus prime turned into a

semi truck he could at least go somewhere he could at least pull you know drive the energy crystals energy cubes over the road yeah is this what original sin was it was the original sin that

they turned megatron into a gun i was trying to think of a biblical here's the deal luke and i didn't know that we were going to get here so quickly today but i've been thinking about original sin a lot lately and there's a reason why and um i don't think i have it anymore but i got a paper cut the like i haven't thought about original sin in a really long time i grew up you know very religious and Catholic. You mean like the Garden of Eden. The idea of mankind must live with the original sin. The reason we don't live in paradise is because of original sin, right? Whatever. Obviously, I'm no C.S. Lewis here, but generally speaking I went to CCD. You're near Christianity. I'm not near Christianity. And I studied him. Can we name today's show near Christianity? Sure. I'd like to welcome the new

listeners from the Parkside Little League who are tuning in for the update and are getting a Bible

lesson we gotta be ourselves though i'm i'm that's no no you're right no app andrew you're

absolutely right i had that i went through that whole journey of was like um i think there was something that jibbity glick said that i was like oh new you know uh new parents and then i was like no that can't be the show we're doing we've got to do our show yeah and we love that we're we're associated with this little league team but we can't i can't let because there's going to be like you know 15 updates this season we just got to do our show yeah and so and that's why i'm

about to release a torrent of swear words some of which i'll be making up on the fly uh no i i got a paper cut the other day this is a little not even worth mentioning but for some reason for the first time in probably decades i started thinking about original sin and there was something about being cut by it wasn't even a piece of paper it was like a it was a cardboard package that cat food had come in or something and all i was doing was like i don't know maybe taking cat food out maybe throwing it away i don't know but suddenly this the most the most innocent banal object i could think of was just like a piece of scrap cardboard yeah cut me and drew a tiny bit of blood and i'm just like this is original sin i don't even know what i mean by that but this is the garden of eden yes biting me in the ass again something that seems like you said

completely non-threatening then sort of and also there's like the idea of kind of like a droplet of blood that feels yeah not maybe maybe not even so much biblical but mythical yeah you know that feels like there's a story there and also i mean by definition you only receive a paper or cardboard cut or whatever on something that you absolutely did not expect it from because if you had expected it you would have been being very careful right exactly it's like you no one's ever gotten a paper cut and thought well that's about how i assume this would turn out it's it's always shocking because you were doing some normal life activity and were then reminded of the fact that you know we're we're flesh and blood imagine handing somebody a piece of paper and saying be careful right and if you again if you were being careful if your mind was like okay i'm gonna open this box uh this whatever that has the cat food and i gotta really watch myself around

this yeah right look at all this paper you would you wouldn't you would not you would not have

received the paper but there's something that's so shocking about going from not being in the headspace of this is dangerous yeah to being reminded that anything can be dangerous original sin baby that's what that's what i've always said since 14 seconds ago when you when you uh put the theory out well andrew after uh much ado about something is it time for us and should we give an update on how the uh tbtl little sluggers did yeah i would love to hear this okay of course uh the tbtl little sluggers by the way now known as the parkside gators

That was a big question. After we had Coach Ben on on Wednesday, there was still some question about what their official name was going to be.

Official name, they went with Parkside Gators, which is actually kind of fitting because as our friend and TBTL employee numero uno, I believe John Sklaroff pointed out, the colors of the Little Sluggers are vaguely the colors of the University of Florida.

Yeah, not even vaguely. I mean, they are, right? Like kind of a deep green and a deep orange. They're really sharp.

Yeah, really nice looking uniforms. We featured one of the players, I believe Fox, was featured as the show pick in the uniform. So Gators is kind of fitting.

And it's notable because Ben mentioned this on Wednesday that like last year there was a big trend towards like sort of.

superfluously, like, kind of building up. It wouldn't just be the gators. It would be, like, the laser gators or something

like that. Right, yeah, like the fire sharks and stuff. Right, exactly. A lot of just kind of take a really intense thing and then put it with a really intense animal. And this is a

more, you know, maybe a slightly more, like, kind of restrained, mature approach to being a team. Yeah, we're dialing it back a little bit here.

It's like, you know, we, please, fire sharks was last year, Andrew. This year we are the gators. We are mature baseball players who pick mature mascots like the uh parkside gators all right your tbtl little sluggers aka the parkside gators took to the field for the first time this saturday morning so that was a couple days ago it was a sunny and warm spring day perfect for playing baseball and a welcome change after several weeks of cold and rainy weather um the panthers and uh both teams were clearly still shaking off the rust in this first game of the season. Because of the aforementioned rain, almost everyone in the league has had minimal practice time. That includes the Mariners, by the way, Andrew. That's one of the underreported stories. Some of the Mariners' problems have been because it was raining at spring training, and they didn't get to practice quite enough. So we're still figuring things out, coaches and players alike. Solomon, who for future reference will be referred to as Saul, stepped onto the hill for the little sluggers. The hurler had a remarkable performance, giving up zero hits and striking out six over two innings. Holy cow. Holy cow. I mean, he could be a third, what's his name, Castillo on our team. He could be the third Luis Castillo on the Mariners. Impressive. But due entirely to walks, oh, and several errant throws, Early season jitters from a team still finding it's—oh, I see. Sorry. In spite of this great pitching, the Panthers took a 3-0 lead in the first inning. So let me just back this up. Saul had a great game, was actually pitched a no-hitter, and struck out six over two innings. But as can happen with baseball, there's one of the quirks of the game, Andrew. Just because you're pitching a no-hitter, it doesn't mean the other team can't get three runs.

No. It's about whip. It's about getting on base.

Yeah, exactly. The whip, the OPS, was actually OBS or OPS or ODB. One of them.

There's OBS and OPS, I believe, right?

There's war. There's whip. There's all kinds of things.

Hold on, now I'm in my head about this. There's on-base percentage. There's on-base percentage. There's on-base plus slugging, and then there's slugging.

Oh, I didn't even know about that. They're inventing new statistical categories every single day. So in spite of this great pitching, the Panthers took a 3-0 lead in the first inning. due entirely to walks and several errant throws and early season jitters from a team still finding its sea legs. The sluggers immediately righted the ship and got back into the game, Andrew, scoring runs in the first and second inning. That's what you've got to do. When they hit you, you've got to hit them right back. That's, again, something that I want to see the Mariners doing more of. It's okay to give up a run here and there, but then you've got to come back and score in your half of the inning. That keeps the morale high on the team. Yes, yes. Something the Sluggers are famously known for, their high morale. Admittedly, these were generated through walks and stolen bases, but a run is a run. So it sounds like both teams were having some trouble at the plate, but were able to make up for it through crafty base running after errors and walks.

You know what I'm hearing here? When Coach was on on Wednesday, he said that we're going back to, like, keeping the kids as the pitchers the whole time as opposed to occasionally having a coach.

And the kids as the catchers, Andrew.

And the kids are the catcher. So we're seeing a little bit, like probably for both teams, we're seeing some Aaron pitches. It's taking a little bit of time for both teams probably to settle into this idea of getting it cleanly over the plate.

And if somebody is on first base, if a base runner is on first and the ball happens to get past the catcher, that player is allowed to advance. Sure. Which is a really big sort of change in the rules and how the game is going to work for these junior sluggers, a.k.a. Parkside Gators. Saul's masterful performance was followed by a similar feat by a little slugger, Bryson, who held the Panthers scoreless over the final two innings. I mean, that's huge in relief.

Okay, so this is a four-inning game?

I guess I'm going to, unless there was some middle relief that we're not getting a report on. And there might have been because of the final score, which would indicate to me that there were more runs scored. We might be focusing on the positive here, Andrew. In other words, Saul's strong start And Bryson's strong close

To the game But you had Taylor Saucedo in there in the middle

It's possible that Awesome Sauce Came in just long enough

I knew we sent him down I didn't know we sent him to Parkside

He's DFA'd to the Parkside Little League of East Portland. Let's see. Bryson held the Panthers scoreless over the final two innings. Bryson notched four strikeouts and in a clutch bases loaded situation made a stellar double play. Wow. Catching a pop-up and then catching a runner off base. Okay, all right. So we're not playing infield fly rule?

No, no, no. That doesn't apply. That doesn't apply. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It would have applied there. If there's less than two outs

And there's a runner on first And the ball is popped up in the infield That would be when the infield fly rule would be Invoked

Yeah I guess so but isn't it also because people were Fake dropping the ball so they could get those Double plays back in the day

Well that yeah exactly The reason for the infield fly rule Was because imagine you're the second baseman Or person because we've got all kinds Of folks playing in the Parkside Little League You're the person at second base the ball is popped up now the runner on there's less than two outs and the runner is on first base now you could drop the ball intentionally and now that's effectively a grounder yeah you could throw to second and throw to first yeah and you'd have the double play or you could if the runner was worried you were going to do that and they start advancing then you catch the ball and throw to first you've also doubled up it puts the runner in an impossible position hence the infield fly

so okay so it still applies even if you do catch the pop-up usually the infield fly rule would keep the players at their respective bases my guess is at this level we have not yet really unpacked

the implications of the infield fly i mean clearly i haven't and but what i know is that bryson pulled a double play it sounds like also by the way unassisted is that nine unassisted what's the position for the because the catcher is one right the catcher so that make the pitcher position number nine defensively?

I think pitcher is number one. Catcher is number two. First base is three.

Pitcher's number one, catcher's number two.

I'm pretty sure left field is nine, right? Is left field nine? Okay, now that's Bryson. I feel like you're better at this than I am.

