Muse

Is that it? Just that one word? Yeah. Okay.

Yes! Uh, hey Steven, that was really good. Um, feeling is here that you could be a bit more positive.

More positive?

Yeah. You know, really go for it. You want me to go for it?

Yeah. Alright. Yes!

Very, very good. Let's just try without the script. Mine just loosened you up a little bit. I mean, it's, what is it, one word? You don't really need it, do you?

I probably don't need the script, it's just a word. Yeah.

OK, let's do it again.

Yes! Is that it? Yes.

Right.

Hi, Stephen. Yes. This is Clem Fandango. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango. Honestly, this is going so great, but I just think there was a little loss of energy in that last take. Maybe try one more.

Okay, ready to go? What?

Yeah. Yes! T-B-T-L Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

It's Friday, Friday. Gonna get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. You negligently ruined her iPhone. You have to pay for that. Simple as that. So isn't that rocket science? What is rocket science?

Rocket science is when the scientists find out things about space. Ah, gazpacho soup just burned my lips. The gazpacho? Yeah, it's been sitting out. It warmed up. It warmed up so much that it burned your lip. Let me explain something to you. If you're expecting something ice cold and you bring it up to your lips and it's room temp, it's going to feel like your mouth's on fire. It's going to feel like your body's on fire.

And boom goes the dynamite. well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of pbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live small beers my name is luke burbank i'm your host coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia where i'm telling you when i woke up this morning and i looked outside i knew it was going to be time to activate the denzel drop didn't know you like to get wet though and yet something semi-miraculous has happened. Since I came out here to get ready to do the show, the skies parted, the sun is out. In fact, there was so much sunshine, I had to close, I had to pull a shade down here in the Madrona Hill studio so that I would not be absolutely walloped by a direct sunbeam. It's looking like a beautiful Friday, my friends. Oh, Ma, Pa, it's just beautiful. Maybe that is some sort of a sign, my friends. A sign that something is shifting. Something in the universe is shifting. And we are ready for a very, very good Friday. And honestly, a good Friday evening of baseball watching. The Mariners played last night. The Mariners are now tied 2-2 in the American League Championship Series. They did not win. They are playing tonight, practically for their very season.

Everything about them just makes me nervous.

I'm taking this weather shift, though, as some kind of a sign of something. Also, the fact that here we are at episode 4578 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. One of my favorite episode numbers to be at, so that's got to be some kind of a good sign. Let's see, what else might we talk about on the show today? Well, if we have the time, we may talk about the apparently more mobile saunas in the news. It's going to be very hot, going to be very uncomfortable for everybody. We talked yesterday about this pop-up sauna that's social sauna is the term for it. It's going around Seattle. And then wouldn't you know it, this morning I'm reading in the newspaper in San Francisco about a whole kerfuffle about a mobile sauna in Mendocino. So, again, time permitting, we'll talk about that. We always have time for this guy. We always permit time for the longest-running co-bro of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ship.

Hey, Lloyd!

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

Good morning, Luke. You don't know this, but I got a real last-minute throat clear in right before you introduced me. Oh, that felt good. You didn't hear it. Very satisfying. Yeah, very good. How about you? Your mic was on, though. Oh, no. Can you introduce me again? How are you doing? Do you need me to filibuster a second? Do you need to clear your throat? Are you all set? Because I don't have a lot here at the top.

I'm feeling pretty good right now. I've got my homemade, hand-forged, artisanal soda. water here which i do i've got to time it just right because what i do like about the carbonation is i do think it kind of does help kind of clear the throat out a little bit it's got that effervescent kind of quality um but if i drink it like right before the intro package is is ending and it's time for me to start talking the the carbonation can create a problem where i get some like a giant air bubble lodged in my throat and i'm kind of betwixt in between so it's a dangerous game but i think i i think unlike the mariners i think i've played it successfully by the way we will be getting to that uh later on in the show i i heard that somebody had commented andrew on the program recently uh that they were disappointed that we hadn't decided to talk about the mariners and it was only because we hadn't done it right at the beginning of the show which is something

we've been trying to do because you and i who are obviously are obsessed with this team right now and where they are and the history literally don't care about anything we don't care about our lives our lives are built around this schedule right now right like our my i when i realized when i woke up this morning that the game is on at 3 p.m. this afternoon. Something I knew. Wait, it is? I'm pretty sure. That's what they told me on Ask Veeves. I actually forgot what the real one was there for a second. I actually think Ask Veeves is way funnier. Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Mariners game is on at 3.

I looked it up today, and I thought it said.

It probably is giving you the East Coast time.

Yeah, 3.08. There you go. Why did it, Andrew? Okay, we can't get into this right now.

Don't worry, we're not going to talk about the Mariners, but we will talk about reading clocks. We'll talk about the time zones the Mariners may be playing.

So when you saw that the game was at 3 today, what went through your mind?

Well, the thing is, I didn't like, I knew it was at 3. I've had it sort of in my mental calendar that it's at 3 o'clock. But it's been a very busy week. It's been a very strange week. I haven't been talking too much about it, but I've been dog-sitting these dogs next door, whom I'm just deeply, deeply, deeply in love with.

But it is taking, but it is, I told you, I mean, they're good dogs.

I always, is that Maggie? God damn it. Who's a good dog? It's Goose. Maggie and Goose. I'm going to send you a bunch of photos after the show.

By the way, props to me for remembering the second dog that, that's the supporting cast

is named Goose. I'm already into nickname territory with Goose. I call him Goober. I love these dogs, but it does. So here's the deal. Well, and I want to be careful because I don't want to sound – I don't want to paint my neighbors in any kind of a negative light. I truly love these folks. They're the best neighbors I maybe ever have, and I know that they rent next door. And so whenever we do happen to see the property owner, we're always just like, we love our neighbors, just to make sure that he knows that, like, that – I don't know if he could do anything to keep him there. But, you know, they're younger. They live a different lifestyle than us. They have these two dogs now, one of which, you know, is, you know, is referred to as a puppy. I don't know his exact age, but is a dog that is as big as the full grown three year old because he's going to be huge. Both of them have some sort of, you know, bulldog in them. I'm assuming like pit. I know. I think they both have some pit, which I absolutely love. That's probably my favorite kind of look as far as a face and a maw is concerned. And they're both pretty high energy. Actually, I would say the puppy, Goose slash Goober, is high-ish energy, but it's because he's so young. Maggie, who's three years old, actually has way more energy and almost more of a nervous energy. It's so clear that they don't like to be left alone, especially Maggie. So, you know, they're next door. I can't bring them over here. We have a cat, and they have their setup over there.

So that was the decision, because one of the things we talked about was, oh, how will Bingo and Maggie maybe interact? But the decision was made that they shan't. The twain shan't mean.

Well, we were thinking about bringing just Maggie over here and maybe just having some time with Maggie to hang out here. But what I've realized is these guys really miss their owners and really like interaction. And I think Goose especially likes – they're such pack animals. I find it so interesting as somebody who hasn't been around dogs a lot. And again, so I'm going to say, just to give you a sense of these dogs, I refer to one as a puppy. Maggie, the three-year-old, is about 50 pounds, almost exactly 50 pounds. And I think Goose is right behind her, but has these huge paws that just show you that this dog is going to be a giant walking amongst men. And so they're both probably, you know, between 40 and 50 pounds, and they're very physical dogs. They like to walk all over you, kind of jump on you, but never in any way that makes me uncomfortable, at least. I love them. I mean, they're so great, and they're just so well-behaved. But also, Maggie, like when you go to say hello to her, you have to open the door and then run down the porch steps because she's going to happy pee, as they call it. Like she's going to pee a little bit, and so I'm trying to, like, oh, he's so, so piddle.

I believe we used to call that they're going to piddle.

Yeah, but so it's kind of like they're a handful a little bit. But you know that whole internet speak now, like handful, pejorative, handful. complimentary i sort of mean a handful complimentary you know like i love these dogs but it is taking up big chunks of my day because i feel so bad like the neighbor's like well just let them out in the yard and then go back home but it's like when i'm working here they they do like to bark at the neighbor dogs that walk by and then i always feel responsible for that and it turns out genevieve's like it's fine dogs bark at other dogs they're not out there barking their heads off the whole time and all the neighbors who walk by every day with their dog know that these are the dogs that bark at other dogs you know like to me i'm always like oh i'm so sorry i'm so sorry and one guy the other day said to me he's like it's okay the dogs bark and i was like okay great this was just a neighbor walking by with his dog um so i'm sort of learning dog etiquette but i just feel such an immense amount of responsibility for these dogs and i hate leaving them over there by themselves but they can't really come over here and their setup their home is just not conducive for me spending a lot of time there or doing any kind of work there or anything so the way it's been going is when Genevieve's been at work I've been spending days I kind of she feeds him in the morning goes to work I go over there spend a little time with him get him to run around in the yard a little bit I went to the store and bought them some toys yesterday so they could kind of play together um but I think that they really like to be together I think I started this thought and didn't finish it like Goose really is a pack animal when Veves and I both went over there last night at one point Veves went inside for a second and I was outside with Maggie and Goose, but Goose was not happy until Genevieve came outside so all four of us could be together. Goose just really... So I really, during this time where their family is away, and we're babysitters, basically, I don't like the idea of bringing Maggie over here and leaving Goose alone back there. I think they need each other.

