Muse

Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me. Do yourself a favour. Come and work for us. The glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity. So do you want to come and work for us? You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?

Track one, side one, the Hemispheres album by Rush. Do yourself a favour and download it. Delete one of your Dido tracks. I don't follow you. Let me put it in plain English. I don't dance to Dido, dude. I know there was a lot of D's in there before you say anything. TBTL!

Wow, you're really good at puzzles.

I did them all the time as a kid. As my mom used to say, when you're doing a puzzle, it's like having a thousand friends.

Do you have any types of food for dogs who are afraid of spiders? It literally, like, if I'm not wearing a good outfit, I can't sing a good song.

Look, man, you know your stuff, but you're like a crazy volcano. You'd have to show me you can bring it down a notch. I'll bring it down a thousand notches if I have to! Eh, tomato, tomato.

It's tomato, tomato.

You say tomato, tomato, I say tomato, tomato.

In a few hours, you're going to be smarter than anyone you've ever met.

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live this party is gonna be off of the hook my name is luke burbank i am your host i've had a few a few what a few small beers coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia bring it back home baby bring it back home where it feels real good to be home after a week in New York City and then a couple of couple of episodes that were on tape now we're at episode 4594 by the way in a collector series let the fun begin and the thing is you know we're always on tape although sometimes we're like a little bit more on tape I guess which is to say Thursday's show and Friday's show of last week We had prerecorded because Andrew is traveling. In fact, he'll be out until Wednesday of this week. He is in Ohio attending a memorial for his late mother. And what happened last week was we were prerecording the Thursday and Friday show. And you may have noticed, as a careful listener, that I had the numbering of the shows off on Thursday and Friday. Today is 4,594. I know that. I have verified it. I have checked and I have double-checked. But Thursday and Friday were off. And I want to say that that was, it was kind of Andrew's fault. And I feel comfortable saying that because he's not here to defend himself. But it was also 5% my fault. This is what happened. He said, hey, I got the show numbers. This is what they are. And he reported them out to me. And then he said, you might want to double check that, though, because it can be tricky. And I said, absolutely. And then I did zero double checking. So he gave me bad show numbers. But then I didn't actually do what I was supposed to do, which was verify. Trust, but verify is one of the, I think, bedrock ideas around this podcast. And I didn't do it, and that's my fault. And so what I can tell you is that today we are back on the right track. We're at episode 4,594. And we got a cool show for you, actually.

Cool, la, la.

We are, if we have time, we'll talk a little bit about the reveal, if you will, of the young guy, the young kid, if you will. Kids and fantasy. The fedora. I'm calling him a kid. He's a teenager. But the young man wearing the fedora outside of the Louvre, who looked like he might be from the 1940s investigating the Louvre heist. We now know who that person is. and I think they're a damn delight. This is another topic we might need to get to today or tomorrow because Andrew was not as delighted by that fedora kid, if you remember. So we need to celebrate him while we can. Anyway, speaking of kids and fantasy, I...

You're a gross person.

I had a return to a childhood experience on Saturday night that was not very pleasant, which we may talk about. And then my mom and dad just left. the my house they were they were here yesterday and overnight and i mean every time they're here there's about 30 new things that i want to talk about including my mom has this system now there ain't nothing like soup for a system of using tiny spoons that i just learned about this morning my parents also just massively derailed my attempts at doing this podcast about 10 minutes ago and honestly the only person who was here to witness it was my friend and colleague tbtl employee numero uno john sklaroff who is sitting in today for andrew hey buddy hey how's it going luke it's great i'm glad that you're

here i'm also a little embarrassed that you witnessed a true meltdown between me and my parents uh about five minutes ago so just to set the scene for the listeners um i am right now i'm i'm i'm playing the audio i'm i'm i'm playing the intro music that you're hearing right now i'm playing those little drops i'm talking to the microphone i'm also recording the show here as a kind of a backup you're recording it where you are that's probably what we'll end up using But I have a lot more technical responsibility today than I normally do. Usually, Andrew is handling pretty much everything. And my job is to just talk and play my little audio drops. And because I have more responsibility than normal today, I have – this is our – is it our fourth or fifth attempt at the top of the show?

Only four. Okay. I will say, be kind to my friend Luke. If you called that a meltdown, like you were very like you were reasonably frustrated, I think, and handled yourself very nicely. I think I wouldn't call that a meltdown.

Thank you for saying that, because, you know, I love my parents and and I love that. And I recognize the privilege, particularly on a week where Andrew is at a memorial for his late mother. I really do appreciate the privilege of having both of my parents alive and well and healthy enough to come bother the living treatle out of me. here at my home. No, they stayed over last night. We had a lovely evening, and then we had a really nice morning having coffee today and all of that. But then, you know, it was time for me to come out here and do my job of hosting this show. And so I said to my mom, like, hey, I'm going out to do the show. I'll, you know, drive safe. I love you. And I'll talk to you soon. Gave her a hug and everything. And so then I come out here. You and I are getting ready to do the show. We're doing sound checks. We got it all dialed in. And then I start the show, round one, and then I mess up the audio. I'm, like, not turning down the music enough. I'm on the wrong kind of audio file or whatever, so we've got to start over. And so we stop, go back to the beginning of that thing that you guys all just heard from Saxondale, by the way, where Steve Coogan's character is talking about the music of Dido. So we start all over again. I play that again. We get to the part where it's time for me to start talking, and I'm talking for about 20 seconds, and there's no sound happening because I have forgotten to unmute my microphone. And then now we start over again. We play the Saxondale clip. You're being very patient there in Minnesota. And now it's working, actually. I've got the music is turned down to the right amount. I'm playing the drops. The volumes on the drops are great. I should mention one other thing, which is as this is happening, I look out through the window here at the Madrona Hill studio and my mom is standing on the patio waving goodbye to me. Now, a reminder. I've already hugged this woman goodbye I've already said I love you I've said drive safe we've done it we've done the goodbye thing and she was waving goodbye I'm waving I'm kind of distracted it's a little hard again I'm spinning a few plates here that I'm not normally spinning and so okay fine they're leaving I see my dad carrying out his he brings a crate of his snacks I think maybe everywhere he goes now those snacks include uh vienna fingers uh-huh and um some kind of uh i think it might be it's it's a licorice called like wallabies like red licorice or like red licorice red licorice okay red licorice um i was shocked the other day where was i somewhere where they sell snacks oh you know it was when i was in new york city and i was i was like i think i was going up to one of those like a magazine you know like they've still got those newsstands kind of things they still had good and plenty in the window and i was shocked i was like i can't believe we're still selling there's enough people buying good and plenty for that to be something that we're manufacturing and selling because that's basically black licorice yeah but not yuck and yum so right

teach throne that's right i would never i would never good point you're very good point if thank you for being the thank you for being the moral compass on today's show john if i'm the moral compass we are lost at sea already but like if you yeah if you like good and plenties keep going And I'm just surprised that there are enough people keeping that in business. Yeah, I agree with that. So my dad gets this red licorice, this wallaby stuff. So my dad's carrying out his crate of snacks, and they're getting in the Prius. And I assume they're leaving, and I'm here. I'm doing the show. It's working. It's finally happening. Take three. And then I look over, and there's another thing, too, which is the door. You know this because you've been here before, John. But the door on the Madrona Hill studio is one of those doors that the middle of it is all glass. And I did that because I won as much natural light at all times to be getting to my eyeballs as possible. And so because of that, it's also a terrifying, it's like a terrifying portal into people.