I thought pitcher was number one. I think you're actually right. There's a lot of like one, four, three double play. What would a one, four? Is the shortstop one?

No, there's no way the shortstop is one. In my heart, this is always the position I wanted to play. I'm looking it up, but we'll get more on this in a second.

Okay. On offense, the Sluggers hit their stride in the third and fourth inning. Okay, so we know that it does go more than four innings.

Okay, right field is nine. I was totally wrong about that.

Right field is nine. I was totally wrong about that.

Pitcher? Pitcher is one. Catcher is two. First base is three. Second base, four. Third base, five. Shortstop is six. Then left field is seven. Center field is eight. Right field is nine. My apologies, I thought it went 7-8-9 from right over to left.

Wait, so 5-4-3 double play would be what?

Third base to second base to first base.

Because that's a real, that's a common one. There you go. When I'm shuffling off this mortal coil, instead of whispering rosebud, I'm going to whisper 5-4-3 double play. That's a burden in my brain from childhood. All right. The Sluggers hit their stride in the third and fourth inning. Saul, remember him. And Saul is a high-value player on this team, it would seem. They're all high-value, Andrew. Everyone is high-value.

They put on that jersey, they're high-value.

Exactly. Saul led off the third with a line-drive double into right field and stole two bases, including home, to tie the game. In the fourth, key walks by Oli and Wilder set the table for Armani. Hey, Armani's back, Andrew. Armani, a heavy hitter last season. I believe I watched Armani do some pitching in my game that I attended. Let's see. I'm also getting. Yeah, I see that somebody. You're waving to somebody over there. My fine, fine postal worker, mail person.

Carrier.

Mail carrier. That's the word I'm looking for. That's the term. Who I really appreciate. As a very helpful thing, knocks on the glass of the door to let me know that she is dropping something off. But it is never not terrifying. Just like when my mom knocked on the door on Friday and terrified me.

I forgot we got a little camo.

I have a sign on that door that says, please drop off all deliveries down at the house. But really, that sign should say, please do not knock on the glass when the monkey is podcasting.

But I love her. I think that this postal worker is going to make an appearance on the show eventually.

She's great, by the way.

Sometimes I overhear in between segments. If you have to go say hello, I'll hear you chat. She seems great.

We have a great rapport. But I do think I need to change that sign out So people stop knocking on that door Or I need to pull a shade down there or something So my heart rate is now elevated Alright, back to the update So we tied the game, Andrew, which is incredible, off of Saul. We've already talked about that. Tying the game in the fourth, and then we get some key walks by Oli and Wilder. That's going to set the table for Armani, who looped a single on the left for the go-ahead run. Wow, so we actually, we were actually, wait, Andrew. We won. This is the first that I'm realizing. This is the first that I'm realizing we won the game.

We're the champs. Of the league? I think that's it. Call it a season.

We'll take the win. I'm going to tell you what happened, Andrew. I was printing this out from Coach Ben today, and I was looking at the score, and I mentioned this. I had a lot going on. I'm just like the Capital One guy for a reason, Andrew. We were doing a lot of stuff this morning, and in the midst of all that, I printed this out, and when I looked at the score, I filed it under the Sluggers did not win. And I was okay with that. That's the journey that we, you know, go on as a team, as an organization. You can't win them all. But it never occurred to me that we win this game.

I think you've been hurt by the Mariners. It was a tough weekend.

Well, I also don't want to blame Coach Ben, but you usually put the winning score first. Oh, okay. I feel like you should say Slugger 6, Panthers 3. I see. That is a truism of how you report to this. Listen, Coach Ben, I don't want to put this back on you. I don't want to throw you under any buses. But, you know, next time, Sluggers 6, Panthers 3, you'll help me out. You'll get me out of a couple of jams. Andrew, this is exciting. I'm finding out you're getting to hear me find out in real time that the Sluggers are 1-0. We need a win as baseball fans. I could really use a win here, Giamatti boys.

As baseball fans in this area, we could really use a win.

Like, I'm not kidding. I wanted to frame this as, okay, not everything baseball-related went horribly this weekend. But then because I misread the score, I felt like I couldn't make that argument. But now I'm back to making that argument. Andrew, not everything baseball-related went horribly this weekend.

Not at all. In fact, can I ask? Well, I don't want to turn the attention away from the sluggers right now. Can I finish?

There's just a little more detail from the game. And then we'll go ahead and move on to other things. This was a classic early season Little League baseball. 26 total walks. Wow. Listen to these numbers, Andrew. 26 total walks, 20 strikeouts, 14 stolen bases, only three hits across both teams.

See? It's not about hitting. It's about getting on base.

No, it's not the water. And by the way, I'll say, that would mean if I'm, and again, I've already showed myself to be minimally aware of how this game went, But if I've got this right, I've got Bryson with a, well, okay, so Bryson made a clutch double play with the bases loaded. We know that Saul had a hit. Did we have two out of the three hits? Of the three total hits, were two of them, did they belong to Little Sludgers?

I'm trying to go over the recap in my head now. You have the script in front of you there, the text in front of you, but it sounds right because.

Yeah. In other words, I'm wondering, did we pitch a one hitter?

Let's see, because one of our pitchers got a hit. Yeah, Saul. And Armani got a hit. Is this correct?

Armani looped a single. You're right. Armani and Saul got hit. Yeah. Which means if there were three hits, it means the Little Sluggers pitching staff only gave up one hit for the whole game.

Although we don't even know for sure that that third one didn't belong to the Sluggers, I suppose. You're right. That's a very good point. But I think Ben would have noticed and noted it. Yeah. Probably. It probably was 2-1 hit-wise.

Given the talent on this team Coach Ben's talking about the sluggers here I know the hits will come soon Post game rally pins were awarded To Saul, Bryson, and Micah Who was a terror on the base paths That's great That'll help That's part of that Yeah, chaos ball That's part of that 26 total walks Is you've got Micah out there Out on the base pads Just like in the pitcher's brain Yes Absolutely Gadfly Distracting them And causing them You know, all kinds of turmoil out there on the mound. And then Coach Ben adds the Sluggers play again tonight. That's right, Andrew. Monday night. Tonight they're going to be getting back out there. I say strike while the iron's hot. You're 1-0.

That's right. That's right. So let's see. Was this game Saturday, Luke? I think it was. Yes. Okay, yeah. So that's good. One day of rest and then get back out there.

Yeah. Congratulations, Sluggers. And I want to apologize for not understanding what a joyous story this was until I was three-quarters of the way through reading it. Andrew, I'm telling you, you know what it was like? It's sort of like when you DVR a game, and we've talked about this on the show a lot, but then you accidentally find out the ending of the game, but then you still watch the game, and you're trying to figure out how the game ends up at the point that you know it inevitably ends up at. This is a real hardcore sports... lifestyle that i'm describing here or if you have a bad brain like me you watch the entire game and then a couple hours later you're like how did that go down again i have i have a real trouble sometimes remembering the blow-by-blows of the scoring plays well i was like okay i know the

sluggers lost but i just keep seeing how they're scoring runs and doing well and turning double plays so they're just i'm waiting for the other cleat to drop and then i get to the part where Coach Bendis listed the score, and I realized for the very first time that we won the game. So go Sluggers.

I was going to say, this is on the baseball topic, and you know what? I'm going to raise something here, which will then segue.

It's a dangerous game, Dano. It's a dangerous game, considering the weekend that was.

I think, though, what it'll do, because of some assumptions that I have about your experience on Friday, I think this will actually, we can have a very short conversation here and then transition to the top stories where we talk about how you did spend your, yeah, the donors, but then also how you did spend your Friday afternoon. Because it is my understanding that you, because you were at the eye doctor, did not consume every inning of that long Friday extra innings game, right? No, I did not. Did you, without getting into the game itself right now, how much of it did you see or what parts of it did you see? Did you see the beginning? Did you see the end?

I saw parts of the beginning middle and then critically the end because I was waiting at the ophthalmology place so I was in the waiting room and I had my fubo going so I was watching the game there I was listening to the game on I was I was using every modality Andrew available to experience this game including listening on serious satellite radio as I drove to my appointment and then watching in the waiting area with no sound on And then even watching in the exam room while I was waiting for various medical professionals to leave and come back and do things and then listening on the drive home and then getting home in time to turn on the top of the ninth inning. And then I watched the rest of the game with my mom, including the devastating end, the devastating end.