And Goose come over? Maybe,

but I kind of don't love... I don't want to play with Maggie over here and have Goose just in a crate. Like, I don't know. They're very comfortable in the crate you know crate train they like it in there yeah i mean we do we put goose in the crate every night before he goes to bed and we've kind of got a rhythm and i think that they they've even calmed down a little bit um i think like they they recognize us very much as their people now not that they were ever unfriendly towards us but last night after the mariners game like veves and i just went over there and watched another episode of colombo played cards and like goose just fell asleep on on veves his lap sort of such a snuggler and and i'm i'm madly in love with maggie and so like i really really enjoy these dogs it's been an experience but it's been a huge time suck because i'm just constantly going over there and then trying to come back here and do a little bit of work and then um in fact this might be a time and we've been working on and i by we i mean you have

been working on some tbtl productions as well exactly involved and it's kind of a pain to like

stop in the middle of that you know what i mean you're making an edit and you're just like ah and then you're like ah the dogs are barking the dogs are barking yeah um but anyway it's it's going pretty well but it's just been such a drain on my time basically and i don't remember how exactly we got into that but there's an update on the on the dog situation what did you say that got me um talking about the dogs i have no idea what we were talking about i i'm sure that it was

something where i was trying to talk about how we don't talk about the mariners but then we were talking about the mariners and i had mentioned that somebody when they when they listened to the beginning of a show recently didn't hear mariners talk and then went on and mentioned it in the comment section like oh i can't believe you didn't talk about oh yeah like it was like well um there's that's the there's a lot of episode left that you didn't actually get to and it's all replete with mariner conversations yeah actually you know what though something that people do like to sometimes do when they're watching baseball is they like to have a few small beers small beers i i know that we got a message from our friend bobby pape who uh who was i have not i'll be honest with you i saw this come in i was kind of i was i'm watching some of my neighbor's dogs too which i don't talk about but that's kept me pretty busy we're all busy this week andrew so i didn't get to listen to it but you said that it actually laid out some interesting concepts around kind of ranking beer experience yeah that's not how bobby set it up i

We got this voice memo in our inbox from our pal Bobby that said, this is my list of top five beers. And I thought, I was like, your list of beers, is it going to be like Michelob followed by Heineken? You know what I mean? I was like, well, what is this? It would be incredible if Michelob was the top of the list. Right. Well, that would be number five, right? Oh, I see. We're going five up to one. I would guess five down to one. Yeah, you're right.

That would be pretty underwhelming if you have my top five beers and you start with number one beer.

In fact, I'm glad you brought up the format of this. So Bobby, clearly a Levitard Show listener, has basically, even though he doesn't say this specifically, has submitted this in Levitard top five sort of format. And this is the way that usually works is on Levitard Show, they'll come.

up with some sort of weird top five lists or one character on the show will do that but then they'll also talk about olis which means these are the ones that are on the outside looking in so you might have like maybe actually seven but here are the honorable mentions so when you hear bobby say oli that means uh basically honorable mention and i'll let bobby take it from here

All right, boys. It is just shy of 9 a.m., and I'm about to run into WQLN-FM, my local NPR affiliate here in Erie, Pennsylvania, to help do a little on-air fundraising the next couple of hours. But before I do, listening to yesterday's episode, I thought I would do top five beers in honor of Dan Wilson's roadie after the ALCS victory the other night. let's do a couple of olis first the shower beer uh more a thing of myth i think i think more people have not actually had a shower beer than like the idea of a shower beer it's um i i've i've had

plenty of shower beers what about you plenty of shower beers yeah i don't know i wonder why bobby

thinks that's something people say but don't do i i definitely had a period of my life where i think I was into the, I've never been the hugest of beer drinkers, although I've certainly consumed a huge amount of beer in my life, but it's not, it hasn't always been my go to, but I def, here's what I'm realizing. I think I had a period of time where I might've been maybe, maybe into shower cocktails, which is a terrible idea. It's a very open container for the shower water getting into.

Well, that's true. Yeah. And also you got to be careful if it's actually in a glass, if it's, yeah, well, there's

that it's impractical, uh, from a, you know, like where are you going to put it? like you know in in the shower so this is not getting like soapy waters mixing with your gin

and tonic but i love i love featuring you with like one of those um like a martini you know how when you get it it's like filled totally to the rim and one of those up glasses and you're just

like trying to bring it to your lips in the shower i have definitely been drinking alcohol in the shower in my life um but i would say i couldn't say plenty of times but i it's definitely happened before but bobby's bobby's point is that the shower beer is is more the stuff of myth than

actual behavior which i question but i will say this my my shower beer experiences tie into one of my other beer experiences which i'll bring up after bobby gets through this so bobby was talking

about shower beer it's the woodstock of beers a lot more everybody was there have one than actually They've had one, but still, nonetheless, shower beer. Also, OLI, the 5 p.m. happy hour beer. The end of the week, slide down that dinosaur happy hour beer. How is that an outside looking in?

Well, we'll hear. Yeah, no, I feel like there are some really interesting omissions in this list. So we are here, by the way. Outside looking in. To flay Bobby today, by the way. Yeah. Nice work.

airport time warp beer doesn't matter the time of day there are no clocks it's like a casino for travelers the time warp airport beer number four the parking lot tailgate beer whether it's a bottle or a can or out of a keg drinking with people wearing face paint and manually modified jerseys with duct tape and if you're a bills fan like me lighting things on fire and jumping through tables exactly number four is the bill's mafia tailgate beer did you see the guy this was

like two games ago maybe it might have been oh i know exactly it was game two of the alds so we were still there at what you what you call the johnson center luke but everybody else knows is the roger center there alcs in toronto oh and cs of course um as i try to jokingly correct you um Did you see the guy with the Bills Mafia shirt? It was right behind home plate. He's wearing like a white hoodie that just says Bills Mafia across it. But I guess...

You know what? I actually do think that flashed through my mind. It must have. And I remember thinking like, what are you doing? And then I thought, yeah, but also I don't usually wear the appropriate sports apparel to the game. There's something about that that for some reason, it's my inner Josh Naylor. It's my inner Brian Naylor. But yeah, I do think I had a vague memory of that guy because he was right behind home

Yeah.

plate.

Okay. Here we go.

number three the mid-afternoon dark bar beer you've slipped out of work early maybe you have a day off maybe you're taking a sick day stumbled into a place that does a good job blocking out the light maybe it's 2 2 30 in the afternoon there's some shitty local uh tv news or soap operas or some bad movie on the tv and you're just taking in a quiet cold one with the regulars the career drinkers at mid-afternoon beer. Number two.

I have a specific moment related to that that I remember. When I used to live in Brooklyn, there was a bar called...

Jackie's Fifth Amendment that me and my buddy Robert Smith really liked. Such a good name. It really, because it was also on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. And at that back, it had this tiny little kind of room you could rent out, which I did for my going away party called the Judge's Chambers. It was just like the back room of Jackie's Fifth Amendment. And I remember Robert and I meeting up there for some reason, because our direct supervisors were in D.C., and we were in the New York Bureau. and so they kind of kept tabs on us but it was you know there was every once in a while there was maybe a little wiggle room as to like if we were out gathering information or not or something and I remember and I'm going to use a bad word here but they used to have this thing it was weird because it wasn't actually a bucket but this thing you could buy at Jackie's Fifth Amendment and literally as the drop would indicate it had small beers in it. Pretty small beers. I know what you're talking about

you know what I'm talking about right? Exactly

and you can get these at various bars I don't feel like it's a big Northwest thing But I think it's a Midwest thing and a Northeast thing Maybe where you get like It's like five of these or something but each one Is like maybe half of what we consider a normal

Size beer but it may be probably like 10 ounce Right it's usually not quite half But they're like these little mini bottles I know Coronas sell like minis like that

Yeah and what they called it At Jackie's Fifth Amendment this is the bad word part they called it A fuck it bucket because when you Ordered it it was like well you're just kind of saying fuck it But what was weird is it didn't come out in a bucket it came out

in a pie tin oh weird it should be in a bucket with ice like on vacation that's what i love when you're on vacation you get one of those tin buckets yeah they called it that and yet it

would come out in a pie tin it'd be like five of these uh i think these were budweiser's was the ones we would get and they would come out and it'd be in like it'd be like a pie tin with some ice in it it did have ice at least it would have ice and then these like little small a few small beers in there and i remember this was like a tuesday or something and it was just one of those days where again it raises the question why were we even at jackie's fifth amendment at like noon that's too early really to be there on a work day but i i remember that we had gotten together and maybe we were having some lunch there or something and it was like we kind of got that twinkle in our eye of like i think what it was we were going to meet there we were going to maybe have some lunch and then jump on the subway and go into the office and actually get some work done and i think as we were there in the darkened dim uh light of jackie's fifth amendment and as we ordered a couple of sandwiches, but then also realized they do sell beer here, in fact. And then looked at each other and kind of got this twinkle in our eye and said, okay, we'll have one fuck it bucket. And then just like, you know, enter the dimension of Lost Tuesdays. Just like so great. It was so great. It was like, you know, and I think I remember, cause he, Robert's a little bit older than me and somebody I've always kind of looked up to in journalism and stuff. And I remember it was like, I kind of needed his permission. Cause it was like, at that point I'm probably like, Well, I mean, I was probably like 30 or something. It wasn't like I was a kid, but it was like, are we doing this? Are we just like kind of blown off work today to drink beer at Jackie's Fifth Amendment? Because like you're a more responsible person than I am. And I remember, I think he might have like called or texted like our editor or an editor that we were working with. He basically kind of like covered for us or something. And it was just like, I just remember that being one of my favorite Tuesdays of all time.