showing up it does not happen very often we're kind of out here yeah this is a message to the tens of listeners please don't come out here unannounced particularly when i'm doing the show it hasn't happened in years but there were times there were deliveries to my old house there were some moments but i never expected to be anybody at that door and when i look over if it's like the if it's the up if it's the u.s postal service person i have out here who i love by the way and she's dropping off broadcast coffee or something there it's it's it's very unnerving because i'm focused here i'm laser focused on doing the show and then i look over and there's just like my parents are like looking through the glass of the door they're not coming inside

they're just looking you know i'm like yeah it's not not not sorry to cut you off but like not to not to insult you it's kind of like you are the animal in the enclosure at the zoo like you're just in your natural habitat doing your thing and all of a sudden these eyes are just peered up

against the glass at you i was it was it was totally unexpected because i felt like we had we had said i had not said goodbye to my dad but he knows i love him and you know what i would say they're gonna hear this too my mom is like really shifted back into being a hardcore listener and it's killing me but um uh you know i can't i can't miss you if if you don't leave um so i was like no no that's that's that stuff that's it does she listen all the way

through because we can put this segment at the end oh she does well sorry i mean yeah it's um

it's again i i my mom also supports the show financially so maybe she maybe she has a right to bust in on it thanks mama but so i look over and they're just standing in the doorway and then i think oh is everything okay but again i'm still trying to power through my talking to you john and my talking to the tens of listeners because this is let me remind folks take three of the top of the show and i'm just like get through this so i'm like waving to them like okay good to see you And then they open the door to come in and I'm like, I don't like I don't understand how they don't understand that when I'm talking into this microphone, I am actually at work. Yeah. And and and they're like, well, you're you didn't say goodbye to your dad. And again, I love my dad so much. And if he had been in the living room when I was saying goodbye to my mom, I would say goodbye to him. but i felt like it's implied that you know that i that i bid him a fond farewell and i wish them safe travels on the road etc so then not so much because of them but because of the fact that i was on my third attempt at doing the beginning of the show i just was like i don't know what i said i'm sure we'll probably make it the easter egg at the end of the show but i feel like i just was like what it was was like a kid you know who i was actually like i when we knew and i were kind of after i stopped the show for the third time you and i were talking about old school when the will ferrell character is yelling about the meatloaf yeah you know from the basement that was very much kind of what was going on for me but even more like i think we might even we may even have that uh let's see do we have that drop yeah here we go let's see let's see if this will play for us hey mom the meatloaf we want it now there was a lot of that going on but you know what it really was was and you're a little maybe young for this movie reference john okay there was a film called king of comedy which i i did hear right yes i've never seen if i know it i know it yeah it's it's actually kind of referenced in joker right isn't that the whole thing where de niro is the late night show host sorry yes yeah but no no no but no you're exactly right yeah so that's kind of a that's an homage to this movie king of comedy which i really really love But it's basically Robert De Niro is this guy named Rupert Pupkin, whose dream has always been to be like a Tonight Show host. Or really, he wants to be a stand-up comic, I think, is what it is. And there's a show that's like The Tonight Show, but it's hosted by Jerry Lewis plays the sort of Carson character. And I believe his name is maybe Jerry Large or something. So you've got this, like, you've got basically The Tonight Show, and then you've got this guy, Rupert Pupkin, who's always dreamed of being— I think it's kind of a comedian slash maybe host slash guest slash he wants to be in the world of this stuff. And he has built this elaborate set in his parents' basement of this talk show.

And he's down there all the time, De Niro's character is, Rupert Pupkin, is down there hosting a pretend talk show. Oh. And he's yelling at his mom when his mom interrupts his pretend talk show that he's doing down there. Like this is like, this is, this is his happy place is down in the basement on his set of the talk show hosting his pretend or being a guest on his pretend talk show or whatever it is. And I remember there being a scene where his mom interrupts and he gets really mad. That is almost, that's eerily similar to what happened, except this is technically not pretend.

Again, you, you are characterizing yourself a lot more aggressive, I think, than you actually were. It was weird that you took off your shoe and threw it at your mom.

yes well that's a sign other than that i come from the middle east and that's the ultimate sign

of disrespect yeah yeah other than that though i think yeah is that is that george w bush over

there um no i i'm glad to hear from you that it didn't come off as as kind of like peeved as i again and they'll hear this and i'll probably call them after the show and clarify because i do love my mom and dad yeah but i think my my number one frustration was that i kept messing up the show and then when i finally thought it was working they just like popping in to say goodbye but it is also i don't think my mom will cop to this but i'll ask her when i call her later i think it's five or six my mom would also like to be on the show today oh yeah and so i think you know she wouldn't have been mad if i was like come on over and set a spell the problem with that is it's twofold one i don't really have the technical setup going for that today it's a little bit of i don't i need to figure out how to have more microphones here i don't currently have enough microphones for to have a guest so it's always a little stressful the fact that we don't have andrew here today everything's a little chaotic yeah for me and so i don't need one more chaotic element which is like my mom being here on the show also my mom was just on the show like a month ago you know it turns out when your parents move in with you there's a lot of opportunities

to have them on the show it's also it's also like and i thought when i heard when i realized what was happening i'm like oh it'd be fun to say hi to suzy and wall or whatever but it is you are doing the intro and you're in the flow of the intro it's one thing if we're like halfway through the show it's like hey mom yes like right now it would be fine it'd be awesome but like you're just like getting into the intro of the show you're talking about the numbering system you're

how you're going through the most performative it gets for me during the show like right now if they knocked on the door i'd be like come over say hi to john this is fun like we are in we're we're chit-chatting we're in conversation yeah we're just in conversation we're just gabbin were gabin newsome and um he's had a huge success with prop 50 yeah he did that's true but um but but but yeah like right now it would be fine right then it was and again it was added to by the fact that i had kept screwing up the top of the show so i am going to call them afterwards and tell them i love them and and that they're welcome in here most of the time please send my regards and well wishes and i love them i will thank you i will absolutely do that one other thing that i'll just mention quickly because we're on the subject of uh of my mother and her very quirky habits we were like nothing like soup so i have in my um in my little kitchen area where the coffee setup is i have this like a little small spoon i don't know where it came from but it's teeny tiny and what i use it for every morning is my um stirring my splenda yeah into my coffee so i get make my coffee add my little little half and half my little splenda and i stir it with this spoon and then and this is kind of gross but i'm the only one who uses this most of the time i clean the spoon with my tongue so it doesn't have residual coffee i wouldn't do that if like somebody was over so i didn't do that today uh but i you know if it's just me i don't think it really matters it's your house i put it back it all sits in a little dish there's a little dish like a little saucer that has the splenda packets in it and the and and then i dry the spoon and I place it back on top. That's my little system. And my mom, my dad says, oh, somehow the spoon comes up. My dad's standing over in the kitchen and my mom goes, I think my mom goes, ooh, that would have been a great ice cream spoon. So my parents love Haagen-Dazs ice cream. And last night they each had their respective pints of Haagen-Dazs. My dad goes with vanilla bean. My mom goes with pistachio.