And it was a bad ending for the Mariners. But here's the deal. and this this this gets into not just baseball but my attitude lately generally speaking I had a lot of regrets when I woke up on Saturday because I had several like kind of communications that I was not proud of now you have muted our friend Durs on the text chain right you're you're no

longer seeing his text or have you unmuted him no no no he's he's he's now it's a it's a binding decision for the season he is muted and i i said this it's funny for someone who's muted he lives big large in my brain because i said to becca on uh sunday okay now we're jumping ahead another devastating game for the mariners but i we were driving around and i was looking at the text and i said to becca hey i'm looking at my sports text chain and considering how it's going for the mariners right now it's not as negative as i was expected to be and i was like oh then i remembered i had muted right i had muted a friend of ours who i love dearly uh but who uh sometimes the the the the discourse on the text chain is tough for me to deal with and instead of me uh getting snarky in the text chain i just i just mute it and then then i can be a more positive for it and the thing

is like and i know like we sort of have a different tone via or at least you do via football and baseball seasons i think like the baseball season it's been disappointing and we've all been griping right and so the text chain is a gripe chain i have no problem with that at all like i'm often very negative on it i'm often negative on it hoping that i end up looking like a fool because things will turn around that's a strategic move that i support that like whatever i sometimes out of frustration i text things that don't even make sense i think um but having said that's like i'm fine with it being a place where there's a lot of negativity going on and i am not like you where ders or anybody but ders being like the most negative person he just doesn't get to me usually I just don't don't mind it. Now, I also think that you could really make an argument that I was maybe out of the ordinary here for how I felt after Friday's game, because Friday's game was the beginning of a series. We didn't know we were going to get swept at this point. And the way the Mariners have been playing has been incredibly frustrating. And it's been incredibly frustrating because it's echoes of last year. And it's like what every fan predicted, which is the team did nothing in the offseason. And then they're rolling it back again. And now we're seeing the same exact results, which is good pitching followed by really bad offense. And just like we don't have to get in the we don't have to get in the X's and O's of it. But are there X's and O's in baseball? That's a good question. Put it on the put it on the poll. But there are like several key categories that the Mariners have been especially frustrating. in and with the exception of one of them which is clownish fielding those were not on display on friday friday's game which was an extra innings game which was also the home opener for The Giants, not a team that I have any really kind of negative feelings towards. It wasn't like the Astros or any of the other teams that I don't need to calm out here, but you know which teams I really root against versus teams that, oh, I root for my team against them. The Dodgers, exactly. Hope you had a great day at the White House, everybody. But anyway, so it's like I don't have any bad feelings about the Giants. It's a day opener for them. It's a sunny day. It's a long game. It's an interesting game. There is a lot of offense. There is so much back and forth. I watch part of the game. I watch probably half the game while writing the newsletter. In fact, I kept on giving score updates in the newsletter, which is probably not super helpful for anybody. But basically, I was like, I'm so distracted. I got to get out of here. So I like got done. I sent out the newsletter and I still had, I think, maybe, I don't know, a few innings left of even just like, you know, regular innings, not knowing it was necessarily going to extra innings. But like and it's a beautiful day outside and it's like four o'clock.

I close the laptop I go on I'm like I'm just going to keep on walking south down stone stone way until the game's over but the game never ends so then I find a little park outside of a chapel of a church near Green Lake that I was unfamiliar with and it said anybody could use this little little corner park it's tiny there's a little picnic table in the middle of it I go in there by myself and just stare into space I'm like I know there's got to be a camera on me this has got to look weird I had my camera with me I'm like taking some photos I'm just like walking sitting on park benches i'm listening to this game and then we're like going both teams are just burning through their bullpen their burpen and like it's one of those games where eventually somebody's got to win and somebody's got to lose and then we're on literally our last active pitcher like after this yeah we're gonna have to go to position players pitching it turns out it would have been rowdy tellez by the way which actually i kind of would have liked to see but anyway and then our last pitcher gets it looks like injured on the mound pulls something but we have no option so he like stays out there and then we do end up losing the game it was a disappointment it's been a very disappointing season so far but this was the first game of the series beautiful sunny day i was entertained by baseball this is an unusual perspective for me i'm i tend to let my mood be dictated by wins and losses but for me at the end of that one i was like god dang what a weird game what a long game what a beautiful afternoon the giants got a win on their home opener like pretty likable like i don't know i just wasn't bummed about it and then so there's the same exact way in fact and you had a less fun way like i could see you feeling negatively about it because you were working so hard to listen to snippets of the game in between doing other things which is a less much less pleasurable way and i could see the loss hitting you harder like why did i try to squeeze all this in while I had better things going on.

No, I said, again, not to X and O it, but there was a moment where we really should have lost the game. It was the bottom of the ninth inning. The Giants got a guy on third with no outs. That should have been the end of the game, and miraculously it wasn't. We got three outs without them advancing, and I said in our text chain, well, this is gravy ball now. The game should already be over. We'd survive that. Anything that happens after this, if we win, it's great, but if not I was I was very sanguine about the whole thing and I I'm with you like I was like well this is great that the Mariners scored eight runs and played a wild one and they didn't end up winning in the end but maybe this broke something loose inside them or whatever so I had a generally

okay feeling about the events of Friday now obviously on Monday after like losing the next two games in more of a old-fashioned Mariners way of just like no offense and just the usual frustrations although i gotta say i didn't see most of sunday's game so i don't know if they ended up getting more hits than the score would um would uh suggest but anyway all of this is to say i got i got i felt really terrible because i got a little i got kind of snippy on the text chain and you might have seen this but you wouldn't have seen what i was getting snippy at which is interesting and i kind of don't want to litigate this here i didn't start you know i really didn't start this to throw ders under the bus but i guess it's gonna now that i've started it it's going to be me sort of defending myself and really what i wanted to do was talk about this about why i'm kind of embarrassed about my text chain behavior because what happened was the game ended but it's still a sunny day i'm like still walking and you know and just kind of having i'm just kind of i was texting with some other buddies and we were saying like yeah you know like still hard to be in a bad mood after that one 15 hits or something like 15 hits you can like so anyway your brother jumps in the text chain and say hey listen that is a tough loss but a good game or whatever i'm encouraged by the hits and like and then ders is just like no that was garbage or whatever no and then i'm like i don't know i can't be mad at 15 hits and then and again i don't here i'll just so it was just kind of you can imagine it was just kind of like anything that we said that was positive was struck down it was just like literally okay i'll just do this i was encouraged by the game we didn't have a real starter offense fought at least also by the way we chased verlander after like um three innings or something Thank you. anyway derges writes nah and i'm just like well i'm not exactly mad at nine runs 15 hits in a hell of a game they had a chance to break it open and extras couldn't manage a sack fly don't let them off that easy and then your brother says something positive again but like well i understand where you're coming from but like this there's some positive indicators and then it's just kind of like you missed the postseason by one game two years in a row there are no moral victories for this sad franchise imo and then that's when i sarcastically wrote three texts in a row that wrote now i feel bad for enjoying a fun baseball game i've learned my lesson won't happen again that was me being real i don't like my tone there that was me being a real b going after like i was a real cry i was being a little bit of a baby there that's right and uh i didn't but i was like that to me now again like i meant this to be more i did not like my response there i could have just not participated in that text conversation but it was a rare moment of me of somebody literally trying to steal my joy like i was like okay that's fine like you didn't like that ending it's a loss that's understandable we're sort of saying well it was an interesting game on a friday in a beautiful sunday you know a sunny friday afternoon and just saying hey you know like yeah that was a tough loss for me but instead it's kind of like it just felt like saying

like no you're wrong for not being as miserable as i am right now and i was like don't you don't get to tell me my feeling and so then i wrote that thing but i hated that i wrote that and it lived with me and then i had a couple of other communications this weekend that were a little bit snarky a listener was trying to i think correct us on something but wouldn't say what it was even a reference to and i was just like please don't explain this to me i don't know what talking about i'm good with this now like i was just like and i just kind of realized like i think that i am in a place where maybe i need to stop communicating with people which could you know be a problem if i continue to do the show with you but like i maybe i want to put out there like a general pre-apology that i feel like i've in the past couple of weeks i've had interactions that i'm kind of like i'm a raw nerve and i'm not maybe i need to like just not engage on some conversations sometimes when they hit my inbox or my, or, or my, um, you know, my text account or whatever. And I definitely love our listeners. And so I want to be careful. I love interacting with everybody directly, but if, if you're going to, if, if I'm a raw nerve because of everything that's going on in the world and you're going to get a somewhat like sarcastic or terse response from me, that's not who I want to be. So either I apologize in advance or I apologize for maybe laying off the replies for a while because it's not you it's me i'm in a bad place i'm i'm with

you that uh things feel very very very close to the surface um you know because of everything that's happening in the real world and then when the baseball world also seems to be as i wrote and maybe this is also adding to the negativity but at the end of the game on sunday which we also lost in heartbreaking fashion after a player of ours injured himself grievously doing something that he shouldn't have been doing honestly i don't blame him that was just a reaction but like it was such an insane ending to the game that also involved us losing but in a new and novel and really heartbreaking way i wrote like this is the darkest timeline ending for this game like it's like you can lose a baseball game and then there's a way where a guy hurts himself Doing something that's actually not the right decision But doing an incredible thing And trying his hardest And then it doesn't even count And then the next pitch they just win the game It feels like the universe is mocking us And I feel like the universe is mocking us With what's happening in America currently And then you throw on this meaningless thing Called baseball that also feels like It's mocking us And it's a lot and it really makes it hard To just be sort of chill about stuff To just kind of let stuff roll off your back It's like, I don't have any back anymore for anything to roll off. Like if it was like the world's going to hell in a handbasket, but the Mariners are eight. No, like that doesn't fix the world, but it's something that I can at least feel something good about. Right now I got the junior sluggers and that's it. Well, that's not nothing, but it's not nothing.