Oh, I love that. Yeah. And I think of L.A. as Bobby was describing the kind of dark bar afternoon. There were a few times where I would go into some like random, like truly random bar. I remember one time by myself and, you know, very little English speaking in this bar, but it's like blazing hot, sunny day outside. And I just like, and I found the weather there to be a little bit unrelenting. I know that different people like different weather, but I just remember needing, needing very, very, you would go into this place would be like going into a cave. Your eyes would adjust to the light, and you would sit down. And I like the way that Bobby talked about how what's on the TV is actually unwatchable. You know, it's some sort of like awful local news or something like that. It's Mort Krim. Yes, exactly.

What is this? What's Mort Krim's segment? Not a creep of the week.

I can't remember off the top of my head. It's been a minute. I know I have some Mort Krim.

But yeah, there's some kind of bizarre relationship with the worse the TV or the programming is, the better the experience is. And I don't know why that's the case. Maybe it could just be the fact that all the experiences that you have doing this and this being fun are always, the backdrop is always terrible local TV. And so that then becomes part of the experience. And so to have, like, if they were showing, you know, Detroiters, let's just bring it back to the Mort Crimm thing. If they were showing something good on TV, it would almost be like, wait, don't waste this right now. This needs to be just either like some kind of a fishing show or like whatever is being played on local television or the most affordable part of the cable spectrum at 2 p.m.

Although if they had some movie on, like I always love a movie on in the back. If they had like Blade Runner on in the background or something like that, I would certainly take that.

It doesn't feel like daytime content to me for some reason.

I'd be fine. It's my opinion. Yeah. By the way, this is all I got for more crim in my files. I don't even remember what this is. Chump of the week.

Is what we experience real or is reality a computer simulation constructed by an advanced alien race? For more, our sports reporter, Jim Caputo.

All right. Back to Bobby's. So we've heard about the dark bar in the afternoon.

All right, boys.

It is. Oh, I hit the wrong button. I went all the way to the beginning. I had to find where we left off again. Let's try this.

It's 2, 2.30 in the afternoon. There's some shitty local TV news or soap operas or some bad movie on the TV, and you're just taking in a quiet cold one with the regulars, the career drinkers, a mid-afternoon beer. Number two is the business lunch beer. You're out with a couple of colleagues, maybe from another company, a little B2B action, and you decide to yourselves. Yeah, this would be all right. We can have a beer, maybe two, get back to the office after. The business lunch beer. And then number one, with a bullet, the crisp autumn campfire beer. Straight from a cooler, dripping down the side of a cold bottle. Maybe you're wearing a pair of shoes with no socks that doesn't quite fit. Sitting around a campfire, nice tall, crispy cold boy. maybe three or four come home smelled like campfire the next day absolutely perfect

the crisp autumn campfire beer thanks guys so i'm not a big camper maybe that affects my feelings about this list but i feel like there were some and again i'm not trying to take this to hot talk glaring omissions i feel like there's some pretty glaring omissions does anything seem omitted to you what's your reaction to that list i you know what because i don't have a rich

personal lived experience with every kind of beer situation i i felt like for me it was pretty much covered i just would disagree with some of the order there was an outside looking in the second outside looking in to me seemed like it should be in the top five that was that was so it's more to me the ordering happy hour that see that is for me that like as he said quoting me you're sliding you've slid down that dinosaur and that first little sip of the beer that just lights up all of your sensor and receptors to tell you again this is why the whole thing is so damn addictive just tells your brain hey we've entered a totally different world right now and it's going to be just fine and that is a very powerful experience um to me and many other people so that for me

would be that have to be top five so i will not do this in a countdown order and i'm also just sort of doing this from the top of my head so i don't know if i have more than than two what i consider omissions but my number one beer my absolute number one beer that is not even mentioned not even olied on this list is the post yard work beer like that is thank you oh my god you you sit you pull out a like a a lawn chair and you put it in your garage and the garage door is open and you've just spent like four hours like in the sun mowing the lawn and then you got a little bit too obsessed with some little project moving some rocks from here to there or whatever you might even you might even start a little fire in the solo stove or you sit in the garage with the garage door open and you watch the world go by while you have a gasoline yes and lawn clippings

and you just yeah you you you're looking out on all of your hard work you're like

god yes you're looking at you're you're like kind of looking at what you've just done you're looking at the bags of leaves maybe like that to me is by far the best beer you can have and sometimes and then sometimes i mentioned this earlier that can be followed up with the shower beer which is like that's often if i'm drinking a shower that makes sense it's like an 80 chance that i've now come inside and maybe i've had a beer too in the garage but now i've come inside but i'm covered in dirt and it's the kind of shower where you can actually see the dirt coming off of you when you look down at the water and then right you have and then you have again like a miller high life or something like that sitting on the sink outside the tub or something god i mean those are two

biggies for me um but then also that by the way explains the shower beer more to me because for me any kind of shower drinking was always in a pre-funk kind of a way you know like i'm really getting amped here and i'm so excited about whatever it is that we're going to be doing that i need to actually start this early which doesn't feel like your move which is why this makes much more sense it's like after you've been working hard in the yard and you're already maybe one to two beers in now you're shower beers as you're sort of as you're as you're and you're also a multiple times a day showerer as well yeah i usually shower in the morning and then

after something like that i would definitely shower again at night um and then also i think this is changing to another...

thing that i feel like was missed was like the first vacation beer or just vacation beer like in general often if you're going someplace sunny i mean my personal experience but like if you're taking a uh you know if you're starting your vacation in in you know some town in mexico or in you know some warm place and like you're ordering a corona or something like that with a lime and the first one you have and it's probably still like daytime you've just landed and, you know, you got through the airport, you just went through customs or whatever, and now, like, you go to some, like, beach hut somewhere and you get your first Corona, that's huge for me. You're probably having a cocktail in that situation, so I don't know if you... I think we can sort of interchange those a little bit, though.

Well, here's what I will offer that's not on the list, and this would be a controversial best beer because it actually, it's born out of pain and heartbreak and bad decisions,

but hungover beer oh see that's not something i have experience with so like you're in vegas

or you're on some you're at some sort of like weekend getaway with a group of friends something that is designated to be like there's probably going to be a decent amount of alcohol that is consumed i even in my my much more drinking days i wasn't typically the kind of person who would be day drinking after night drinking but sometimes in a pinch like again you're in vegas and the whole stated mission is there's just this kind of like you know uh rolling thunder aspect to it sometimes the next day let's say you know it's it's noon or something and the people are emerging from their their slumber and their stupor and you're kind of organized at like maybe the where the sports book is or like a some kind of a burger joint restaurant and everyone's kind of licking their wounds and everyone's just kind of like woozy and like golly i went too hard last night and you feel so awful. And in that case, I could never actually, um, like the idea of a, a shot of liquor would make me, you know, almost feel like I needed to throw up or like a, any kind of a cocktail would be like, Whoa, but there was something about like a bud light, like a light beer, something that does not have a hugely high alcohol content, just a way of kind of like easing back onto the horse and into life that like the crazy thing is it works you know what i mean this is the whole the hair of the dog works because you just become drunk again and all you're doing is kicking that can down the road but there was there'd be a moment where like the beer the hangover beer would actually be working in other words you'd be feeling less terrible again in the short term i would be very clear about it it's not a long-term solution to your problem But that moment of like being somewhere probably, you know, let me give you an example, a beer on race's boat when Chelanigans are afoot.

Well, that was that was another one I was going to mention, boat beer. Not that that would necessarily be my top five, but it should be mentioned as an OLI. Like a boat beer is a very specific thing, especially on a lake. Right.

Absolutely. And like that would be the kind of thing when we would go to Chelan. And again, I'm happy to report for my liver and also local law enforcement there in Chelan. We don't really do that anymore. But like when we would go there, that would be the kind of thing where it was just like there's just be a lot of imbibing. And then the next day, everyone would just feel horrendous. And then it'd be like that first beer in the middle of the day would sort of like, again, it would stave off the hangover. And it would just be all of a sudden you went from just being like, I don't know if I can exist anymore to being like, where the party at?

Yeah, right. Yeah. So kind of a, you're saying hangover beer, but, and you're using the, the, um, what do you call it? Shalanigans? Shalanigans. What's that?

Regrettably, I'm using the term Shalanigans.

I just paused there because I always, one time I thought you guys went to Chehalis or something.

Oh God, that would be.

And I called them Chehalis again. There aren't enough hangover beers in the world. Peace of love to our listeners and Chehalis. It's just funny that I confused those two. But anyway, and then one other that I will mention, and I will say this is not one of my favorites. I think other people fetishize this experience a little bit more than me, but I'm kind of surprised baseball beer wasn't mentioned, like baseball park beer.

That's, I think yard work beer, and then for me, baseball beer. I mean, for me, honestly, I think baseball beer, number one. I would never, it would never occur to me to drink a cocktail at a baseball game. Like, that's like, you know, flying a kite at night, as they say on The Simpsons. Like, to me, the ballpark is the hallowed, sacred location of beer consumption. And I look forward to it. And, like, again, the most beer that I might consume in a given year of my life would probably be in one visit to the ballpark. So that's got—that's for me—that's got to be the number one.