I love pistachio.

Pistachio is so underrated, I will say. You know, I think I should actually, I should think about it because I think I would like it too. When I was a kid, I thought pistachio ice cream was weird. Cause it had the nuts in it and people would be like, yeah, like you think I thought of like, Oh, you have sweet things and salty things, but like a sweet thing that has kind of a salty thing in it. Now I think I might actually enjoy it. I sort of like, I wrote it off as a kid, you know, in my, my list of things I would ever eat. But so they were eating their ice cream last night here as we were all hanging out. and so this morning my mom was like oh that would have been a good ice cream spoon and my mom proceeds to explain to me that she has a collection of tiny spoons that she eats her ice cream with at home so that she eats her ice cream slower and you seem intrigued i i can 100

relate i so we have like our silverware or flatware set wherever you call it yeah and we have like the larger tablespoons and the like smaller teaspoons i guess right yeah and i for sweet stuff like something like ice cream especially i always do the same exact thing so it lasts like a teeny one or just a smaller one it's like the smaller too because that way it's like it will just like i'm eating it slower and i'm enjoying it longer a hundred percent i don't have a collection of

small spoons but i get that like the smaller spoons i have those two like you know like you said with your flatware there's like the kind of large one yeah that you still might eat soup with but it's kind of all almost a little too big and then you've got chili spoon the tablespoon yeah but then there's the

other one that's a little smaller that you might use and then but these are like these are like you went to niagara falls it's like yeah it's like a novelty tiny collector spoon and my dad was like yeah when i when we travel he said i part of my whole like kit of stuff i have to bring is

a tiny spoon for your mom that's adorable he doesn't it's so adorable they're the cutest

they are the cutest they really are the cutest i love i love this for them but i guess my dad now one of his kpis is bringing is bringing the tiny spoon that my mom will use to eat her ice cream so that she eats it more slowly i thought this might be for like you know controlling how much ice cream she eats in terms of calories or waistline but that is not my mom and i also love this about my mom my mom goes yeah some people might think i use a tiny spoon they're like i'm being cheap because i but she goes but i just think ice cream is really rich and i don't you know need to finish all of it on the first time and i was like hey i salute you on that um you know so i think it's a good system i just think my mom has a system for everything yeah and and in a changing set of systems which i think is also funny like i know people that have a system for everything but they have the same system sure like i've got a buddy kevin arnovitz who's a real systems guy and like down to i've talked about this on the show before but like when i knew that he was a super systems guy it was we had been we had got some sushi we lived i lived in la at the time we went to some a particular place that only he knew about practically to get this certain kind of sushi right like it was a little store but they had the best for whatever reason and we got this sushi that I think I remember it was like smoked eel or something was the flavor because that's the one to get. Then we brought it. We came back. We were in his car. We came back to his house in L.A. And we parked and we got out and he shut the door. And I was like, hey, you forgot the sushi. And he goes, no, you leave it in the car for five minutes. And it warms it to where the smoked eel oil infuses. This was the same guy that figured out, by the way, that you could put two cans of Heineken next to each other. and it was exactly the size and weight of a foot-long Subway sandwich, which you were allowed to bring into Dodger Stadium back in the day. So we used to go to Dodger games. He had season tickets. He had two season tickets, and we would go to so many Dodger games. This is when they sucked, by the way, which is why I have complicated feelings. The Frank McCourt years. Yes. I think they might have gone to the postseason one time while I lived in L.A. They seemed rootable to me because they weren't good right and because i loved i was i was i was enamored with everything los angeles at the time and i lived by the stadium so he had figured out so for some reason in those days you were allowed to bring your own food into dodger stadium i think they still allow that if

i've seen oh okay i think i've seen stuff on tiktok maybe so i could be wrong but i think that's

something they still allow which is really cool okay i know it's like i actually you know i will give them credit for that one thing nothing else anymore with all their overspending and if they get if they get Tarek Skubal I swear to God I'm gonna absolutely lose my mind if he becomes a Yankee or a Dodger probably a Dodger at this point yeah but but so he my buddy Kevin figured out that you could um that if you saved he would save his like he'd get but his whole thing was it needs to it needs to look realistic so he would go to Subway and he would get a foot-long sandwich of some kind and then he would carefully like save the paper the paper that had just enough like oil drips in it you know like olive oil and vinegar drips yeah and save the bag and then when we would go to the dodger games we'd get two heinekens i don't i don't think they if they were they might have been tall boys i think it might have been like two heineken tall boys i feel like that's way too long that seems too long that seems very long i don't see myself as being a person who could watch a whole baseball game on only one regular size sure but what if you each went in with your own subway footlong we might have and he might have given me he was less of a drinker than i was in those days he might have given me he might have just been transporting for me but anyways like yeah so it was like two cans of heineken i mean it could have been two cans of anything because they're pretty standard but like that's what we went with and then you wrap them in the subway paper and then you put it in the subway bag and then you bring it through and then security picks it up and for some reason seemed to security like this could be a real thing and then you get into the then you crack your beer it was so satisfying yeah it was such a satisfying caper yeah but my mom has a million as a former sandwich artist i really approve and appreciate that i'm talking to the right guy i'll just say that but yeah my my mom um you know my mom has a lot of systems but then i feel like they also um she she trades out different systems and that's where i think it gets a little complicated for her because the thing about systems is you got to really lock in on them and you got to stay with them um you if you're constantly changing systems then it gets Then you decide it's a tiny

spoon trip, but you forgot that you had changed to a different system of giant spoons. A spoon so large you can barely fit it into the pint of Haagen-Dazs. I could see my mom, next time she's over, going, I'm only using the largest spoons they make.

She's just grabbing a serving spoon or

one of those carved wood spoons from some kind of a Polynesian restaurant where you've got a giant fork and a giant spoon and they're on the wall. Anyway, Um, all right. Other, other little update from my weekend. Um, that's a little bit on the gross side. So everybody please, you know, prepare yourself. Um, I had an experience. I don't know if I've had this experience since probably my, my tween years, which was we had, um, we did live wire on Saturday night in, uh, Portland, uh, by the way, really fun night, really fun to see some tens out there. Thank you. It was a great show. It was a sold out show, which is kind of a fun change of pace it's really hard to sell tickets to things these days yeah um and so it's nice when we were able to sell it out um one of the big guests was um you did you and jess watch somebody somewhere yeah oh we love somebody somewhere yeah what a show so we had jeff hiller yeah joel was the guest he's so and that was oh my gosh and by the way um i uh he was nice enough to um hang out with me a bit before the show and i i recorded a a long interview with him which will be tomorrow's tbtl oh hell yeah yeah tomorrow's tbtl featuring the one the only the emmy winning jeff hillard talk about forward promo yeah right um it was a uh it was a great night but i was because i had been interviewing jeff hillard over at the hotel i was running late for our live wire sound check also it now gets dark man did we go off a cliff with the darkness right you get that in are you are you i mean i know you're two hours ahead of us but as far as like um latitude yeah you you in the twin cities are in about the same latitude as us in portland

seattle right i think we are i don't know the exact numbers but like just eyeballing on a map

yeah please let's do an experiment i'm gonna do i'm gonna google what time is sunset portland and you do what time is sunset twin cities what time i appreciate you saying the twin cities and not

just minneapolis um because you know of my feelings yes i do know i believe i love me i'll

I'll never fly into anywhere other than Bloomington again in my life.