And to extend grace to Durs, I mean, I think that is exactly what's going on with him. I mean, obviously, he's just been a long-suffering fan of the Mariners and the Cougars. And, like, I mean, that can really do something to you over the course of a lifetime. But I also think that he cares very deeply about what's going on in the world. And I've known from previous conversations with him over, not even recently, but just years ago, just that he can lay a lot of the emotions he's feeling about the world into the sports. And so when the sports are going bad, it's like an extension of all of that. And so I think that that is.

reality for him too and so when he's feeling this way and then also with the mariners i know i've said this on the show there's this sort of there's a direct tie-in to to money and billionaires and and what's going on in the world with billionaires you know what i mean and you can sort of just say that like just the selfishness and the and then you know not putting the fans first and how that could sort of tie in with the what's going on with the oligarchs and and the white house and everything and you see like like you had alluded to the dogers uh celebrating with their president been solid solid name i will only call them the dogers going forward but with you um and so anyway i just like it's just it's hard or i'm not i'm not saying it's hard but the opposite of that actually i'll just say that it's sort of easy to let all of the stuff intermingle especially when your brain and emotions are so unstable as mine are you know what i mean like i'm not trying to justify it i'm just sort of trying to like maybe put words to it and describe it i actually

appreciate you doing that and and i think it's maybe something that's useful for all of us to consider generally speaking about everybody else in the world right now particularly our people that we know who we know are affected uh at least psychologically by what's going on and i you know want to clarify you and i as like straight white men who are lucky enough to have these this job like we're not the people that they're really coming for right now but even so when you're talking about people in the world that you know that are watching this and feeling horrible about it, we are all probably not going to be our absolute best for a while when it comes to an errant comment here or there or getting our feelings kind of hurt or being in a stressful situation. We are not, those of us who are horrified by what's going on, we are not right now probably in our most sort of like pliable and flexible selves or we're not in our moment of being able to absorb it's why a baseball game it's why robles dislocating his shoulder or whatever he did and i i was watching that and i was just like is life worth living like that's an outsized reaction to a baseball game but that's the way it felt to me and if somebody would have sent me the wrong text message at exactly that moment i could have very easily said something i regretted or been really harsh or or so i guess i'm just trying to say if we can all try to give each other as much slack as we can right now, because we're all going through this, and it's making everything hard, it's making the little things hard, and the meaningless things hard, like baseball scores, or overcooking the roast, or whatever, because we live in the 1950s, and mostly what we're doing is cooking roasts and sometimes overcooking them.

And this is, you know, I say that as more of a reminder for myself, not for other people, and it's really driving me crazy, I kind of, I can't find this specific piece of tape from Arrested Development where, you know, Tobias is saying, oh, here he comes. Mr. John Wayne hides all of his feelings. You got to let this out. And then he realizes somebody ate all of his scrambled eggs and he has a total freak out about it. Like I'm Tobias freaking out about the scrambled eggs or the hard boiled eggs right now or whatever it is. Who the bleep ate my eggs or something. Yes, exactly. So, you know, it's kind of like that. You're just like, oh, we're just talking about baseball. We're having a good time. And then like and then you're ripping somebody's head off or you're being passive, like just disgustingly passive aggressive the way i just was uh to ders and i just like i woke up on sunday or saturday i just like i said to viz i'm like i don't know man i like i'm having a just more intrusive thought i'm like if i had just like not responded to several texts i probably wouldn't be having as many intrusive thoughts today and she said i wouldn't i wouldn't bet on that i think you'd have intrusive thoughts about well that big old fat brain and looking for a big fat problem

to chew on. But here's, I will say this as, I'm realizing as I reflect on my childhood that much of my mother's mothering of us was through song, through existing IP, which is redundant, I guess. No, intellectual is not the same word. So my mom would do this thing where sometimes she would just like sing, when we would be asking her something, she would sing us the answer when she was trying to do something, get us to do something. And she used to love when we were just being, when we were being cacophonous and acting up she would just out of the blue just go silence is golden which i want to say is that a is that a frankie valley number there's a you should know from your kick see appreciate there's a song called silence is golden and my mom used to sing it to us when she wanted us to shut the hell up and i would just say you might want to mute maybe throw a little throw a little mute down on on on the you know on dur's maybe not for the whole season but for a little while till things turn around till there's more positivity that can be expressed i i'll tell you what i'll tell you what of all the things about the weekend the highs and lows of my weekend none of them involved the text chain yeah it's very it's very liberating and you know listen this is this is not throw this is not national throw durs under the bus day but i will tell you that like when i don't get it's i think it's August the 6th.

Second, Saturday in August.

I've got to put out my calendar.

I know the first Saturday in August is National Mustard Day. I know because I'm going to have to go back to Middleton, Wisconsin to celebrate. They take over a whole block there in Middleton, Andrew. But the reason that I don't feel like I'm crazy in my reaction to those texts from Durs is because I don't have those reactions to anyone else's texts. And we do, like you said, there's a volatility there. We all express our negative feelings and we express our positive feelings. It's not like you can't have a rich experience of how you feel being expressed on this text chain. Everyone else does it. I'm never having a problem with how anyone else does it. There's one entity on there that is regularly making it not as great. And eliminating that sound on, that's not how texts work, taking that out of the mix for me has totally, radically transformed my experience around that text chain. And, again, I'm not trying to be mean, but I will just say it tells me I'm not crazy. Because if I then just found the next person I was mad at on the text chain, then that's me. But I'm not mad at anyone on the text chain. John Goodwin, all the McNeese State hype man content that John Goodwin can send, I'm here for it. Oh, I muted him.

I don't even know what you're talking about. What is it like when you see a weird passive-aggressive text blur from me?

Well, I didn't even realize what you were referring to.

Well, as I was going to say, you must have been like, what the hell is this guy doing?

Honestly, I didn't read all of those texts very closely. I go in, and I put some fire into the text chain, and then I wait to see if there's any response. And when there isn't, I lose interest.

It's just like Twitter. You only post when you want something to react to yourself.

This is my new Twitter, Andrew.

This is my new Twitter.

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.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the generous folks that are donating a dazzling amount of dough. They're making TBTL possible. When I was filming some of that stuff for CBS here in this room with the camera crew, I was talking to one of them, Paul, the camera guy, a good friend of mine, and he was talking about the changing media landscape because he was looking at this little setup that I've got over here, and he said something to the effect of, and it was flattering. He said, you've done a really good job of staying. Because we were just talking about generally how the whole industry looks different and a lot of jobs that used to exist, both literally jobs and also like projects, have kind of gone away or scaled down dramatically. He said, well, you've just done this really great job of sort of figuring out how to kind of evolve with time. And I said, oh, no, no, you don't realize there's zero evolution on this show. This is what we've been doing for 15 to 16 years post the radio, which is get on here, talk about whatever inane stuff is happening in our life, and then pray that people like Marissa Collins in Columbia, Maryland will somehow find it to be valuable in their life. And we're glad that Marissa does Because Marissa has been donating For a while and supporting And says in her message Hello Luke Andrew, Veeves, Becca Susie, Walt Phyllis, John My imaginary TV boyfriend Chris And all you wonderful 10s, 11s And 5s That's the whole arc Everybody on board We're going to ride out this flood together Long time listener, medium time donor First time Dazzler Hey, Marissa. Thank you. My message is mostly a plea for everyone to realize how the current administration is quickly dismantling the government. All Americans rely on. I'm a longtime civil servant and I'm watching in horror as the staff around me are threatened. They may be gone by the time the boys read this. Please get out to an in-person protest. Google 50501. That's 50501 to find one near you. It's vital to show our strength in numbers. So this is interesting I'm guessing that Marissa of course Wrote this a while ago And was prescient Was definitely accurately predicting What we are now seeing going on And also I'm hoping Marissa You were heartened as I was By what went on over the weekend In terms of many, many, many Public protests across the country And one of the things that I thought Was really inspiring was They were in big cities And they were in small cities This was not just you know sort of um you know geo-fenced to new york city and los angeles and san francisco or seattle and portland this was all across the country and in lots of different places and in in places where you might not have expected it which i think really showed just how many people are upset by this and what a real strength there is in us getting together and saying this is not

normal this isn't politics anymore this is just people saying like what is happening is wrong It's just wrong. Like, and, you know, and people. like you said, turned out this weekend to show it. It's funny, like it was hard for me to get a good beat on that because I would open up my Blue Sky app every now and then and I would flip through it and nothing on Saturday would pop up except for just photo after photo after photo of just packed street places, packed parks everywhere from New York where apparently it was just like chock-a-block with people for like an entire mile. Portland, I heard, like obviously here in Seattle, but like you said too, like small communities. In fact, a friend of mine said, she was like, you know, I went up to Shoreline because like because Seattle like being another head in Seattle or be another person in Shoreline where maybe you don't have as as dense of a population, you know. But anyway, people turning out all over the place. But it was funny because I was like, man, this is everybody must be seeing this. But then I'm like, oh, it's because like literally Rachel Maddow and Sarah Spain and I don't know, maybe one other person are just like retweeting every single one of these things. So for my feed, it would be like everybody in the world is seeing this. And I'm like, I wonder actually how this is being covered. I'm like, it's been so long since I've just like turned on NBC News or something like that. I was kind of I was curious as to how much this this was, you know, being presented to people who weren't there.

I would guess I also didn't go in like because, yeah, my Instagram feed, because I'm still on there, was just all, you know, people that I know or people that are in sort of nearby orbits of mine, you know, out at these various events, and some of the signs were pretty great, pretty sweet. I'm guessing that the major news also covered it. I'm guessing Fox News buried it or framed it. I mean, what I thought was wild the other day, I don't usually do this, but, like, it was, you know, I think maybe day one of the just complete Wall Street meltdown, and it was you know it was unavoidable and pretty extreme and pretty bad for pretty bad for for a lot of americans whether you have money in the stock market or not it's a bad day because there's a trickle-down effect etc and they headline new york times you know dow and freefall washington post seattle times oregonian the columbian out here where i live i go to fox news i'm just curious fox news website no mention of the stock market i was like and i'm gonna most of the kids have stopped listening because we're done with the little league segment i was like when did these mother stop caring about the stock market it's it was it was unbelievable even by their even by their shady standards it was unbelievable because it was just like i when when did the stock market stop being a story for you how could this not be above the fold for you foxnews.com website this is this is this is such an intentional attempt to bend reality to your desires it's just it was just amazing i mean the only thing that made me happy was i know sean hannity owns a lot of stock yeah right yeah i know sean hannity owns more stock than i do how about that yeah um and that's i guess boy that's cold comfort but um i don't know where i'm going with this other than to say marissa i hope that it was um it was encouraging to you to see people doing the thing that you're describing or incur or sort of advocating for in this dazzling donor message now here's here's where things get really interesting andrew marissa says i cede the rest of my time to my two adorable children leo and leo of the friday friday it's time to get down on friday and avi here are the jokes they wanted to share with you all and i have them here andrew can i play them from oh sure yeah

i have them here i have them but i have not listened to this yet but if you nor have i but

i know they play and it's only gonna play in one ear and that's gonna make you crazy would you like to do the honors from there?