And for me, maybe number one would be my daily morning beer. No, you know the interesting—

But if you're not hungover, it's not a hangover beer. So that's why it's a different category from what I was talking about.

The funny thing about me.

me is i can i'm not saying i do without but i can do without the baseball beer like when i'm at a baseball game i'm totally happy to get one of those cups that i can refill with soda because like now maybe i don't want to get into my relationship with alcohol but like there's enough going on at the baseball game like there's just i don't need you know it's more like when i'm at home playing darts listening to podcasts like that's kind of good beer time what would spice what would spice it but like when i'm at a ball game i'm happy to just like kind of have snacks and soda or what have you but that's also probably because i drink more beer than you whereas for you you don't drink that much beer so it's going to be more like hey i'm at the ballpark and this is something that i associate with being at the ballpark as a lot of people do yeah there's

something about that enormous you know plastic cup of of beer generally very mid-range beer That's another thing I feel. Whatever. This isn't a fun place for me to take it.

Yeah, that's not true anymore. I gotta say, you haven't been to the park in a while. Most of the beers are not mid-range there anymore.

Well, that's part of where I said this isn't going to be fun is like, I don't need to get in. I don't need to weigh in on like how people should, what kind of beer people should be drinking at the ballpark. But I would just say, for me, what I associate most lovingly with that experience is definitely something in the range of a Budweiser. And like, I would never, it would never occur to me to have some, you know, really wonderfully constructed I can't even I don't even have the terms for like a fancy beer but like for me for me it would be if you see me at the ballpark and I've got a beer in my hand it's probably a Budweiser

so anyway Bobby we didn't thank you that bad no that was a lot of fun and it was a good conversation starter as well which is something that we need on the show otherwise Luke and I

just sort of stare at each other that's right until we have a few small beers and then small beers then the conversation really picks up and gets really interesting thanks Bobby all right let's thank some donors these wonderful generous folks are supporting tbtl with a monthly or yearly donation and it's how we are able to do the show five days a week i was listening to pablo torre finds out which is kind of if you are if you're in the venn diagram that I am, Andrew, of people who are overly obsessed with sports, but people who also like investigative journalism and quality production. It's like it's a perfect circle and it's very big in the world of like PLUs, people like us, I think. But there was something interesting this morning when I was listening. They went to what was clearly a break and there was no ad. And I thought, in what universe are they not selling enough ads? Now, here is what was really weird. And this will take this conversation to such a boring place that only you and I will enjoy. There was another ad break later where there were ads. And my theory is that they charge a certain amount for the first one, and they charge less for the second one. And they didn't have anyone paying the rate for the first one, so that one went unused. And then the second one kicked into a, you know, like a SimpliSafe ad.

They probably, I mean, they are kind of like, like if you, have you ever used like an auto-fill cat feeder? I don't know if they have them for dogs as well, but you sort of, like, you fill up a canister, and then it's just sort of a gravity bucket, right? And then they can kind of eat, and then the more food they eat at the bottom, it kind of falls down.

Well, you'll be surprised to know, Andrew, that I have one that is Wi-Fi enabled and has a camera on it.

And it's for you?

It's, well, yes. When I'm a good boy, I'm allowed to have two big scoops.

That would be so great if Becca was, like, pushing a button somewhere in Portland and giving you a treat. I would have you into our life.

There's a lot about me you don't know, Andrew.

I think about those pre-rolls kind of like that from our experience doing it as well. Like, you know, like somebody, you know, let's say three or four different brands signed up for what we would call maybe the P1 slot. I don't know. Yes.

Like the first commercial break once the show is started. Right.

But then eventually, because then it's all automated. And then basically when the system sort of when the gravity filler is out of that, they say, we'll go to a break. And there's no content there. So the show just moves on. But then the next break, there was still some ads in that gravity feeder. Do you think that's a good analogy? I'm kind of proud of that.

It is kind of. I'm following it. But I guess my first thought was like, this is, again, for people like me, this is like maybe the hottest podcast going. And yet even, and I assume that it's tremendously profitable, but it's like even they're grappling with whatever it is their business model is. And yet here we are relying on people like Carrie Deutsch of Bellevue, Washington, and it's working. Yes. Like we get to do this for our job. We get to work with John Sklaroff. and uh and it's all because of folks like carrie folks like lauren realberg in philadelphia pa

oh nice the real realbergs know andrew i have some tape for lauren you like are definitely you're the real thing lot of people say so do you think if you weren't i mean if you were less fake do you think you would be or you could or you have a desire to that's for the real bergs what's that what is that from um that is clearly we use that in intro sometimes yeah i don't know what it's from might be from the um and it's probably not the kroll show but you know who that is right oh gosh why am i blanking on his name i don't this is such a john daly the other guy who's no kroll sketch it's the guy see i can't think of his name but i know that eddie is it luke waters of seattle washington he's the guy no he's the guy that that's our don't i know we'll get to him in a second i got confused he's the guy that eddie pepitone gave me a hard time for saying he was funny and he wanted me to say why he was funny he's the guy with the big diastema on his teeth and he is like in all those like kind of like children's hospital yeah yeah i want you to give

me a reason why you think he's funny uh because yeah well how did this get made yes or why did this get made i think paul sheer has kind of grown on me here's what i think i like i think i like Paul Scheer the uh person in the world who does like that that how did this get made podcast is a hugely successful all of their ad breaks are full um but like I like him a lot doing all that stuff the characters that he portrays in all of those shows always to me seem like just like the joke is that they're really unselfaware and over the top as they're the like fire chief invest murder investigator whatever guy you know never got there was there's not enough subtlety there

for me but i did talk over luke waters seattle washington you were trying to wedge him in there i was i couldn't stop because i stopped i wouldn't have been able to pick up again but luke i'm sorry about that i blame i forgive you it's waters under the bridge luke yes it sure is

i was gonna ask is this another mariners reliever i don't know about thank you luke we appreciate you thanks also to nancy nester in albuquerque new mexico albuquerque oh i don't do it well what you heard me stifling was my my one albuquerque reference um nancy thanks thanks to brenna collerton who's in gig harbor washington beautiful gig harbor betcha that uh brenna is thinking thoughts about the seattle mariners playing tonight or today by the way that 3 p.m thing is really throwing me like I didn't I didn't have a particularly well we can you know I'm going to thank the other donor today and then we can talk about this but just kind of our approach because I'm almost like I'm having like a I don't know I'm having a crazy last minute switcheroo thought around this game but after we thank Brenda let's also thank Catherine McFadden

in Portland Oregon hey Catherine and her sister longtime friends and supporters of the show thank

you one of my very so much places to have hosted live wire last night Portland Oregon thank you Catherine. Thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible, for making us more successful from both a financial and downloads standpoint than Pablo Torre finds out. And what was the other one we mentioned? How did this get made? Combined. We're bigger than both of them. Combined because of you, our awesome donors. So thank you very much. Hey, Andrew, do you by any chance have any big weekend plans? You want to know if I have big weekend plans? That's what I want to know.

The biggest one I've ever had. Big weekend. Well, I'm trying to figure this out, too. What your big weekend plans might be. Well, this is what I'm trying to figure out, too. This one might be a good place to say, and I'm sorry, I've been doing this a lot lately, and we're going to get into a better rhythm at some point, but I just don't see a way that I can get the newsletter out today. This week, just trust me when I say, I've been working on TBTL things that are very important.

I can verify that. A lot of times when he says that, it's honestly bullshit. It is bullshit. But not this week. This man has been hard at work.

And because of that, I was like, oh, well, I guess when I do this to myself, when I'm not staying on top of the newsletter responsibilities throughout the week, then it can really hit hard on Friday. And this week, I knew I was doing that. I was budgeting my time. I was like, okay, well, I have all of Friday, I guess, and then I'll just get it done before the Mariners game. You thought, am I going to have to go to the celebration parade on Friday because they'll have swept the Blue Jays, and will that leave time for the newsletter? I didn't expect that, but I definitely, like, I just don't have time to do a Hey Dummies, produce a Hey Dummies, like, get it, there's just a lot, the newsletter takes up a lot of time, and I've waited too long, and then realizing, oh, wait, I don't have until 5 p.m. to get this done today, but only 3 p.m. if I'm going to watch this goddamn Mariners game, which I'm kind of dreading anyway. Sounds like you're feeling good about it. So anyway, I don't know what's going to happen. My guess is no newsletter today, and I will – maybe I'll just take advantage of Bobby's list and go have myself an afternoon beer. Do every beer on the list. Yes. Including the ones we suggested. Including the camping ones somehow. Yep. Yeah, so that's it. I mean, I haven't really thought past that right now. I guess we have this game on. at 3 p.m. and then there will definitely be another game oh no there won't be one tomorrow so that's what kind of bums me out whatever it doesn't matter my schedule you didn't ask me about my big schedule plans but it just really bums me out like I love a free Saturday but this week has been sort of so crazy and I'm not getting everything I need done and I just wish that we didn't have base I wish that today's game would be on tomorrow you know what I mean I could use today as a friday to get some shit done instead of having a a three hour to your thursdays what's that because something happened to your thursdays yes right referring to the drop so anyway i'm actually weirdly bummed i'm like god if only they had put this game on a saturday and i could have had today to get some work done so anyway that's where i am i'm going to be watching baseball and then i guess tomorrow just sort of like pacing around wondering where my baseball is the way maggie paces around wondering where she buried that bone i bought her i got you some toys by