I love Minneapolis, but, you know, St. Paul for life. All right, so I got mine for tonight.

445 is what I'm getting for Portland. What are you getting?

448.

Oh, must be nice.

Three extra minutes. But what about Seattle? Because Seattle will be closer to us than you. Yeah, you're right. 438. So it's even darker earlier in Seattle than it is.

Yeah. Because I'm a little south of Seattle. It's amazing that it makes that much difference. It's amazing that it's even three minutes, the difference between me and Seattle as far as the... So yeah, it gets dark really early. So I'm in traffic. I'm sort of feeling that anxiety when you're late for something, and when not only are you late for something, but you are the really central character in the thing. I know everyone's on stage waiting for me. This is not the show. There's no audience. This is the sound check. But still, the house band is there. The announcer, Elena Passarello, is there. the staff everyone no one can do the next thing until i get over there yeah so i'm feeling that anxiety it's pitch black i'm getting at the age where like i don't i don't love driving at night i mean i've got many more years of night driving in in front of me but i don't i note it when it's dark i'm like i'm not seeing everything as well as i used to so i'm like anyway i get to the uh i get to near the theater i park i have a suit i've got to get and i'm getting all my stuff my computer out of the car and it's um what did you did you grow up calling it a parking strip or a tree lawn there in in westchester county the area between the sidewalk and the street where there's grass so it's it's the side it's not your front lawn there's the sidewalk yeah there's the grass and then there's the curb what do you what do you call we called it the parking strip when i was

in seattle as a kid in westchester at least where i grew up we didn't we didn't have those green name because one we i grew up in suburbia so it was just parking lots but if it was street parking you rarely had that kind of thing but here in minnesota it's all over the place and they call them the boulevard like so it's our house our lawn sidewalk the boulevard and then the street

okay yeah yeah andrew called them calls it a tree lawn which actually i think kind of makes sense because a lot of times there's trees in it i step onto the boulevard tree lawn slash yeah um parking strip and i i feel a familiar terrible feeling under the ball of my left foot which is a squishing feeling and i realized i have just stepped into a massive dog turd oh could i can i just say i i know

that is a common topic of conversation on the show especially like relating to andrew and garbage bins as as the one person who lives with and cares for a dog on a daily basis yes there's nothing that makes me more angry than people that don't pick up after their dogs because it makes all of us look like jackasses i just like i like when i when my dog takes a poop and i pick up the you know i use the bag and pick up where if we're going on a walk like i make it clear as possible that i'm carrying this thing around so everyone knows i'm one of the good ones i clean up my dog i hate it so much yeah i always joke that like when i used to have a dog and i

would uh be walking her and she would poop somewhere i would pull out the poop bag with a flourish like like some job in arrested development when he's like pulling scarves out of something yes i'm so demonstrative like everybody note that i have the bags yeah the The roll is unfurling. Yes. Like, I'm being so, because I, yeah, I was like, it was one of those moments, too, where it's like, I'm late, I'm holding this suit that I'm trying to not drop, because I don't own, like, a, for all the, like, ways that I try to super maximize my life, I don't really own, like, a good garment bag right now.

That is shocking to me.

Isn't that kind of surprising?

For as much as you travel, too, not even just maximize your life, for as much travel as

you do. i mean i have a travel one that i can use but um but for this i just kind of for like live wire i'll just take the suit out of the closet in my house i'll make sure it has all the components and i'll hang it on the little thing in my car yeah but it's still kind of loose so i'm i gotta be careful because you know how the pants are always trying to slide out of that situation so i got this i got my stuff i'm late it's dark and then it's just like i just feel that and i really haven't yet When we talk about dog poop on the show, which you're right, we do discuss it a surprising amount. What I always say about that is, like, it's actually, generally speaking, it's a nice thing about modern life that we do not encounter as much just rampant dog poop as we used to when I was a kid. When I was a kid, it felt like it was everywhere, and it felt like I was always stepping in it, accidentally sliding into it. I feel like as a kid, you're encountering dog poop all the time. Was that your experience in Westchester?

Yeah. And I've heard you talk about this on the show. And I do think you've mentioned before, I think there was like a proper public shaming and like discourse around it where most people are good about it. I also think, I think it's one of those things when you're a kid, you're just out in places, you're just outside, you know, it's like go out and play, right? And so you're just out and about more than you probably are as an adult. And so there's more chances to encounter it probably as well, I'm guessing. I don't know, maybe that's just, but like, yeah. But it was definitely a thing that was more of an issue when I was a kid than it is today, 100%.

So that's why I was so bummed when I felt this, and I thought, well, maybe I didn't really feel that. And so then I'm like, I do that thing where I'm walking across the street, and then I get over to where there's a little bit more light. And I look down, and yep, sure enough, just a fat, smashed thing. So now I'm like, I also have to, by the way, I'm still, these aren't the shoes I'm going to wear to do the show, But they are the shoes I have to wear to come into the building and to get go on stage for the sound check and like, yeah, wear them home. So I'm like dragging my foot. I'm looking for anything that looks like any grass or whatever, any grass, any sort of ridge, any any ridged surface that I can just kind of. And I'm scraping it and I'm scraping it and I'm scraping it. And I'm like, you know, I get I think kind of like most of it off. and then like so i thought i thought that i had so i looked down i was like okay it's kind of dealt with it's not like it's not it's not like there's still a massive amount in there and somehow it didn't go totally in all of the treads like yeah i was like yeah i was like this is this is this seems like it's been mitigated enough that i can like go into the building without it being disgusting because you know also sometimes when you're a kid it's just like in it so much and you're like you know it just it reeks and you're trying to get it out of the treads usually we would be using like a stick or something trying to or find some water you also as a kid your foot's smaller so it's just like yes there's less surface area surface area thank you yeah yeah yeah um so i so so i go in and then it's like and and then it's like i'm on to the next problem which is you know whatever i don't mean problem but just like i'm now i'm thinking about sound check and whatever and i forget that it even happened i go upstairs to the i have this little room that i kind of like gets dressed in my suit and whatever and i take those shoes off and i'm not nothing really pungent seems to be happening and so then i like i like uh you know uh i get changed my suit do the show fine get go back home and then the next morning i get up i get dressed to go we had another live wire event uh back down in portland i get dressed again put put these same shoes on and then i drive and i'm like i'm in the car i'm like huh i'm sort of no noticing something is going on i wonder what's up with that but i'm like i know it's not the shoe because i looked and it was fine last night and then like i after the show i go over to becca's house and um and i sit down on the couch and immediately bubbles beelines it for me and just starts obsessing over the the the bottom of that shoe and i look down and i realize there's still a significant amount that's caked in like it's hard to explain but you know like not a tread but the middle of this shoe actually i could actually show you no please don't that's okay