Let's just give this a shot. It's a good way for me to troubleshoot this stuff.

Here's my question. Is this Leo or Avi? I think this is, based

on what you just read, I'm guessing this might be both of them, but I don't know. They're listed as

Avi's joke and Leo's joke.

Oh, I see. I'm looking at the playlist here. Good call. Maybe you should be the master of audio here.

I'm going to try to play Avi's joke. I'm going to try to start there.

How do you catch a quadradoral?

lateral you use a trapezoid a polar bear whoa whoa whoa whoa soundcloud okay we're hold on we're backing this up we're gonna play obvi's joke again i'm gonna try to pause it yeah okay this

is a soundcloud thing by the way i kind of i tried to like uh make fun of you for that but the truth is um soundcloud does this it automatically it does one of those things where it just automatically

plays the next thing it's kind of uh i want it to be easier to pause too i've been trying to become I'm a SoundCloud rapper, and this is honestly a disincentive. Okay, let me try Avi's joke again. Here we go.

How do you catch a quadradoral?

How do you catch a quadradoral? I don't know.

I can't say that word.

I didn't. Let's try this again. How do you catch a quadradoral?

How do you catch a quadradoral?

A quadradoral. Oh, okay. It's like a quadrilateral?

Yeah, I think it's something with four sides, but it's not squared or rectangles.

Because it's lateral, like a, okay, so a quad. A quadrilateral is a shape.

I think so.

Okay, it's got four, but then they're lateral.

Yeah, it's got four sides, but it's not a square and it's not a rectangle. So it's just like a funky four-sided shape, I think.

Got you. Okay, now we're getting this. So how do you catch a quadrilateral?

You use a trapezoid.

You use a trapezoid. Hold on, SoundCloud. Don't rush Leo on us. Okay, how do you catch a quadrilateral? With a trapezoid. With a trapezoid.

How do you catch a quadradoral? You use a trapezoid. That's good.

Okay. That's a pretty solid joke. That is a good joke, and also, let's not give the kids too much credit here. How about we give me some credit for being right about that? It's a four-sided polygon. Let's not forget who the real winners are here. Thank you.

Who the real heroes are. Okay, that's Avi's joke. Here's Leo's joke.

Puller Bear walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, I'd like a gin and tonic. The bartender says.

What do we think the bartender says? Why the pause? I'm guessing. I haven't heard this yet. This is the first time I'm hearing this. Dude. Well, I don't want to ruin the joke. You're playing quadrilateral chess here. I just thought that Leo was having a moment, a senior moment.

I'm guessing it's why the pause. That's great. Okay, let's find out.

Why the big pause? The polar bear says, oh, these? I've always had them.

I love that. That was pretty. Andrew, let's hear that again.

I love this bear. I love this performance, this delivery.

A polar bear walks into a bar. He says to the bartender, I'd like a gin and tonic. The bartender says, why the big paws? The polar bear says, oh, these? I've always had them.

I could see you using that joke, Luke. I'm not joking. Absolutely. I feel like this is going to have legs and paws.

I feel like it really, it utilizes, and I use that term advisedly, like some other, like a different mechanism for telling the joke. And it's a surprise. Yeah, thank you. It's performative. It feels, because it's like, and I fell for it because I just thought, again, that Leo was just forgetting his joke. Trying to remember the next line. Yeah, I got, because that would be probably what I would do and do often on this show. So I like that it's using different ways to be funny and to tell the joke. So very nice work, Leo and Avi. And Marissa, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate you. Maestro?

Oh, we're doing this still.

On your mark.

On your mark. Get set.

Get set. Why the big pause? Ready. Go.

Oh, I've always had these.

It's James McCracken out there in Louisville, Kentucky. James says, in a world that can seem full of jerks, you dummies are a bomb.

Oh, thank you.

In a jerk store that called and said, they're all out of you.

It'll be funny. In a world full of jerks, you guys fit right in. Now, James, did you say this? My apologies if I'm correcting something that you didn't get wrong. In a world that can seem full of jerks. I think I said that. Okay. I didn't.

In my mind, I said that. But, Andrew, I can't stand by it. I can't trust my mind.

Just want to make sure. I don't want to misappropriate.

Don't trust your lying mind.

Yeah, I don't want to, you know, misquote James there, because there's a bit of a difference.

In a world that can seem full of jerks, you dummies are a balm. I think what he means to say is, the balm store called, and they're all out of you.

That's right.

I'm never going to leave that joke alone. James says, I'm happy you're still out there. Keep up the fight against global loneliness. Signed, James in Louisville. Well, James, thank you for, you know, I was going to try to sort of, I don't know if analogy is the right word. I was going to try to go with analogy saying we're out here fighting against global loneliness, but your donation is helping give us ammo. But I don't really even like joking about ammo because it gets more more warlike. Yeah, I'm feeling very warlike, Andrew.

You know what I need to do, Luke? Yeah. And this is I do. This is relevant to everybody listening, including you. I need to plug my headphones directly into my Scarlett to see if I'm still having the same audio issues there. Because if I'm not, then I can isolate that it's somewhere between the Scarlett and the board that I'm getting this issue.

And you know what's so important about this is you need to do this for 1.5 more days, right?

I don't know. I have a new board coming. I'm using an intermediate board because I thought it was going to be my new board, but it's lacking some functionality that it turns out I need. And so I just was like, fine, I'll order this brand new board, which is coming through, you know, it'll be coming here at some point this week. So I'm hobbling along with this other board that is kind of the worst of all worlds because it's something new that I'm getting used to. And also, I shouldn't worry too much about it because it's only going to be another show or two. And I don't think anybody else can hear the issue that I'm having. I think it's just me. But I just, I'm usually a very.

go with the flow kind of guy you said before things roll off your back when you have a back you know i'm like that too and this is very unusual for me to be so obsessive over every little piece of audio it's only the stuff i play from my computer it sounds the term is whack i

believe it sounds whack well the well that that's why i'm trying to do the lifting with soundcloud and other things i'm trying to uh keep you know take that off of your plate today as much as possible but um the thing is that your experience is also uh the biggest experience you're going to have, so it kind of makes sense that it's bugging you even if the rest of us are completely in the dark about what is going on. Here, let's see if this sounds funny to you.

Is this what your mom used to sing to you? Well, only the silence is golden part, but yes, let's... This is the Great Tremolo... Oh, no, it just says The Tremolos, but the album is from The Great Tremolos. Does that band name ring a bell to you? No, but I think the guy's about to come in with it here.

Not yet. I don't think this is the version that I grew up. Okay. We're getting pulled down in every retirement home in America over this. There we go. Do it. There we go. Is this the version? No, it's the Frankie Valli version. There is a Frankie Valli version. And by the way, I'm going to now play it. You ready, Andrew? I'm going to play it off of Spotify, and it's probably going to be in one channel.

You have your own audio issues.

Exactly. There's no... And I feel like the Frankie Valli version, I could be wrong, but I feel like it comes right in with Silence is Golden.

Oh.

No, this is kind of like what you were playing. I do like this, though. This has a... And you're probably only hearing one channel. Imagine if you could hear both.

Silence is okay. it reminds me of like tommy james and the shondells a little bit with that guitar oh yeah right like crimson and clover Here we go. Wow, he's still there.

Yeah, go high. When they go low, we go high.

The amazing thing is he just recorded this last year live on stage. Yes, he did.

I saw it. As vibrant as ever. Yeah. So the other thing my mom would sing to us as a way of sort of trying to, I guess, just, I don't know, impress something upon us. She would sing Silence is Golden. She would also sing the carol. Wait, who does? Too late, baby. It's too late. Is that a Carole King song? We'd be complaining about something. I'll go with that. Yeah. We would be complaining about something or wanting something to be different, and my mom would say, it's too late, baby, now it's too late. Meaning that ship has sailed. Whatever's happening, we're not doing that anymore. We're not complaining about it. It's too late.