the way to distract you appreciate it um i am actually having today is going to be for me uh i would say not a rare treat that makes it sound like i have such a busy life but like it actually is the case that it's my friday and i i've got a story going up on cbs this week but it's done it's it's now screening for the bosses we've we've got we'll have tbtl pretty much put to bed i did live wire last night like a lot of a lot of my job life stuff will actually be sort of wrapped up here today and and uh yeah i have kind of i don't have any major responsibilities this afternoon or even tomorrow um becca is her family has this big fall party they live on this her uh when she was growing up uh her family home was in this beautiful piece of property down in salem oregon in kind of wine country and it's like the leaves turn and they so they've had this and they have all these apples that get pressed so they do this uh fall party she's going down on saturday to get that already so basically like this this is it is it's very nice but this is all lining up this kind of lining up for me to where today i'm like well okay i'm actually gonna have because like for instance last night if we can kind of take a step back i did not get to watch much of the game which was of course a blessing because i was hosting live wire and uh that's you know i feel like that was a that was a major blessing to me because i there's we do a sound check at 5 30 which is like exactly when the game started and i could have literally been on stage i have a laptop on stage with me i could have had fubo going on my computer while i was doing the sound check but the thing is the house band they sit behind me on the stage and they would be able to see that i had the baseball game on and my feeling was if they see the captain of the ship is so obsessed with baseball that he's not even really paying attention during the sound check like that the baseball is prioritized over this thing that we've all come together to do for hundreds of people and then thousands of radio listeners i feel like that was setting a very bad example like i would be if i was on wait wait don't tell me and segal who's a world-class boston red socks fan and i mean that in every sense of the word if segal was watching the red socks as you know as we were doing wait wait i'd be like well this doesn't feel like he's taking this seriously so i point being i didn't really know what had happened until about probably 6 30 when I go up to my chambers at the theater, which is to say the room that I change in and also where I pace around and think nervously about the show, the radio show I'm about to do. And then I turned it on and we were winning one to nothing. I thought, oh, that's a nice feeling. And then right after that, Jimenez hit the two-run home run. And then I thought, ooh, that's a bad feeling. And then I just turned it off because I was like, I've already need to, I need my anxiety to be focused on the radio show I'm about to do, not on this baseball team thing. So I turned it off. And then Andrew, my experience through, the mercifully you could say the criminals text chain was friggin a ghost town during the game

which i didn't think was necessarily the greatest sign but i was also like occasionally i would see like i would see like on my family text chain the hawk squad people would be saying things but it was getting summarized by ai for me yeah so your texts are getting summarized and we don't

need to summarize texts they're short form communications i i don't know if i can get back

to i think once i click on it then it undoes this but if i have a text particularly yeah if i have a text that i haven't clicked on right so it's on the the basically i'm looking at a preview of it and the preview now the preview the ai previews it and so i got one last night i don't know maybe at about 8 30 or something that I looked over and it just said something like rooting for Ivers not giving up yet and I think the Ivers thing must have been related to the salmon race and then the not giving up yet kind of gave me hope that maybe we came or game not over it was just like rooting for Iver.

game not over yet why do we need a computer to misinterpret and confuse a short message in a text chain like the text is more valuable than a computer that is reading a text that makes sense and then spitting out garbage to us I don't I just where I'm at with I am going around feeling like that Tim Robinson character who just says I don't want to be around anymore every time we talk about our phones anymore i'm just like i just too much shit on me too much shit on you

um uh what's the name of that character again i forget now but anyway um so i had this moment of when i saw game not over yet i thought oh maybe we came back and then of course after livewire was done i just like glanced down at the mlb app and i saw that we lost by a lot of runs I was sort of like when I was doing that TV shoot on the really bad Detroit game the game where we just like you know, like we're leading Detroit by 3-0, Detroit was getting booed by their own fans and then all of a sudden we collapsed, this game felt a lot like that, I think, but in both cases I was not present for the collapse and therefore I have a certain kind of feeling around this team that I am guessing you don't right now have

Well, why don't you stop working during these games since that apparently is causing losses? I'll tell you what, have you thought about this?

not gonna work tonight this afternoon and i ain't gonna work on sunday i just want to bang on the

drum all day i wonder what time that sunday game is boy that'd be interesting if i could if i might

actually miss that if you might be working at your pop-up you might be that would be the first one

that i actually like miss miss which who knows i whatever if they if they win i don't care and then if they lose i guess i wouldn't have sat through it but yeah it was a disaster of a game you know i came in here like not really bemoaning the previous loss the night before which a lot of people were like boy what a painful loss it was 13 to 4 and really the two of those runs of the Mariners had were garbage time anyway it's more like 13 to 2 and um because I have no idea who they put out there to pitch when we got our last two runs um but I was like very well you probably Luke you probably heard the show yesterday while we were recording it I was relative I thought it was a fluke I thought it was like parts I thought it was a bad start that we then gave up on so that we didn't waste you know better bullpen arms and so like I didn't think the score really reflected what happened what i hadn't really considered i was thinking very much i guess about our pitching i guess what i hadn't reflected on enough was how paltry our offense was and boy was it on display last night it really gave you that feeling of like yeah you really had to remind yourself that the blue jays just had this happen to them over the course of two games exactly how it's happening to us right now over the course of two games because if you were to see our at bats yesterday It was just so pathetic. It was just like the embodiment of that meme of a stick figure just poking something with a stick saying, come on, do something. Come on, do something. Like it was just it was concerning. And as a Mariners fan or maybe any baseball fan who follows a team and understands things are streaky, you get this feeling of just like, oh, we're getting into a slump at a really bad time. Now I've got to remind myself, it's two games. This just happened to the Blue Jays, and then they came back with, you know, roaring here in Seattle. So who knows? I'm not saying I'm giving up on everything, but I definitely realized I did fall into the trap of hope. I don't know if you know this, Luke, but hope is a dangerous thing. That's something I just came up with right now. And so I feel like at a certain point I was like, oh, yeah, the Mariners. I never went into the series thinking, oh, yeah, the Mariners have this on lock. We're definitely going to win this. but i started to think that we're i started to not think we're definitely going to lose this

you know and um now as my sister hannah said in hawk squad i believe she said i really have a better grasp now on andrew's eternal pessimism oh nice i got a mention i didn't know i yeah you gotta let me know anytime i mentioned a lot really there's no google alert for that is there

if you're getting mentioned in hawk squad i'll see if i can yeah you gotta let me know now i'm nervous though maybe some of them i don't want to know about but you're being an andrew derogatory anyway um yeah so yesterday was pretty rough and it was the type of game that pretty early on things went south and i'm sitting on the couch watching with genevieve we had just kind of checked on the dogs next door and i know we need to go back over there to kind of i just want to spend time with them i feel really bad leaving them the dogs alone for long periods of time so i knew that after the game i wanted to go over there with genevieve and spend some quality time with them at least maybe an hour or something before putting them to bed so i sort of had that hanging over my head and i was just sort of like antsy you know and i'm sitting on the couch and then when it's when the game got out of out of hand and just like some pretty ugly things happening i just got really sour i mean vives and i are just sitting on the couch like kind of staring at our phones and the game kind of not even really talking much just like glum just glum as hell and And then I remembered that they, right near me, like literally three blocks from me,

They sell something perfect for moments exactly like that, and it's what they call a one-gram blunt pre-roll. And you can go down to a store, and you give them about $15, and they give you one of those, or you give them $30, and they give you two of those, and that's what I did yesterday. And I put the game in my headphones. There was no point in watching it on the TV anymore.

So you were still listening, though. You were still following the game. I hadn't given up.

I'm just like, I got to get out of here. Let's shake things up. Also, the better the Blue Jays did, I have not been in a situation either because I haven't heard the announcers that much or it's been a game where the Mariners are ahead. But I have not been in the situation that I've heard other people complaining about, which is like really disliking the commentary that they're hearing during the national broadcast. But yesterday, when we're now in this narrative where the the Mariners are clearly going down to and then you had Max Scherzer out there who now they're calling Mad Max because he's having this great inning and there's this great and I wouldn't I don't blame them. I don't think that the I don't think the commentators were being biased. It's where the narrative was like you have this old hang dog guy going out there reclaiming his former glory. It's a great storyline. It's a great storyline if you're not absolutely miserable as a Mariners fan. He's your guy. So I put on the headphones and immediately felt better just hearing Gary Hill Jr. in my ears because he's not like, hey, look at, oh, my God, can you believe what Mad Max is doing? He's sighing and he's saying he's my guy, right? And so I walk down to the weed store and I buy a couple of these blunts. And I did not smoke them both, by the way. Don't worry. Everything is fine. But I came back. One was for Maggie. One was for Maggie. I got a chew. They call them chew blunt. And I got to say, I'm not usually somebody who turns to marijuana as a mood enhancer because I feel like it is usually just going to increase whatever mood you're in, generally speaking. So if you're in a bad mood, sometimes that's a dangerous game. But I just wanted to, and so I kind of smoked half of it, like walking home. And then I got to say, it really helped me kind of disassociate from the game a little bit in a way that I was like, and by the way, this is, I'm not trying to make it sound like this is the first time I've watched a baseball game under the influence of marijuana, obviously. but in this case I was kind of like you know what I am sitting here on this couch furious and fuming and just in such a funk and then and then when I'm done with it I just want to fast forward to the part where Vives and I can just go next door watch Columbo spend some time with the dogs play cards I'm like why can't we just get to that part of the night and then like at some point in the eighth inning i was like we can get to that part of the night we can do that right now we're not and i was like we're not coming back from what was at that point a 6-2 deficit i'm like we're not coming back from this and as we're getting ready to kind of leave we made the decision let's just stop being miserable and turn this off and i'm not usually somebody to bail on games then you had those last two runs come in and it was happening as i was turning off the tv i'm like smart decision i'm like you know what and some sort of miracle happens some sort of absolute miracle and this becomes one of the most historic mariners games in well in history the most historic the most notable game in mariners history because it was such a comeback and i missed it because i turned