should we have a trigger web content segment for no no this will not be on the internet should we have a trigger warning for this segment for listeners like don't listen while you're eating

a meal or something yeah retroactively retroactively uh you shouldn't have been eating during this conversation but um what i realized is that and i guess you could say the good news is it's not it's dried so it's not like yeah it's not like being redistributed everywhere and it's kind of in the shoe has a recess in the underside like you know like the the bottom of the shoe what do you call them well you're saying the tread are you like yeah you mean like the back portion where i the bottom of a shoe what do you call like this i'm not ed bundy i'm not familiar

with all the moving parts of a shoe but yeah what do you call that i actually i don't know the technical term yeah i would just say the sole or the tread because it's like it's like you have all the tread lines and then that big gap area and then more tread lines like so that middle portion

that middle portion has dried poop in it so i immediately take that shoe off i put it in the hallway of the apartment building i'm like i shall not besmirch your apartment with this shoe and then i will tell you the rest of the day i was all i could think about was that shoe yeah because i didn't want to do here's what i didn't want to do at becca's house i didn't want to like scrape a bunch of poop into the garbage can or i don't know i didn't want it to become her problem i feel like her house again somebody who deals a lot of dog poop yes this again this

is not the conversation i was expecting to have today i feel like the move there is scraping into the toilet because then you just flush where poop goes because that's where poop goes and then you And then you could, in the bathroom, clean the bottom of it in the shower and then clean the shower afterwards, like bleach or whatever product she has around to clean the tub after the fact. But I'm also Monday morning quarterbacking this. You are in the moment dealing with it.

No, but it's like, no, you're absolutely right. It's like, here's the problem. There is feces that we don't want to have around. There's a place in the house that feces goes.

I mean, I didn't want to. On a regular basis.

on a regular basis i must spell out that directly no but seriously no like obviously that's what i should have done but also i didn't know what the i didn't know what kind of implement she had around i also i'll be honest with you i was just grossed out by the whole thing absolutely absolutely and so and so i'm so then i'm driving home and i'm like doing this thing where i'm like i don't want to put my foot down flush on the on the carpet in my car yeah like because i don't want which bottom my foot is it is that your right foot your left foot left foot so it's like the inactive

because you drive inactive foot yeah the inactive foot so it's like you kind of are you doing the thing where it's like on the side like you're kind of turning on your i'm like turning it on

the side yeah because i don't want to put it down yeah exactly right and i'm just kind of like and and just everything that's going on where i'm getting out i'm walking around i'm doing i'm going into a store i'm getting some groceries all i'm thinking the whole time is i'm obsessed with the shoe for some reason yeah and then and then i i said this i think i might have written this on like blue ski a while ago but because this happened to me you know i just said that was the first time i'd stepped in dog poop in a long time but that's not true there was another time i don't know maybe six months or a year ago that i i think it was probably here at my house because there are you know there are animals and coyotes oh i saw a coyote the other day out here um there are animals that crap in my yard so anyway i had stepped in some kind of an animal poop dog poop thing and what i what i realized was oh i could throw these shoes out right oh these are sneakers that i bought for probably when they were new they were 40 dollars 60 dollars i've worn them a lot i have way more i have more shoes than i will wear for the rest of my life if they if somebody said you cannot acquire any more shoes the shoes that you have in your house are the shoes that you have to wear for the rest of your life i could live 10 lifetimes

before the wear and tear gets to them and there's like holes a hundred percent yeah i mean these

the shoes that have been befouled now are um these stan smith adidas stan smiths that i wear all the time i have i am not exaggerating right now six pairs six pairs not actually

pairs there's a really thrashed some really thrashed ones in my basement that i use for mowing the lawn six pairs of these shoes six pairs and that's just the stan smiths yeah there are there's there's a there's myriad running shoes i have 15 pairs of running shoes like it's ridiculous so i decided i'm just going to throw these shoes out that's what i'm going to do or i'm going to one thought was i'll just throw out the left shoe and then maybe at some point i don't know

something will happen to one of my left you'll eventually have to throw out a right shoe to

balance it out eventually yes did i say stan smith or rod laver because they're rod laver stan smith they look like stan smiths they're not stan smith was a tennis player rod laver was also a tennis player he was australian okay just i need to be transparent accuracy they're not they're not stan smiths they're rod lavers both made by adidas both very similar looking sure so but i can't for some reason i can't quite bring myself to throw the shoe away so the shoe is now But I also can't leave it outside because it'll get rained on and then it'll become officially grotesque. So where do you think it is, John? It's in the far corner of the Madrona Hill studio with its partner. And I don't know what to do because part of me just keeps saying, just throw it out. It's fine. You have many pairs of these shoes. These were not expensive. When I bought them, they were, again, maybe $50 or $60. And although there was a period of time that I personally drove the cost of these Rod Laver shoes up to like over $120. Because you bought six pairs of them? they stopped making them during the pandemic and and they were you could only find them on this

thing called stock x have you heard oh yeah yeah i i don't do it so i have a very complicated relationship with like shoes and sneakers and stuff because i really like them i love the look like i'm a big basketball fan that's a whole part of the culture but i also have very wide feet and so my options for shoes are very limited like i can wear new balance and a handful of other ones And so, like, I wish I could wear cool sneakers. And at the same time, I, like, mostly can't. And so I'm very familiar with StockX and all the, you know, what NBA players come out with, like, different colorways and what looks awesome. But, like, I could never wear it. They're never made for me. And so it's like. Yeah.

I'm kind of. I'm not. It's funny because, like, I am not a sneakerhead per se. Yeah. I don't. I don't have, like, I don't get the new drop of anything. I just wanted these Rod Laver sneakers that I've been wearing for years. and they just they weren't making them and but they did have them on stock x and i started buying them and for those folks who don't know stock x is like a it's it's described as like the the um the stock market of of shoes so you can buy you know these shoes that either aren't being made anymore or are for some reason uh valuable on the aftermarket but it also tracks the going price for the shoe and there was a period of time where i think i was the only person in america buying these rod labors so i was personally i could watch the price of the sneaker go up on stock x you're just betting against yourself on them basically i know idiot but um so i i for some like i part of me wants to just throw the shoes away and not deal with it and part of me thinks that's so wasteful i should just get the garden hose yeah and go to town on them but then part of me says no you're a grown person who works hard to build a life for yourself where you have more pairs of rod lavers than you will ever wear and you can just toss these out and it's okay you know like it's fine and i don't know what i don't know what i'm gonna do but that's the