yeah definitely carol king i need to think about it i need to look it up but yeah i actually that's a record that i have that's a really that carol king record is i'm looking at it but it doesn't so i'm pretty sure it's called tapestry right that's a very famous that's her big album i couldn't give you the track listing it's one of those records that has so many famous songs on it that you think it's a greatest hits but it's actually right like a studio album yeah yes exactly

well thank you to our donors for making tbtl possible today hello and welcome to top nothing like top stories an hour and 14 minutes well we had to talk about

carol king albums and that was on me mariner's text chain gators tradio we've done a lot we've

done a lot today um so on friday at the end of friday's show i just kind of mentioned in passing Oh, I'm going back to the ophthalmologist because I had had this, this sty on my eye, this, uh, Chileazad, I think it's called, or that's, that's a Pokemon card. It's one of the two. Uh, Chileazin, I think it's called. And basically what it is, is it's when an oil duct in your eyelid, on the inside of your eyelid gets plugged up with a little piece of dust or something. and normally it goes away just and you get a bump in your eyelid and normally you can go away just from like a hot putting a hot compress on it and I will tell you if you ever have the misfortune of getting one of these and you have to actually call the doctor, there will be no end of every person at every level of the medical establishment asking you if you're doing a hot compress And there's no amount of telling them that you're doing one that will convince them you're doing it Like I bought a crazy thing on on Amazon. That's like It's like a sunglasses, but they're made out of beanbags and fabric and you can microwave them and just put them on your face And they're supposed to like I was like Every time I would have to call in to make an appointment around this or do something to to try to get some help with it The first question would be are you doing a hot compress? Yes. How many times a day? I don't know four times a day like that's the answer in fact when I went in this time the nurse that was helping me said are you doing a hot compress and I was like yes I've been doing a hot compress it's not doing anything because my boyfriend gets these and I just make him do a hot compress right away I'm like yes I promise you I have been briefed on the benefits of the hot compress this is not news to me but what was interesting about this whole procedure was I had first of all I had a different ophthalmologist the first ophthalmologist that I went to who did the original procedure and I don't want to be

gruesome here but so if you're squeamish you might that's right yeah we gave a we actually gave this is what we had to give a trigger warning for the last time so consider this the trigger warning we don't need a special one at the beginning of the show because if things did get kind of graphic

that first time it's it's it's pretty gruesome what what depending on your tolerance for these things what goes on to try to address these this kind of like little infected i guess you could say bump in my eyelid and the first time that i went uh to actually have this thing you could It's just, say, sort of drained or cleaned out. The ophthalmologist kind of explained what was going to happen to me, and he explained that, like, this little red bump on the outside of my eyelid was actually the bottom, the base of the volcano, and that the issue, the infection point, and where the duct was blocked up is on the inside of my eyelid. So they clamp your eyelid. They give you pain, you know, medicine. So it doesn't really hurt. It's just a very weird experience. They give you some pain shots. Those don't feel great in the eyelid, but then once that kicks in, they put some numbing eye drops in, and then they put this clamp on there, and they kind of flip your eyelid inside out, and then sort of go to work, you know, making an incision and kind of trying to clean out whatever the infected matter is in there. So they did that a few months ago, and first it was way worse because it's kind of a trauma to your eyelid into this thing, but then it got way better. It reduced down in size probably by 60%, but it did not go away 100%. It, it, it, and it was still a reddish dot that always involved me having to, if I was going to do TV or something, put some kind of little, even when I'm doing TBTL, because we might pull these clips for the social media, I will put some like concealer on it because it's kind of a distraction. It's like this red dot right under my eyeball. Um, and so anyway, that doctor who helped me the first time was so booked up that I could not get to see him back to see him till like i don't know may or june so he referred me to one of his colleagues who had an earlier appointment i.e last friday so i went in there and i really liked this doctor but i'm gonna call him dr newhart because he was like so understated he was like a bob newhart type he was probably about my age maybe a little bit younger very professional but also very like not you know sometimes you can deal with a doctor who is like overconfident in the sense that they're just telling you everything as if they just got this they went up on mount sinai and were handed these tablets and now they're telling you that was not how this doctor was treating this this was a dialogue he came in he said well so i've been looking because i had sent in some photos through the like you know whatever you call it portal for kaiser so he goes yeah i was looking at some of these photos of it and i was showing some of my colleagues earlier today and we're just trying to kind of figure out what the best course of action is he goes i think and he kind of felt around on it and stuff he said i think that probably the the best approach is to go in through the outside of your eyelid this time because i think that's actually where the majority of the issue now is so i think the best approach is to go in through your outside of your eyelid although we could go in through the inside too i mean that would be

also good because if we go back in through the inside then you know there's no chance of scarring there's no chance of like a noticeable, you know, injury on the outside of your eyelid because it's the inside. It might heal faster because that's how that part of the body works. So we could do the inside. And I said, well, I'm going to defer to you on this one, Doc. But I know in his defense, I was giving him also a lot of timelines. I said, well, I do have to film something on Monday, which I just did. And then I have this big event in Seattle. We're doing live wire at Ben Aroya on Friday night. I don't know if there's still tickets available, but there are. You should come out and see us but that's kind of a big one for me it's a homecoming i'm gonna see a lot of my family and friends i would like to feel confident about how i'm looking or at least

as confident as i get are you gonna be doing tbtl from my house that later on this week i forgot

about that i don't think so i think we're i think we're gonna come up midday on friday

okay um so i think yes i just wanted to interrupt your absolute flow of this story that i was on

the edge of my seat with just with a practical matter that the listeners don't need to be

involved with sorry about that they're all listen they're all wondering we're all wondering when's

luke gonna get back to andrew's studio i'm literally like well i should probably vacuum

all right go ahead so um so anyway i i'm talking to this doctor and i'm like thinking i'm giving him some different dates, which is not normal for his, generally speaking, a normal person with normal job stuff is not as worried about. I literally said to him, can you promise me that whatever you do, this will only look as bad as it looks now by next Friday, April 11th. That was my baseline. I was like, I can live with how it is right now. I can put some cover up on it. It's generally fine. What I can't do with you, sir, is enter into a medical procedure where this is going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot better because that's a problem for me and then i had this other date which was i'm going to be shooting some stuff for a big um software concern on the east side and that's a lot of like close-ups of my face and that's in late april and that's like i was like i really so it's i was giving him a lot of like i was asking a lot of questions and giving him a lot of timelines that like are not normal if you work in let's just say you know if you're if you're a tow truck driver and you go in there to ask how long is it going take to heal i was i was throwing a lot at him and he was trying to be mindful of that but what it led to him being was let's just say less than a hundred percent on which end which side of my eyelid we should be going in towards to the degree that finally i'm in the chair i'm i'm i'm uh i've sort of reclined back uh there's been a long break i've been following the mariners as this doctor and as the nurse they come in and out of the room they're going into things getting different things i'm signing a lot of releases which is always a little stressful when you're just basically going like i know this could go very bad i know i could emerge now with a only one working eye but we got to do it and so finally now doctor has me reclined he has now injected my eyelid with the numbing agent he is the clamp is on i was a little bummed they had to use the clamp for the outside kind of thought that was an inside the eyelid specialty but no this was basically the exact same procedure except instead of the inside, they go through the outside. I thought it would be a little easier, a little less invasive, if you will. And he's holding the scalpel, Andrew, and when he comes back, he's shooting me up, and he goes, yeah. He's holding the scalpel. He goes, yeah, I think the outside is the way to go in. He goes, I don't know. I'm just trying to talk myself into my decision. and i was like as i'm reclined in the sea with a clamp on my eyelid i was like well let's be 100 on this one doc do you i don't think you ever want to hear somebody who's about to do something that's pretty intense on your body like this say i'm trying to talk myself into the decision now i appreciated the honesty i actually really liked this doctor i like i really liked how he was not like he wasn't he wasn't acting overly confident And he was he was bringing he was the TBTL of this kind of a procedure. He was pulling the curtain back constantly and talking about his thoughts about the thing that was going to happen.

He wasn't coming in. He wasn't trying to, like, fake it until he makes it. He was like, I'm still trying to talk myself into my decision to make an incision on the outside of your eyelids, sir.

You know, your description of this sounds so intense to me. And literally you describe re-describing what they did last time, like almost made me sick to my stomach. I'm pretty squeamish. no i and i say that not to complain i say that to say that i'm not trying to undermine the seriousness of this from your perspective uh-huh but it does also sort of sound to me like because to the doctor this is a stye and it's not even though i i would not want to be in your position and it sounds very serious to me in a certain way now that you can retell this on monday morning yeah let's say afternoon we've been going for a long time um it's sort of it sort of seems to be an indicator that like well this is a sty i'm gonna get it out i deal with this a lot that you could almost find comfort in him talking about this because he's not talking about removing an organ you know what i mean he's not talking about or even actually doing something to the eyeball itself you know what i mean so in a certain way i could sort of see like oh i wouldn't find comfort in the moment, but as you sort of describe it here, I think, well, maybe it's kind of like the doctor's like, well, half a one, or half dozen a one. I can't say. Six of one, half dozen of the other. Yeah, it might have been more of that kind of situation. What'd he end up doing?

He ends up talking himself into it. Outside. Outside of the eyelid, and so then he is doing the procedure, he's made the incision and as he is and again i don't mean to be overly gross but it is part of the story he cuts open the eyelid and now he's using this tool to go in and try to like and he goes and he just goes oh yeah i'm getting a lot out this was the right call this was good this was the way to go that and then i just said it's fine i said from amidst absolute intense teeth gritting andrew which i was doing like i'm like you know like it's a real clockwork orange shit yeah amidst that i go well that's better than the alternative yeah like what if he had gotten in there and he'd been like oh no this was not the way to go like i was very relieved once he had once he was in there once he had committed that he was like oh yeah yeah this is good this was this was the way to go and then he had andrew the genuine relief and excitement in his voice to realize that he had made the right decision was really something because it really like led me to believe i mean again the stakes were not that high here i was this was not a it's not a life-threatening situation if anything it's just ego-threatening for me because it's like how long am i going to have something embarrassing on my eyelid um but the the genuine excitement that he was expressing over removing some sort of you know built up whatever was inside this kind of infected thing on my eye his excitement indicated to me that he genuinely didn't know until that moment if he had made the right call or not

I got to say, though, saying, oh, yeah, I'm getting a lot out, like, that is so satisfying. It was weirdly satisfying. Yes, yes.