off the eighth and ninth inning i'm still gonna be happy yeah i'll still watch the highlights and i'll be like oh i missed it but you know what maybe that's what needed to happen to change the I was just like I just don't need to sit here and be miserable anymore and you know what I don't think I've ever been able and again maybe maybe this is the drugs but I've never been able just to move on from a game so quickly like it wasn't even like nice I'm packing my feelings down I just went and had a really and maybe and I said to Viv some like I guess that's the miracle of marijuana and she said yeah and dog love like it may you know like maybe there's something about support animals and so we went over there and I just stopped thinking about the game entirely Until I got a notification on my phone 20 minutes later said the Mariners lost I'm like yeah no shit they did But what's going on with this murderer over here

You know yeah like I had Didn't have that exact experience but it was Similar in that I was disassociated From what was going on as well And so it was like just kind of getting Oh well they didn't do that They didn't do that thing I wanted them to do And that's a bummer but not like There's just something about living in that world with them every pitch for nine innings that just is so intense and is so i mean keeps coming back to the eternal question is this fun uh not right now but like i i know what you mean that kind of like feeling of like you know what i actually out of self-care and whatever i am also allowed to not allow this i'm allowed to step away from this if i choose to this is voluntary and uh and yeah if a little medical marijuana helped you with that i think i i i Bye.

say go for it you know yeah and and also i mean i i think maybe i would have maybe gotten there anyway but you got there quicker yeah yeah it was just kind of like i just thought you'd think it's funny that i just decided to go buy a couple of blunts in the i love that and then honestly not ruling it out for myself but um so i i told you this little anecdote before the show and i'm trying not to throw our buddy under the bus because he already takes a lot of shit on this show but i kind of got to bring it up because this kind of plays into something i want to examine psychologically about sports fandom especially at this critical point in the in the season or postseason but our buddy Durs who we talk about a lot who's on the text chain but you block him a lot because he's often very very very negative I think that he's also gotten better at being positive during good parts of the game by the way and also he's he's a very self-aware like sweet man who also knows that he's being overly negative and it's sort of a stress response for as you say but last night like you said there was almost no activity on the sports thread except for a few things he was putting out there when he was like during moments of absolute frustration but it's like that kind of thing where he's just like something bad will happen like something really bad will happen like nailers thrown out to end an inning where it sort of looked like we might be able to mount a bit of a comeback and the response is just all caps l-m-a-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o and it's kind of like that doesn't that kind of like just screaming sarcastic laughter into the void doesn't make me feel better but nobody was really engaging with that at all he was the only one doing that and then i opened up blue sky and i saw that and i don't see him posting on blue sky that much but i wonder if it was because of lack of engagement and he again he feels like he's screaming into the void it was a terrible feeling last night it was a yeah the night before i just was so sanguine about it and then last night it was like oh this is really ugly and now you start

now it's the kind of worst fear territory yes closer and especially just seeing some really

really terrible at bats and it's kind of like oh that wasn't just fluky pitching like we might be in trouble here and i understand it and and i understand the feelings he was having but it was weird because i don't think he posts on on the website very much but i open up my app and i'm just you know mindlessly scrolling and i saw him post something like boy a lot of toxic positivity on this app tonight or something and first of all i think we follow a lot of the same Mariner's Blue Sky is a little bit different than Mariner's Twitter. It's a little bit, it's like there's a lot of frustration and stuff, but it's a little bit more, you know, maybe a little bit softer. And people, you know, I saw a couple of people just saying, this feels like we're going down 3-1 in the series. But just a reminder that we are still, when we lose this, it'll still be a tied series at 2-2. People not saying, not being Pollyanna-ish, but just saying this feels worse than the numbers actually say right now. And we're all kind of catastrophizing because you're seeing a terrible game and you're just like, you want to shake them and say, wake up, wake up, play the baseball that you were playing two nights ago, you know? So we all have our feelings about that. But the reason I'm bringing this thing up that Durr's posted isn't to lambast him because I really do think that he's a very good person who's having very bad feelings and he doesn't know what to do with them and it's coming out in this way. But that idea of the idea of being too positive when you're a fan is something that I want to think about. Like it never occurred to me to turn off a baseball game that was making me miserable before, especially when it's a historic game in the postseason like this. Right. But last night at a certain point, I was like, oh, I'll just turn this off. I don't have to do this anymore. And the idea that that was like a novel concept kind of struck me. And then this idea that like, are you a bad fan if you do that? And then also, is there something internally inside people like me and Durs that is kind of like, well, if you're not miserable right now, you're not a true fan. And I don't think he's saying that. And I'm definitely not saying that. But is there some little gremlin inside us that says like, oh, well, if you're not the most miserable person on the chat right now, then you don't care enough or I don't care enough. There's something psychological about being – for those of us who are maybe already predisposed to go negative or feel very negative about these things, I wonder if there's something about connecting the negativity to being a good fan and not just, as we always say, the person at the party who's like, why is everybody so sad?

yeah i think i'm in a weird spot with that question because i take this stuff way too seriously and for some reason my stress reaction is to go toxic positivity like that's for whatever that's where my mind goes and my my responses go so it's always like we can still do this or well i you know well we had a great season you know it's like and and it's and that is in a way a version of and when you say that why is everyone so sad that's a callback to when the seahawks Thank you. i was in this huge loft space with i don't know 50 to 100 people in it watching the game and the seahawks throwing interception at the on the goal line to lose the super bowl and we were just the place is stunned and this one tipsy person who clearly hadn't really cared that much about the game just goes why is everybody so sad and it was like that's as close as i've ever come to murder that i know about and i've fought people i mean i've tried to murder people and it hasn't worked out this person i was going to throw out that building but anyway all that is to say there is something about unwavering toxic positivity i don't actually i don't want to necessarily i don't want to agree that that's a term i don't agree that's a term i'm using but there is something about somebody who's just like completely and totally ignoring the facts of the case of the game and just being like it'll be okay guys that that's just kind of like well it's probably not going to be okay if we keep doing this or whatever like i could see that just totally unvarnished i should not say unvarnished but totally un interrogated positivity is kind of annoying, and I also definitely feel, like, the reason I was mad at that person at that Seahawks game was because I thought her not being sad about it, and me being more sad about it made me more of a real fan. Like, I'm sad about this because this means a lot to me, because I'm a real fan, because I've spent my whole life following this stuff, and you don't care about it, therefore you're not sad about it, and so my sadness is connected to how real of a fan I am. So I do think there's a little bit of that, but I also kind of feel like I can, so yeah, i do think that that's probably i i i guess my problem with the term toxic positivity is a again i'm probably a practitioner of it and b it's like how toxic can it really be other person is just too optimistic i feel like to me like is toxic negativity uh is that a is that redundant yeah maybe i don't know whatever we think of as toxic normal toxic stuff to me that's like pretty obvious why that can be not great because it just is bringing the room down and it's it is very negative and it is making the person doing it i mean here's one of the things about toxic toxicity that i think is kind of unfair it's here's why i have a problem with it and again not to throw ders under the bus but what ders is doing in a way is making everybody else on the text chain do emotional labor so that he feels better because the the putting of the super negative stuff into the chain that's him processing why is he processing he wants to feel better he has bad feelings he He cannot hold them, they make him feel bad. He needs to lighten his burden. He needs to hand these bad feelings off to other people who now have to deal with them so that he feels better.