i will say i'm currently in if you i i would recommend if you said get your hose if you have like a like a a nozzle head that's adjustable put on the strongest pressure wash it exactly and just spray and like you do the thing where you put your arm out with the shoe in one hand and you kind of keep as far away from you as possible because it's gonna there's gonna be some kickback and you just know you're gonna clean wash your hands afterwards or whatever it might be a little messy but it shouldn't be too bad i think you know i could also do that's a good by the way that's very good advice i should do that i'm also again like i again being the person that's picking up poop every day like i i'll tell you a real quick story when i started dating jess uh she had our dog thor she had him about a year before we started dating and um i was walking thor with my brother-in-law who was walking their dog maggie and thor you know did we get to do and i was like uh and he's like do you love this girl i was like yeah he goes then pick up her dog shit and it was this moment and it was like it was wow it's an act of love it was but it was also just like get over it like so for me for me like dealing with dog poo it's like yeah it's gross but it's also like i don't know people have babies and they clean up baby poop all the time well

here's the funny part here's the funny part yesterday we were walking gg yeah and gg stops and drops a massive deuce and becca just like looks at me like would you and i'm like yeah of course i'm not grossed out by picking up dog poop if i'm using the bag the the bag that does not gross me out for some reason because my hand is protected i have a system i am not disgusted by that it's something about it being in my shoe and i'm blasting it like you said i'm blasting it

With the pressure washing, but it's spraying back on me or something. You have to angle it right. So it's like the spray. It's something about not being – I don't mind it if I can tightly manage the situation. Yeah. Where I've got the bag on my hand, a da-da-da, it's a system, you roll it back out, you know, like it's a thing. Yeah. But this, for some reason, is kind of gross. What I should really do is what you're suggesting, which I should just spray it down. But if I don't want to do that, at the least what I can do is – I told you I have some really thrashed rod lasers. my basement that are my lawn mowing ones those ones seriously have probably 10 000 miles on them right i could throw those out sure this because by the way after a summer of walking around the lawn in these there will be like i will be no evidence of this mild amount of dog poop that's on them right anymore like i will naturally in the process of the next spring and summer's yard work life i will wear off whatever is on the bottom of these rod lavers so these might these

might just need to move down to be they become your new lawn shoes yeah new lawn shoes and the

old lawn shoes i can throw away because the old lawn shoes really are very thrash i think that's

a good idea and i i still would recommend spraying the hose but to psychologically like if you're comfortable picking up gg's piles put like on your hand that you're holding the the shoe with yeah exactly or like if you don't have anything that's just like a plastic like uh shopping bag or whatever put your hand hold the poop back hold the shoe with that and spray together and because like even if it goes into your basement becomes your lawn shoe you don't want that just sitting in your basement till next spring or whatever and so like i you've not seen how gross my basement is that's the one place in your house i don't think i saw yeah no you and you shan't i had somebody

over doing some doing some stuff on the house and she was sort of getting the tour of the place yeah and doing some kind of like estimation of various things and she's like what about downstairs the basement i was like i go like i can show you the basement but i just really want to like prepare you that it may feel unsafe because it is literally no i was being very serious i was like i was like i will i was like i i will show you the basement but i want to just be really clear that it's kind of like it's kind of upsetting yeah because it's it's not finished i mean it has a concrete floor but that's it it's unfinished other than the fact that it's not dirt but it's just the low it's low ceiling the lighting is very poor it's just full of tools and sawdust and piles of things and it's it is it's like i wouldn't you know i wanted to let her know that i knew that it was unsettling and therefore i don't know i just wanted i didn't want her to walk into it and feel unsafe i wanted to somehow try to get in you're saying expectations

like i wanted to you're not gonna like it down there and i didn't also i also didn't want to

make a joke that was like yeah a joke that was her going like is he kidding or not kidding so i didn't say to her like okay it's my serial killer basement like i mean really don't do that i intentionally held off on a joke like that because i also didn't want to like introduce that into the the conversation like she's like is he saying that as a joke but it's not a joke i just wanted to say like i want to i want to let you know that this basement is really very very um kind of unfinished and it's it's really messy and if you want to see it for the purposes of square footage sure but i just want to like prepare you and she was like okay and then it was fine but i just want i wanted to i wanted to level set before we got down because i didn't want her to be like oh and this is where this is where things get really dicey this is where all my closest friends come to stay and just open the door yes exactly oh my gosh yeah it's a it's a It's a basement that if you wanted to leave a shoe that has some amount of dog poop in it in over the course of a winter, it's not going to hurt the property value at all. Right. Okay. Okay. By the way, John, this is our donor music today. Oh, yeah. Awesome. Because the donors help us get things done. That's right. How donors get more done at TBTL. It's because I still don't have the real music from Andrew. And the thing is, the last time Andrew went out of town, it was it was a little bit more sudden. Yeah. I had plenty of time to ask him to send me the music and I just forgot.

And like Andrew always does when he can, especially if he knows he has he's planning to take a quick trip or something. He like sends lists and intro tape and like he's so on top of like, here's these things you need.

Yes. Yeah. And if I would have asked him, he would have sent me. But I don't know. I feel like this is kind of like this is sort of badass. It's kind of propulsive. It's good. I feel very motivated to thank our donors today. These wonderful people are supporting TBTL with a donation of dough and it is really and truly the only way this thing can happen. I was trying to, as I often am, trying to explain what the show was to somebody and that somebody was Jeff Hiller. I love that Jeff Hiller knows about

TBTL. Do you think he's listening today? hey Jeff I'm a huge fan oh no

okay never mind i did get the digis though nice so i think we i think we're good with him by the way like i think if we want to have him on down the road for special programming i think i think we're in but that's awesome but i was i i set up our the little sound recording thing at this table at the at the hotel um in portland and and then he came down and now he was also going to be on livewire and livewire is a big production there's lots of right there's lots going on and this was a little more humble and i was trying to explain yeah well this is a podcast that i do with my buddy and we have a colleague we work with and i've been doing it for 17 years and trying to explain it to him and he seemed he seemed pleasantly confused and and i get that because it's a weird thing uh this tbtl and it's it's a weird thing that's only possible because of folks like christine pernula of rent in washington thank you christine hey it's my old pal stacy Sledge in Bellingham, Washington. Stacy wrote an article about me and TBTL once, many years ago. Stacy's a journalist in Bellingham, and I've said this on the show, and I'll say it again. It was the only article that's ever been written about me or TBTL that has been actually 100% accurate. No kind of factual errors. Some have more factual errors than others, and I think I think you know what I'm thinking about, John.

I was going to make a joke, but I wanted to be nice, so I was going to say. Was this the article? Does Stacey write? I heard a lot of tens over the years reference an article they read in The Stranger that turned them on to TBTL. Is that this article, or is that something different?