I was like, okay. And, again, it's odd to have this incredibly satisfying moment happen in a moment that is also one of great personal turmoil. Because I also somehow, and this is actually not that shocking to the listeners because they know about how my insecurity works. i somehow have locked into this thing where it's important to me that the medical professionals i deal with leave every interaction being like that guy is so unflappable like which is a which is a terrible terrible flex to get locked yeah no i'm the opposite i'm like i go in just like

this is my soft underbelly i'm terrible at all of this stuff give me all uh give me all of your padding give me all of your emotional padding and give me all of your physical padding and that i

think is actually the way to go because i have unfortunately chosen the the other path and that means i i would love them to just like literally like just go back to the nurse's station and go everybody gather around i gotta tell you about well i gotta tell you about this cool cat that

was just oh he was so cool man he was he came in on a motorcycle hates loud noises but came in on

the you know that soda machine you know that soda machine that's on the you know that jukebox

I was going to say, you know that jukebox? You know what he did?

He bumped the jukebox and the soda came out of it. I've never even seen that.

It was very weird. We've got to get that fixed. We've got to get that fixed.

Like, you know, it's a terrible, terrible thing to hang any kind of your self-confidence on. I don't know if that's even the thing I'm describing. Like, basically, I really want to be, like, tough guy in there. And that's bad because it means that when they're doing something like this, which is, again, I'm happy to say, not really painful. but just super weird, deeply weird and uncomfortable because of the part of your body, et cetera. The fact that you can't not observe it because your eyelid is being pulled open. I did also ask this, because a new ophthalmologist, Andrew, you get a second bite at the apple. I asked him, how many Clockwork Orange references do you get? He goes, you know, less than when I started my career. He goes, I think that movie is fading in the public consciousness. Yeah, yeah. I was like, this is an interesting indicator on that, right?

but um and wasn't the guy wasn't like that there was somebody evil from that movie that was in the new space jam movie a couple years ago do you remember that was that malcolm gladwell one of

the droogs the main droog malcolm glad not gladwell malcolm malcolm i was like i was really i was like

boy i'm really i'm really out of the loop what can't that malcolm gladwell do malcolm mcdowell maybe is that the name of the character of the main that's one of the main that's one of the main

he's the star of Clockwork Orange

it might have been him or it might have been just one of the other people in the little derbies with the cane or something I'm looking this up now are you finding anything

Malcolm McDowell does not appear to have a role in the Space Jam a new legacy movie or any other Space Jam movie

it says why the Space Jam 2 Clockwork Orange cameo is so controversial this is from Screen Rant so apparently some of these characters did appear maybe not maybe not the main one. I mean, I literally have not seen this movie since I saw it once in college. It says a cameo by Alex DeLarge and his droogs.

Okay, so a different person from Clockwork Orange.

Alex DeLarge is not the main Clockwork. No, it looks like Alex DeLarge is a Clockwork Orange main guy. I don't know who you're talking about.

Maybe I just, maybe Mel. Malcolm McDowell, a.k.a. Gladwell, is just the only person from that movie that I have any other context for. And so I just, in my mind, assume he was the star.

Oh, you know what? Malcolm McDowell is the actor. I see. We were saying the same things, and I think that you knew this, and I didn't. I was saying the name of the character. You were saying the name of the actor.

So the actor, Malcolm McDowell, does make an appearance in Space Jam.

Let me see if it's actually—my guess is no, it's not the actor. My guess is they have somebody else dressed up like the character. because the whole thing about Space Jam was they were like, oh, we're going to use all of our IP. So I've never seen the first Space Jam.

Of all the IP, Clockwork Orange seems like leave that one behind for Space Jam.

I think they literally used all the IP. I think that's the thing, and I think that's a very, very –

Like that was part of the challenge?

I don't know if it was a challenge or then just like emptying out the clip on their IP. But like it just sort of – I think it – like again, I've never seen it. I haven't seen even the first one. Don't spoil it. I don't know who wins. Have you seen the website, though, Andrew? Do you know about this whole thing? They just updated it, I think. Yes. How disappointed would you be? I would suck. But, yeah, anyway, I think that there's some crowd shot. They did. They just show all kinds of people, and I think some of the Clockwork Orange goons are in there. But my guess is they're not the actual original actors. They updated the website because of the movie?

You dirty dogs. in 2021 the landing page for you can go to the 1996 site but if you put spacejam.com into the internet which for many of us famously was a great kind of time capsule of like 1996 internet stuff you would get the 1996 space jam website which of course was the michael jordan version but then when i just went to do that it splashed me to space jam a new legacy the 2021 one with lebron james now i have the option yeah of navigating back to the 1996 site or going forward to the new site but the important thing is this is experiential andrew this is like it's not the same if you land on a thing of lebron james it's not the same as landing on the 1996 site totally untouched by by you know time and development and web development genevieve and i had a laugh

in the car the other day because she was describing something she was describing some tv show and she said like boy i wish they would make like an interactive online experience in the personality of this character or something like that and i was like oh kind of like veep did with splatnet.net or whatever but then i said oh maybe the first thing i said was oh you want this tv show to go full donnie darko and she's like yeah exactly and then we took a moment up why the big pause i've always had those we took a moment to be like are we the only two like gen xers who are going around just saying to each other oh you want to go full donnie darko with the website and it needs no explanation beyond that do you remember the donnie darko experience were you part of this was this a big national phenomenon or were veves and i just geekily into this movie

um i here's the thing all of the uh there were people that were into donnie darko um and really into it and they were people who were into different kinds of movies than I was into

but do you know are you familiar if I say

the Donnie Darko website am I familiar with the film Donnie Darko

I'm not asking if you know the film Donnie Darko if I say the full Donnie Darko website experience do you know what I'm talking about the Donnie Darko website okay so it was an early internet thing that was very very immersive in a way that like you were I can't even quite remember the details of it but basically it was somewhere between a website and a game and an immersive experience that was incredibly creepy just like the movie itself was and it was like nothing that I had ever seen before and so it's okay I'm not asking whether you like the movie or don't like the movie it doesn't matter I'm just saying that like I don't think there are a lot of people who have a shared language of just saying hey go full Donnie Darko on that website in 2025 I don't know if that makes any sense to anybody anymore except for people like maybe Genevieve and I and one listener out there right now and for some reason I'm thinking it might be Brett in the U District and I don't know why But that, like, might know what the hell we're talking about. Now, I have no idea if that website still exists in its original form.

Well, somebody on Reddit says, somebody on Reddit said, Donnie Darko website is still active and worth a visit.

Interesting.

But then somebody says, the archive page of the official website doesn't work anymore. But Rich Holman, a web developer who always loved the website, has made a re-upload at DonnieDarkoWebsite.com. At the time of writing, it's 100% working. And so then I clicked on that, obviously, Andrew, and I'm on that website. And it's, but I can't quite, it doesn't seem, oh, oh, maybe it's, I think I may have.

Did you just enter the portal? I may be entering the Darkoverse. Just give me your hand. I'm scared. I'm scared. I don't, don't let go. don't want you to slip into the it says the tangent universe collapsed 8 563 days 12 hours 46 minutes and two seconds ago proceed i'm hitting proceed you've been here before enter the level one password i haven't otherwise proceed here oh again andrew i'd love to get you on this at some point to tell me if this is if this reminds you or if this is like note for note what the old thing was

it's rings a bell you saying that i kind of because i haven't even seen the movie probably since it came out i don't even know if i ever went back and watched it i saw it in the theater so um but i forgot about that whole like that countdown thing um yeah it's such a creepy vibe i wonder if i i remember being blown away by it i don't know if i knew what i was going state of

virginia recommendation for parole yes comment after completions of 12 month curriculum resident appears to show signs of complete rehabilitation i'm guessing this is a plot point from the movie

donnie darko i was gonna say i don't know um if i would still like the movie today i remember going in seeing in the theater in like walking out and being like what was that i mean and you have like that's how i felt walking out of space jam right and it has um you know it has uh jill in it as well who plays like a amazing character in it i was drew barrymore in that too i was like i wasn't prepared for anything that i saw but now you know what is it 25 years later 23 years later or whatever it would be. I don't even know if it holds up, or if it was just a product of its time.

Interesting. I should actually go watch it at some point, because it is something that gets referenced a lot, like the rabbit, you know, whatever's going on. I don't know what's going on with the rabbit. I know there's a weird rabbit in it, or a person in a rabbit costume, or something. It's one of those things that was so big in a certain... There used to be in L.A. out at the... Was it at the Lemley or something? one of those kind of artsy movie theaters they would have like a Donnie Darko you know midnight movie every Saturday like it was it was people watched it a lot and talked about it enough that I should have watched it at least to know get the references yeah I again like I don't take this as

a recommendation from me especially for you because it is a really dark it is a very dark

movie that I think also deals with a lot of like well they didn't name it Donnie Lighto yeah right

exactly and I don't know that it all would even hold together like you know if you had like frustrations with some of the things not seeming to align for you for like even severance i'm guessing that donnie darko is not for you i could be wrong i'm not trying to put you in a box i just don't want you to think that i'm recommending this necessarily probably isn't the best fit but uh for myself as somebody like you know what movie i totally feel the opposite about now is american beauty i remember seeing that in the theater and just being like this was amazing and also i remember like i was in one of those really great like kind of historic theaters somewhere in akron that was like you know an old playhouse of some sort with just like everything was kind of gilded with big shan it was just like such a beautiful historic space i went there with like some colleagues from work and then like a judge for some reason so i remember just being like a very young you know relatively young adult i was still in college and just being impressed by the whole experience and then seeing this movie that felt like a it wasn't a movie it felt like a film to me right and then i tried re-watching it like i don't know how many years later and i was like oh my god this movie is so far up its own behind like i didn't how much of that is the spacey factor oh no it wouldn't no this would have been pre-scandal no no no pre-scandal no it just seemed like so and again maybe i'm wrong if i see it a third time maybe my expectations are so low that i'll like it again yeah exactly so i'm not trying to ruin the experience for people who still love that movie i just remember holding it in such high regard yeah and then going back maybe 10 years later or something and watching and being like oh this is kind of corny like yeah

at the time as i also saw it in a theater and i was very struck by it and i thought it was a thing like one of the first movies that i could remember where in adult life i was like this skewers the sort of all this skewers this this sort of perfect american dream and family um that uh you know we're all striving for but that is really hollow and this really perfectly kind of like points out the illusion that is the quote-unquote American dream of a certain kind of American

dream absolutely and you know what it might have been like it and again maybe I should watch it again and and maybe with some different context but like you remember like the poetic boy who like takes videos of the paper bag that just blows in the wind yeah and like it seemed profound to me the first time I saw it and then it seemed like whatever the opposite of profound is the second time I saw it but now I'm almost wondering maybe the filmmaker knew that maybe this was a Maybe it was supposed to be cringe, those scenes. I don't really know. I don't remember.