And that is, and by the way, I've done plenty of things in the text chain myself that are not great, where I've gone off on people. And that's, what is that me doing? That's me doing the exact same thing. That's me trying to feel differently in the moment by doing something and then putting, making it someone else's responsibility to have to deal with that now, which is not good of me when I do that. But I guess I find that toxic positivity seems less threatening to me in the world, like someone just being kind of like and definitely based on what you were saying. I actually I very much as a toxic as a as a known toxic positive person, I subscribe to that very theory that the Mariners, it feels way worse than it is on paper right now. You you lay two eggs at home and you just look like little turds out there. and of course it feels horrible but also i do feel like if we win today we are now back in the advantage position even though we've got to go play in toronto like i would rather be i'd rather we be ahead 3-2 than uh toronto be ahead 3-2 so that tells you there's something there's something to the fact that being 3-2 would really help us and also i think i keep saying this i think there's a reason why when you win the first two games you tend to go on and win this thing and i think I bet you if you look back at a lot of these series they might not go exactly like this but I bet you there are certainly a lot of moments where it's like oh the team that got out to a quick lead they just lost their mojo but what happens is like we just played two really really lousy games all we have to do is play one non-lousy game today and then the pressure's on Toronto and then when we go to Toronto we just got to play one non-lousy game in Toronto and I just think that the I think that's why I don't I don't feel as good as I felt when we were up 2-0 or up 2-1, but I don't feel like all is lost. I think we're going into a game tonight that feels like, oh, what, Andrew, a week ago when we were going into a Friday game that we really needed to win. I mean, in that case, it was literally elimination. I do have the feeling that if we don't win today, we're in really bad shape going into it. I don't like the chances of going into Toronto and winning two games, although, by the way, stranger things have happened. Well, we started the series that way, too. Yeah. It's like it's like if the worst case scenario happens on today, on Friday, we still go into Toronto with at least a hypothetical chance. Well, that's that's what people were. I mean, I know we're just kind of keep saying the same numbers over and over, but I think that that's what that's the only kind of positive thing that I saw on Twitter or I'm sorry, on Mariners Blue Sky yesterday. which was just people saying this feels like we're reacting like it's an elimination game it's not even setting us up for an elimination game we still have two more games to play no matter what you know and and by the way that was a good reminder to me who felt like the sky was absolutely falling and also and this is where we kind of get back into like i'm not trying to be i'm sure there are fans and maybe you're one of them who doesn't want to hear this kind of talk

right now but it's i'm actually at a place that i'm not usually at with the mariners which is like i i'm i'm still i still think that even if we don't win another game in this series like i'm gonna be sad like obviously but i am why is everybody so sad but i i am very grateful that we've had this so far and i did not ever expect i mean i honestly if i was a betting man i would have bet that we didn't beat the tigers you know and so we already we already did that and so like again i'm not trying to say what a great season guys but hopefully there will be more to build on and hopefully we'll get maybe even more pieces next year i know i'm talking like the season's over and it's not but i'm just saying that like i'm trying to remind myself that this isn't um no matter what happens still good compared to every other season i've ever watched of Mariners baseball literally every other season I totally agree with you like I am not conceding

this series but I I I feel like we're playing with house money this season has already been a pretty big success in my mind um in that we made it to the playoffs something that we hadn't done in a while and then we actually won a series in the playoffs um we had a bye and then we won a series and and I think and we're playing you know what certainly I think most people thought was the best team in the American League, a team that absolutely humbled the New York Yankees. We're playing that team to a draw so far. And if we don't end up making it to the World Series, I mean, I will not think that this season was a total failure. We didn't come into this season thinking it's World Series or bust. It's like if the Dodgers don't make it to the World Series, that's a big failure. It's funny because I go and I read some of the like, well, in my darker moments, sometimes I'll go look at the New York Post, which i never like because i hate the news that newspaper's editorial existence but i do think that they sometimes have funny stories and also funny headlines and to see the way that the new york post sports section is regarding this yankees season it's just so hilarious so angry so angry yeah so another lost season and it's like i forget that the yankees have already and you know again peace and love to our yankees fans but i forget that the yankees have been eliminated and that over there in the you know in the media capital of the world and that largest of apples there it's like it's like a truth and reconciliation committee is like it's it's freaking nuremberg it's like we need to we need to figure out who knew what and when they knew it and we need to get to the bottom of this and like we got like they're in they're in like free fall over there and uh and we're still playing meaningful baseball that's pretty cool and so even if we don't end up beating the blue jays um i i i won't feel like this season was a total loss and that's also living somewhere in the back of my head you know it's just like i don't know i just i can now listen i said in game three we were gonna win by a lot and then i thought well for game four we'll likely bounce back i was wrong on both of those counts but i remain my air of of sanguinity remains unaffected somewhat a little bit affected but I you said something I thought really good earlier and important which is that like the way that the Mariners fans we Mariners fans feel right now is exactly how the Blue Jays fans felt after game two it's like what are we even doing why can't Vlad Guerrero get a hit I mean I was reading I was going on the um the toronto star and reading all of their columns this is i'm a sick sick person andrew sick in the words of larry king and i like i i love when when the mariners are beating another team i love to go read the local paper of where the other team is and just kind of like check the vibes and it was you know it was basically they were saying exactly what the mariners columnists and the mariners you

know sports knowers are now saying here in seattle which is the mariners have got to get it together and in particular some of their players like gino suarez and rosarena etc so just remember i mean again i think in a certain way baseball is like the streakiest sport of all of the sports because it is such a crazy proposition i once had a baseball coach who's like this baseball coach it was funny because you could tell that he had his good sport had always been baseball and he wasn't let's just say he cut a sort of a maybe a josh nailer kind of line in the world like where you know he wasn't somebody who you looked at and you immediately thought born natural athlete Right. But I remember him. what people don't understand like and he was talking about like the other sports at the high school because what they don't understand is how unbelievably hard it is to hit a round ball with a round bat for something that stuck with me it was like his defense of the idea of baseball and also like i know we don't look like the basketball players i know we're not the football jocks i know some of us look like a koopa troopa from mario brothers but what they don't know how hard it is to hit a round ball with a round bat and that is kind of true it's really hard to hit a round ball with round bat therefore the the margin of error the difference between a couple of i mean now here is something about the mariners and this is where we are going x's and o's but whatever it's friday it's 75 minutes into the show i do a point of concern for me is that we have not manufactured the runs that we've gotten in the games where we've scored like the second game in toronto where we we it was that day game and we went way up and it was just like oh my god it's all happening you got to remember we had two three run home runs and a two run home run in that game now you could argue that a three run home run is the ultimate risk play right it's the ultimate what you can do with runners in scoring position well that would be a grand slam would be the ultimate right well i mean with those runners and oh sure yeah yeah i'm saying in the moment of you being up with two guys on the ultimate thing you could do would be to hit a home run and so in a way that is i guess manufacturing runs but but it's also kind of a lightning strike it's kind of a thing that comes out of the clear blue sky that is very hard to do and pretty hard to reproduce as opposed to continuously getting runners on base and getting quality at bats where you get base hits that bring guys in that's more like you're kind of you're earning your runs the old fashion way in that case and we haven't done very much of that in other words a couple of swings different in that second game looks real different too that's what i sort of the home run ball is a fickle mistress right because it's like when it's working you look great but it can also i think it kind of could mask a lot of bad at bats by gino suarez and randy a rosarena like that's the that's the thing is that i'm a little bit worried that we have gotten this far because our home run production has gotten us enough runs in critical moments where we've and our pitching you know generally was showing up but that what we have not been i mean we were statistically very low in the league

of like bringing in runs when we have less than two outs and runners on base we do really badly with that that kind of situational hitting we got someone on third and or someone on second and it's less than two outs and we don't figure out how to get them home that is that is troubling to me and then watch tonight or this afternoon again I'm still reeling from this three o'clock news not just because it moves my whole day up my day of what I don't know but also because it means that wherever I'm getting this information about when these games are it is the wrong place I don't know if it's because they were listing what time it is in Toronto when the game is on I don't know what I looked today and I saw 5 p.m. and I was like oh okay that's kind of later than I thought it was going to be but all right I guess it's going to be another one of those 5 p.m.ers and it's 3 p.m. I don't know why I was seeing that information, but here's where I'm going with this, Andrew. I have watched all of these games here at my place, or not at all, right? It's either been here, once with my brother, and then the rest of them by myself, or not watching them because I was working. What I haven't done is gone to any kind of a local establishment to watch a game. And I don't know why it being at 3 o'clock instead of 5 o'clock kind of has me intrigued, but I could go down to town i could go find i think we've got a b-dub somewhere i could go find you know certainly there's sports bars there's places that'll be playing the game i could go down i mean this is a dangerous game dano because it's like i don't know anyone there i'm not trying to make friends the energy could be weird there could be people that are saying why is everyone so sad they could not have the the audio of the game yeah that's the thing you want you want to find

i mean i can just turn around and come home if that's the case yeah but i also it's just weird

that it's like this is a sort of a byproduct of the strange version of my life that i find myself in at 49 years of age which is i live in this house that's kind of not near anything that i it's not near a lot of the people that i know and it's not like so there's been almost no there's been no thought in my mind so far of like who am i going to watch the game with am i going to go to the eagles and watch it with the pals or am i going to get together with my local baseball fan friend group then we're all gonna or am i gonna have people over it's other than when i had david and alicia and gemma over and maybe it's not is it too late to get gemma here um like it's it has not even occurred to me even one time to go watch any of these games in a public space with anyone else and i'm wondering if maybe that's adding to some of my craziness because i am as i mentioned just here in this house high above the mighty columbia just pacing back and forth and just yelling things gutturally that i'm hoping alexa's not hearing yeah that's where i i'm

trying to figure out too and maybe it's bobby's list of beers that got me thinking oh yeah maybe He would be. Did you think it?

Yeah, for some reason, like, I'm thinking about a Reuben right now. I don't even think he mentioned a Reuben.

I don't think food, well, food maybe touched things with it, not much.

Or maybe when you were talking about, you know what it was, I think, when you were talking about you went to that bar and you just got some food and then you're like, well, should we get one thing of beers? It was probably a Reuben. And I was like, ooh, that sort of sounds good. But the thing is, like, I need to, if this were a 5 o'clock game, almost any place that's showing the game is going to be absolutely crowded. I did this on Wednesday with some friends, and luckily my friends got there early enough to grab a table, but it was like standing room only at the sports bar in Greenwood that we went to. I'm sorry, Green Lake, and I will always do that. Will I ever do it? I'll never get Pike and Pine right.