No, that was written by a guy named Eli Sanders in The Stranger. Oh, yeah, right. I know that. Stacey's article was in a Bellingham news operation. But it was, I would say maybe Eli's and Stacey's were the only two articles that have ever, in fact, and there may have even been a flub or two in Eli's article. Just, again, nothing particularly important, but just kind of like a timeline of maybe when I grew up where or something. And the thing about Stacey, our friend Stacey Sledge, is that she's not only a fine journalist, but a TBTL listener. And a donor. Well, hugely, a donor. Maybe most importantly, a donor. But Stacey was able to write the article without making little mistakes because Stacey is deeply familiar with my life from listening to this show for all these years. So, Stacey, thank you. We really do appreciate you. Thanks also to Kathleen Climo, who's in San Francisco, California. Thank you, Kathleen. Thanks to David Zuckerman, who's in New Rochelle, New York. That sounds like a place that you know about, John.

Literally, let me say, my mom is from New Rochelle. Love it. grandparents were there it's like were there uh my whole childhood while while they were alive and so i would go to new rochelle once a month at least to go visit my grandparents um yeah how far is that from like westchester well it's in what it's southern westchester and i grew up in northern westchester so like it was like 25 30 minutes from where i grew up and were you in scarsdale no yorktown scarsdale is that's fancy right scarsdale is i think literally one of the richest per capita like municipalities in the country yeah we zip codes probably yeah sorry zip code i always mix up no no i mix up area code and zip code constantly i will say so i went to yorktown uh yorktown high school i'm from yorktown heights and very lovely suburb like what were the what's the mascot at york so we were the corn huskers nice but we had our football team we so we had a person a mascot dressed as a giant corn but our football team like our logo we just aped the oakland raiders so it was like the raiders logo oh yeah so it was like the skull crossbones and black i don't know so huh interesting pastiche yeah is that something that the students get to vote on that at some point if they did it was before my time there

like it was just what i knew and i love the idea of like some like kids in westchester but it's during the like al davis kenny stabler right john coach years era exactly era raiders they're just

like there's the freaking coolest team in the world we're called the huskers but uh so i played when i put i remember i played freshman football and we one of our first games was at scarsdale and like we grew up again nice suburbs like you know very privileged and well off comfortable you know right you know but it's like but no scarsdale was one of those moments where like are we poor because like we show up and their high school is literally a castle and they have their each football team their their their freshman team their jv team and the varsity team each had their own fields like we had like a dirt field that rocks in it that we practice on and then we probably

the baseball field during yeah that was like our practice field and then we had like a we did have

like a dedicated football field but that's what all the teams played on for games and so we show up like we're on like the freshman field or whatever and they and we have like because we're the freshman team some of us had like gray pants some of us had white pants I'm sorry. We had, like, ratty jerseys. They all come running out in, like, matching Adidas uniforms. And it was like, but we beat them, like, 21 to 7.

So that was the best bus ride back home. We were so happy.

Yeah.

I feel like when I was in high school, when I was going to Jesus Creek, even though it was technically a private school, it was, like, the cheapest. It was mostly, like, a religious cult that, you know, was trying to further indoctrinate the young people of the world and so it was it was at in only the most hyper specific sense again a um a private school there was a very nominal tuition fee but again it was mostly so so we played in this league with other private schools but then there was a real range there was the legit private schools that were like we played against a school called the bush school which was like very tony sounds fancy it's a weird name right but that was the name of the school we were we were too small to play like lakeside lakeside is the school where um bill gates went it's where i think he met okay um uh is that where he met paul did paul allen go there no i don't know anyway the lakeside school is very very tony but anyway it we the thing that sucked about going to jesus creek was we were both the poorest school in the league and many times the worst so it would suck yeah it would suck it would suck to like go to it'd suck to both like to go play the bush school and then have them also trounce us right and be way richer than us

right we at least beat scarsdale and listen scarsdale's beautiful little hamlet or whatever they call it but it felt really great to beat up on them yeah but but going back to david nourish shell i love nourish shell spent a lot of great time uh great times there in my youth and marissa

Uterberg, who's in Lakewood, Ohio. Andrew may be in, I don't know where Bob Walsh is living these days, but he may be literally somewhere near Lakewood, Ohio, even as we're recording this, Marissa. So, you know, just know that you're even closer than normal to the TBTL experience. And then Brian Covey is in Seattle, Washington. A place, Brian, even though you're, it's getting dark there three minutes before it's getting dark here, I want you to know that you and I are very, very close as well. And I'm thinking of you right now, and I feel extremely connected to you. So thank you to all of our donors for making TVTL happen. And again, I've got the right co-host today. The person who knows even more than Andrew and I do about how this couldn't happen without those folks is right here with me, Mr. John Sklaroff. Thank you so much, everybody. hello and welcome to top story all right i've got an idea john yeah um we are by my count we're approaching the 58 minute mark which is great because i can talk about this fedora story for two minutes and then we'll be in the badlands and then we can talk about whatever we want which is sports gambling those are the rules this um yeah they're the rules that i made up and i feel very strongly about that. We got an update from Unpaid. He's typically the, I think, unpaid TBTL bidet correspondent, television's Chris Hayes. But he, you know, he branches out into other areas of content.

Yeah, you allow him some free time to do some other projects.

Yes. And he sent me and Andrew this update from the Associated Press. Meet the mysterious teen behind the Louvre Fedora Man mystery photo. We talked about this on the show a couple weeks ago. So when the Louvre heist went down and, you know, the next day or maybe even later that day, the the press descended on the Louvre. There was a photograph of some French police and standing next to them was this very arresting figure of this young man dressed like he had walked out of like a Mickey Spillane novel or something. Just like a fedora and a kind of a very smart suit and an overcoat. And the Internet kind of went wild. There were a bunch of theories. One was that he was actually the detective on the case. The other was that he was actually AI because he looked so put together that it was like, is this even a real person? Andrew was very—Andrew was weirdly put off by this kid. I think when he thought it was a detective who likes to dress up, he really didn't like it. I'm going to violate a certain amount of personal privacy here, and I'm going to read you a little bit of our back and forth between Andrew and television's Chris Hayes and myself over the weekend.

Yeah, okay.

Chris sent us the link. He said, we found him, boys. And it's a link to the real identity of the Fedora kid. And then I said, oh, yeah, top story tomorrow. And then Chris said, he's also 15, which makes much more sense, by the way. So spoiler alert, he's a 15-year-old. And then Andrew said, ha-ha, I just saw that. And Chris said, it was so funny when Andrew thought he was the actual detective and was like, I bleeping hate this dude.

Here's the response from Andrew. TBF, like as in to be frank, I still might. So Andrew's really got it out for this person. Yeah. I think it's because, and again, I feel comfortable speculating because Andrew's not here, and he'll never hear this. I think Andrew himself is very much not someone who likes to be observed in the world. He's not, as in the parlance of the Dan Lebitard show, he's not a look at me Louie at all. But he is a Louis. You're right He's not only He's a look at me Lewis Which is really different He's a don't look at me Lewis

Don't look at me Lewis There you go

We should make that the show title Don't look at me Lewis I'm writing this down Let's call this Don't look at me Lewis Just look at me Lewis And you know how he spells it too right Is it L-U-I-S It's the French way It's the French Yeah yeah Yeah yeah Yeah as opposed to Oh L-E-W Yeah L-E-W-E-S Right Which is how I think of Lewis To me Lewis that's the american spelling of lewis right like richard lewis jerry lewis i live near a place called lewis county and it's l-e-w-i-s to me when i hear lewis and i'm in the states i don't think of lewis yeah but he's got the lewis but he's lewis so look at me lewis or don't look at me lewis that's the show title don't look at me and then everybody be cool yeah everybody be cool okay sean you don't mention it to andrew i'm not gonna mention it no let's see if he gets 61 minutes into the show. Nobody at him.