I don't think so, but I do think there was a funny, again, this is going to be so unhelpful because I'm missing so many of the details. But by the way, I think that that actor is named Wes Bentley. Okay. Wes Bentley. And. He was on my radar because Camaro Kev and and I and some of our other friends were friends with a guy who was a filmmaker and had lived in a house in L.A. with that guy. And they had this bar buddy Kelly and his brother had made a movie that was like making the rounds of film festivals. And they knew Wes. And I think Wes was in their movie. And then he was like in American Beauty filming the garbage bag as it like caught on a power line or whatever. And so what was funny is that I can't remember if it was one of the Scream movies. I saw there were some one of these parody movies that parodied the plastic bag getting stuck on the power line for its faux profundity. And I didn't realize how faux the profundity was until I saw somebody making a joke about it. And I can't give you the movie, but I just remember seeing something. Maybe it was an SNL sketch. I can't remember. I remember somewhere seeing someone making fun of a character where a guy is, like, videotaping a garbage bag that's stuck on a power line and doing it so intense. And that was the moment I realized, oh, yeah, that was a little overly, you know, whatever, self-involved.

I believe we have a DVD of American Beauty somewhere that is signed by Alan Ball, the writer, because Genevieve met him at some sort of, I don't know if it was a Microsoft event or something. Did he also make Six Feet Under? Yeah, I think he's a six feet under guy, and I think he wrote, I don't think he directed, I don't know if he's a director, I don't think he directed it.

Have you watched the autographed DVD to see if it plays differently? Yeah. Maybe that's.

Right, exactly.

I was trying to explain, not explain, I was trying to unpack B.J. Lederman for Becca the other day.

Well, she's on public radio. I mean, she's on public radio. Oh, exactly, well, she's not. Veteran listener.

Yeah, that's why I need to walk that way back. I was not explaining anything or even unpacking anything. just the question was like how many songs did bj lederman do for public radio and we looked it up and it was you know it's a lot of the public radio theme songs but and i was also noting that on the bj lederman music site there was an autograph cd that he was selling of of his his new original work none of it i think related to public radio just music he writes and it was an autograph cd that was uh for sale for 50 had been 150 but now marked down to 50 and i was just trying to imagine first of all i almost bought it for you as a gift i thought it would have been

freaking amazing if you spend 150 bucks on me no it's marked down to 50 uh 50 and 50 bucks on me

i'd still like to choose what that 50 bucks is going to you would not like a bj lederman bj lederman original music autographed original music cd i literally was like i gotta figure out the best person to give this i will spend 50 to blow someone's mind with this but it's got to

be the right person originally 150 that was what was interesting and then the other thing was there

was the non-autographed who was also selling for 50 it was a very interesting pricing strategy on the website yes interesting indeed yes but it made me think also if you play a if you play a cd or a dvd that i guess it's probably the packaging is autographed not the actual disc yeah i'm assuming

he signed the underside of the disc would that andrew now we're getting into compact disc questions

If you were to write on the underside of a compact disc with a Sharpie, do you think it would? It would play Donnie Darko.

That's how you get to that website.

Anyway, all's well that ends well. My eye is actually a lot better. Oh, yeah.

That's what we were talking about. It looks like, I know you said earlier, maybe it was before the show, like here on screen, I know you were taping stuff with CBS before we did this today, but I would not know at all that anything is going on with your eye. Because you took a photo of yourself of a huge bandage. half of literally half of your face or like a third of your face was covered with bandage on

friday he is a big my doctor dr newhart he is a big proponent of the eye patch and he asked me he goes and he literally kept going yeah i usually recommend the eye patch and i was like okay we'll let you do the patch he goes i mean did the other guy have you do an eye patch and i said no he didn't he goes ah we do it differently i don't know i usually go with the eye patch like that I can't overstate that was the guy's vibe. He was like, yeah, I'd do the eyepatch. He didn't do the eyepatch? I was like, he didn't do the eyepatch. I'd do the eyepatch. Okay. And so I did the eyepatch, but I hope this doctor isn't hearing this. I had to go to, there was a Safeway right next to the Kaiser that I was at. I needed to get fixings because my parents were here. And I'm walking to that Safeway, and boy, did I not realize how much I need both of my eyes for my depth perception. I know that their folks have diminished vision for one reason or another and can kind of like, I guess, acclimate. I was not acclimating. I was having I'm not handling this well. I was having trouble in that grocery store. And I finally got back to also, by the way, I was checking out in the grocery store. And there was a very helpful young young person who was bagging the groceries. And I was buying some of my my beloved athletic brewing. You know, if you buy, we talked about this before, if you buy non-alcoholic beer, they still card you, they still ID you, which is kind of weird. But I've decided that what it is is that the grocery store does not want their employees to be in the business of. figuring out what thing that looks like alcohol is or is not alcohol like if it's zero proof if

it's low alcohol yeah but why does the machine and i think we've come up with an answer to this i just can't remember and i think maybe even we got some some emails from grocers on this because the odd thing for me is i do self-checkout and the machine flags it and makes you get carded for it so in other words like if it was just up to the employees to see it but like if the robot says Tell them what the barcode is. Yeah, the barcode should just not do it any more than root beer would.

You know what I mean? That's really, that's a good point. Well, and I also, by the way, I went through the not self-check. I went through the human checkout line because I was like, I can't with one eye manage all this. But anyway, the checker asked me for my ID. And then I've been walking around the store with this big thing on my eye. And I'm feeling self-conscious about it. And then I, so I'm like, am I going to get through this grocery trip without addressing this? And, of course, I didn't. I handed her my ID for the athletic brewing. And I said, it's going to look a little different because I wasn't wearing this eye situation for my driver's license photo. And then the checker kid goes, I wanted to ask about that, but I didn't want to be rude. So I was like, okay, we're all noticing this.

I gotcha.

And then did you make up a story? You're like, ask away. It was, I was in a grand battle. It was a dark and stormy night. I said, oh, no, I had, I tried to explain the thing that I can't even remember the name of, even though I'm now a world expert on having them. but anyway i explained oh there was something on my eye and then they were like oh but your vision is okay i went yeah it's fine it's just it's pretty cosmetic and anyway then i got out to the car and then i was just like i don't want to i can't drive i'm not going to drive home with this like this is actually whatever good the eye covering is doing for me in terms of maybe infection i feel like the chances of me crashing into someone else in this car are greater or worse than that so i took the eye patch off and i literally threw it in the garbage can at the at the Safeway gas station, filled my car up and headed home and never looked. I've never looked back, Andrew, except for the last 40 minutes.

I'm curious as to how many listeners during the past, I don't know, five minute conversation have done what I'm doing, which is like close one of their eyes and let's look around the room or the bus or whatever they're, wherever they are as they're listening to this. I feel like they're, I've been feeling this very instinctual thing to like sort of close one eye and look around.

You know what? It almost made me, it made me feel when I was in the store, like I was drunk. It made me feel disoriented. A little kind of with some sort of vertigo or whatever And again, I'm sure that it's something that over time you can adjust to But I did not have enough time And I felt almost a little bit like nauseous or nauseated in the store Pushing around Or like I had just, I don't know, taken a hit of something Some of that also could be that I'd just been through a fairly Well, some of it could have been the alcohol Oh, is that why they kept asking me for my ID? Is that why the police kept asking me for my ID? Because they were trying to trespass me from the safe way? But anyway, it's good. I think it was the right decision. I think it's back to where we are today on Monday. It's as bad as it was on Friday before I had the procedure, which is an improvement because once it heals now from that, I think I'm going to be a lot better.

Sounds like you got a lot. I loved hearing that. I loved hearing that.

We got each other, and that's a lot. For love. How does this music sound to you? Pretty good? Pretty normal?

Just like one ear. Just kind of watery underneath me. One ear is just kind of odd, right? I can't explain it. There's something, like, spatial going on.

Yeah, it doesn't matter. All right, thank you for listening, everyone. Thanks for being part of TBTL. It's early for me to start saying that. It's usually a Friday statement, but today was such a long show. I have to also thank you for being part of this one.

Do we have to do this again tomorrow? I don't know. Could we cut this in half?

Just snap it in two. Yeah, could we find, like, a wishbone this one and just make what I'm doing right now tomorrow's show? I would take that. I'm fried. I've been up since, like, 4.45 a.m. All right, we'll see you tomorrow, everybody. In the meantime, have a great Monday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Power out.