It's like me calling it Paddington instead of Pooh Bear, which, by the way, I did the other day as a joke a bunch, but then I was like, people don't know that I'm doing it as a joke, and then it's going to start a whole new round of

people trying to correct me. We did name that show Paddington myself on the back. I like that. that was yours i think but anyway um yeah so i'm sort of tempted but also i don't know i well this is one thing too is like with knowing that whatever i do i'm gonna have to come back and you know kind of make sure the dogs are okay and kind of and i honestly oh you can be drunk for that no no i

oh i know trust me i know if you take your dog dadding so so serious that you're like no no but

just like knowing that like at some point we got to get back here we got to feed them we got to um you know like make sure that they get let out and that that is like it's kind of a reminder of what dog ownership is like but also i sort of feel like if i had if this was my own dog who lived with me and like i feel like i would hopefully have a dog that i would find a place that could accept dogs and we would go together you know what i mean like but right now i can't take these dogs with me like i say high energy they they they i don't think that they're in any way a danger to other dogs but they bark at other dogs like i'm not in a position to take these dogs out in public and so um and I don't even know if they really do that but anyway the point is it's kind of like it's a good reminder of kind of like boy this whole week just feels like well I can't really make the usual you know footloose and fancy free decisions that I would usually make because that is sort of hanging over me a little bit so I have no idea I might just stay here um and watch the game maybe go somewhere else I don't even know where I'd go like I just want what I want is to find again i think maybe bobby's list and all the all of our memories of like nice corner empty bars in an afternoon or whatever what i want to find is a great dark bar that has the game on but nobody knows the bar exists you know what i mean like i want to go watch this game with like you know like five other grumps at the bar you know and and then play some touch tunes afterwards but the thing is you're just not going to have that because the whole city is on fire right now not on fire i mean like it fired up fired up is what i should say don't play don't play into the maga agenda andrew seattle is burning luke i don't know if you've heard it's burning with mariners fever anyway so i don't know i'm just babbling now i did want to ask you and i'm not saying this because i i think maybe i i do wonder if some of our hardcore tigers fans maybe had to maybe take a break from the show for a couple of days uh after that that painful uh series loss But I was – so consider this a trigger warning if you're a Tigers fan. But, Luke, did you hear the announcer after last Friday's game? You did hear it. Can I play it for the listeners, though?

Sure. I have never felt more empathy for an announcer. This, in my mind, was like – I heard Aaron Goldsmith in this. I heard any of the Mariners announcers I love, if they had to do – if they were having to do the work that this person was going to be having to do.

Yeah. So this is an announcer for the Detroit Tigers. And I think his name is Dan Dickerson. I don't know if that rings a bell to you, Luke. I might be getting that wrong. So apologies. But I think his name is Dan Dickerson. And he just got done calling a five hour game that ended in a 15 inning game that ended in an absolutely heartbreaking loss for Detroit. and then he forward promotes he's like alright well we're going to a commercial break or whatever and when we come back we're going to do a game recap and now this guy is thinking I got to recap this game like this is like the end of the Tigers season he's miserable and they go to commercial break but unfortunately his microphone was not turned off and so you heard this and I'm playing this from the internet I hope it's cut right

Dan and I will be back to talk about it after this on the Detroit Tigers radio network and fragile I don't have to do a game fuck this game recap oh I'm sorry is that out loud

somebody started putting music underneath that so I'm getting out of it I thought that was just a clean recording but you could hear him just say I can do a fucking game recap

cap and i i dude i feel you i am not playing that out of like ha ha we beat you i am saying i feel that bro you shouldn't have to do that i know that's exactly right but also it it's just so

funny it feels to me like we're going into another one i hope this is mildly entertaining for the listeners just like last week on friday we said well we're gonna have some kind of feelings on monday and we don't know what they're going to be they're either going to be jubilation or tribulation we are going to be in sackcloth and ashes or we are going to be partying down and we're going into another weekend just like that like we'll see we'll we'll we'll know something on monday i mean the three three possibilities are we win tonight and we went on sunday or we today rather than when on sunday and it's jubilation on monday uh we lose both games and it's uh we're in the depths of despair or probably the most likely outcome we've won one of the two games either today or sunday and we're cruising for a seventh game a winner take all game which when

does that even happen is that like uh monday that would be monday yeah because it would be yes we take the day off on saturday then two more games it would be sunday and monday in toronto

not to mention andrew this is a total last minute lanyap the game that they keep promoting the college football game that's been promoted all week as one of the best games in the country is saturday the big noon game the university of michigan hosting the university of washington Huskies so like Smack dab between and I'm Not as what I'm not crazed for The Huskies the way that I am for the Mariners or the Seahawks But basically I've got This whole Mariners thing today and then I've got the Huskies Who are actually kind of a pretty fun Team to watch this year they look you know they're not Going to go to the natty but they're like You know they're a competent team And they're going into Michigan and this is going to be a Big nationally televised game so I've got Friday Night I've got Saturday and I've got Sunday there's all These big giant sporting events for me

by the way just to get the schedule clear here today's game as we discussed is at three game six will be 5 p.m on sunday night so that's good for me i will be able to watch it or bad for me uh and then if it goes to a game seven that would be monday but again an evening game at

least five o'clock holy guacamole clear out my carol hold my calls on tuesday i know what is

that tuesday morning going to look like so that's where we are that's where we are but you know what

it's i know you love to make predictions so what's your prediction for today's game oh man you do you

want to know my keys to the game yeah what are your keys to the game well we gotta we gotta get our uh offense to wake up certainly what is my prediction i uh what's your prediction i i really

don't like predictions i think we're gonna win because i think i think that there's a reason why sweeps in a three game series i'm talking about just like regular old season sweeps don't happen a ton because it's just like it's usually kind of hard to beat a team three games in a row because of how how you know sort of capricious the game of baseball is i don't know if you heard me earlier round bat round ball all that i just think that we'll probably we looked we looked we looked real bad the last two games and usually here's what i know about baseball in my experience as soon as you've decided something is true it becomes not true so as soon as we've decided that the Mariners cannot hit it becomes untrue or as soon as we decided the Mariners pitchers can't

pitch it becomes untrue oh good and I believe both of those things right now good well you're

setting us up for a bounce back good as soon as as soon as there's any dominant narrative because think about after the first two games dominant narrative was the Mariners actually have built the strongest team in MLB for the postseason that's what people were saying and very loudly and that the Toronto Blue Jays were incapable of uh of coming through in the clutch that was the story and that so proved to not be the case so anytime there seems like something is the obvious story in my experience that then goes out the window and that means to me I think that the Mariners are gonna bounce back and play pretty well tonight um and so I think that they're gonna

take this series I I don't know about the series but I think we're gonna win tonight my my the only thing that I sort of have a feeling about and again maybe this is just me protecting my feelings maybe it's me just like really looking at what our team looked like the past two nights But my guess is my feeling, my prediction is that the Mariners don't go on to the World Series. I don't feel like we're going to be able to salvage this this series. And I'm, you know, coming to grips with that. And I hope I'm wrong and I'm not trying to be negative. But I don't know exactly how it's going to play out. But my guess is the Blue Jays are going to probably end up getting swept by the Dodgers in the series. I mean, that's the other thing is that that, like, if we win and we get to the World Series, we then have to play the Dodgers, probably, and the Dodgers are... Did they beat Milwaukee again? So they're up 3-0. Yeah, exactly. I don't know if they're going to lose another game. Three of their players are AI. I mean, that shouldn't even be legal.

Yeah, exactly.

So, yeah, I mean, that's another part of this, is it's like, obviously, I would like us to still get the chance to play the Dodgers, but the Dodgers are a pretty frightening team, because when you have an illegal amount of money, Then you can And you spend it all on your team That's a pretty tough team to beat So it's like, you know I mean, it would be fun to get to the World Series Because we have never done it before I would like to say that I live to see the Mariners play in the World Series I also do not like the idea of saying I live to see the Mariners get swept in the World Series Yeah, right But, you know, I think

With a Shohei Otani beats by Dre ad By the way, we never kind of closed the loop on that But we did get our I sent you a picture Oh, you did? I don't think I got it

I texted you a photo of Shohei Otani behind one of the Mariners in the second inning of that game. That's absolutely... I wonder if... That was not last night's game. You know what, Andrew?

Look at this. You didn't send it?

No, I did. Message send failure. Oh, okay. Because your phone hates texts from my phone that are pictured.

I love the way your phone can't send a text and you're blaming my phone for it. Okay, you know what? This is the most iPhone user thing in the world. My phone can't send a text, and it's your phone's fault. Well, do we know it's my phone's fault? I don't know. Your phone can't send texts. Mine can. I mean, your phone can't get texts. I get the ones that I need to get. Yeah, okay, good.

All right, cool. Cool ending to the show. We love it. All right, thanks for listening, everybody. We've got a big, exciting weekend in front of us, and I hope it goes all right. in the meantime uh have a safe weekend i'm gonna say go mariners and hope that's not a jinx and tell you that we'll be back on monday with more imaginary radio in the meantime please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

power out