Exactly. I'm blueski. No emails. Don't tell him. I want to see if he

finds out about this and why we called the show. I want to see if he can figure out why we called the show Look at Me, Lewis. Don't look at me, Lewis. Don't look at me, Lewis. We'll see if he makes it all the way to where we are right now, John. To the Badlands. Speaking of the Badlands, John, we've got merch, and we have done the worst job promoting it. Could you tell us and the listeners about our cool new merch at the TBTL merch site?

Yeah, yeah. So if you go to tbtl.net slash shop, and I do want to preface this because this is a point Andrew made, and I agree. this is not like please go buy the merch today because yeah yeah we we just thank donors and that's how the show makes money that's how this can be our it's a very weird sales pitch because

what we're saying is we have merch it's really cool but also if you don't buy it it's fine and if you do buy it it doesn't really move our bottom line very much which is a strange way to

frame it but it is also true yeah it's this is not how we sustain this show in our jobs but we We know folks we've written in over the years and check in and like, can I buy something for my 11 or my 10 or whomever or my five? And so it's available if you're interested.

And it's cool stuff. It's cool stuff. It is. By the way, you click on the shop tab at tbtl.net. And John, this was a co-production really kind of of you and Andrew because you had the idea for doing this kind of national parks vibe, which I thought was really smart. And Andrew went out and he had to actually buy a font for this.

he purchased font he did use tbtl funds to purchase a font because we're all on the up and up here yes uh and so so we it's it's it's and again nobody everybody be cool but a listener did also message me was like hey the national park service might like send you a cease and desist for doing this so like nobody don't tell i mean i think the the shutdown helped us out in that regard but nobody nobody tell the national park service you know what if they want us to come

If we get arrested and our punishment is we have to do the podcast in front of Old Faithful, I'm fine with that. I want us to get one of those wacky judges who sentences us to a sentence. You've got to stand in front of – you've got to go to Yosemite and wear a sign that says, I borrowed the National Post font or something. I'll do that. Absolutely.

Next on in front of Old Faithful. So it's the design that – yeah, I kind of conceptualized it, but Andrew is the one that put it together and it looks really awesome, is it looks like a sign, like if you're going into a national park and it says, Entering TBTL Badlands. And it's just like, it's very simple.

I'm trying to get as much juice out of the song as I can. Yeah, absolutely. It's a very, I really love this. Again, whether or not we're legally allowed to have it, I really love this little piece of art.

It really came together. And we also have shirts, hoodies, and we also have coffee mugs if you just want to wake up with it in the morning, and also water bottles in case you're like somebody that's going into the parks and you want a water bottle for it but um don't let any of the rain don't let the rangers see it um and then the colors i was actually really happy with this because like obviously we have some options on the website we we the service we use for merch and stuff um it's all kind of like earth

tone colors and stuff kind of the parks color like that vibe was the palette that we went with for the options uh so i'm really i think it all looks really sharp so we have that as one new design totally brand new we also have because people loved it during the fun by the way i got

my tambourine thank you yeah good there you go yes i'm so excited good the my um postal service uh woman who i talk about a lot it was it was adorable she was like i don't know what this is but it was like it was tambourining away as she brought it to be yeah she's like what's this

jingling yeah exactly yeah but so we um because that there it is the uh tambourine our friend max in brooklyn designed uh the chip the logo for the chipmunk logo right yeah chip chipwrecked and so uh and so we have um shirts and hoodies of that available on the

website too yeah so the logo of me and yeah me and andrew and john as chipmunks that max did yeah um that's on the tambourine it was so popular and it's just such a good design by max that we it's awesome wanted it to be wanted like you can't wear a tambourine yeah so this is now you can now

you can wear this just like i guess so strap it on somehow yeah i mean it's a it would be effort

it would be effort so uh that's the story on the tbtl merch store please go there please uh appreciate all the hard work that went into it please buy something there if it if the mood strikes you but also realize that we still need you to support the tv talent that's how we actually pay the bills

around here right and and i will say real quick i i put this actually in the newsletter that just went out the other day i sent information about this like it's it's early uh november still early part early half november like if if merch or whatever if you do want to get something for somebody as like a holiday gift as long as you order something by the end of the month like you should be fine with like shipping and mailing and stuff but i i get super anxious and paranoid about that stuff and so i'm not saying i would say order sooner rather than later not because we again we're like desperate for the money you know we don't need that cash to get us out of any jams but i don't know i just for my for your sake you might want to order sooner and that way you have it in hand in time for the holidays and we have a good track record with the company we work with for this but like in case something goes wrong and you need to email me and say hey they sent me the wrong thing just just throwing that out there too that's but that's a me anxiety thing hey no

problem with your anxiety john let's harness it and use it for the good of tbtl which is why all the stuff that has gone out since you've had the job that you have has been like great the the you know the thank you gifts and everything so i i salute your anxiety and thank you it's making it's making the experience of the donors better and i appreciate that by the way the uh the louv kid is a 15-year-old. His name is Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux. That is D-E-L-V-A-U-X. That is an extremely French-sounding last name. He is a fan of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. He was visiting the Louvre with his family, and they were just there to see the Louvre, and it was closed, he says, because of the robbery that had just happened, or whatever, the burglary and um i i go back and forth on this i guess that was a i don't think it was a robbery because they didn't threaten anyone with weapons i don't know why this matters to me okay burgling my theory is a burgling yeah is the theft of something where they come you like somebody burgles you they come in your house or your business or your louvre they take stuff they didn't pay for it they but they didn't put a gun in someone's rib cage that's a robbery you don't burgle a bank that's true i just like rob a bank because you threaten them with the threat of

violence i just like i i in this case like heist i'm just a big fan yeah heist is good but i think you're i think you're right in the difference between a burglary and a robbery i think you're

i meant to talk about this the other day yeah we were this came up uh surrounding the louvre the fact that the louvre's security camera system the password for it was louvre yeah And I didn't actually, I didn't go quite far enough into this as I meant to, but like, here's, you want to know my hot take on the Louvre thing? Okay. Yeah. Give it to me. I DGAF. Yeah. What happens to these colonial ass monarchic diamonds? Yeah. I just don't care. Like, they're like, oh, they stole. I mean, literally, they're pearl clutching about the pearls that got stolen. like like oh they it's it was the like okay if you steal the mona lisa i'm like all right that's a pretty famous painting i've gone to see that at the louvre you know like it's a whole thing but like as far as like if you've been in like i was in this summer i was traveling in europe and i went in some you know big museums and i looked at some precious baubles and it's like i don't know man i just don't really give a crap if some guys got away with some

tiara from some like yeah 35 generation ago royalty that like also like if you it was if it was england and if you stole the like i don't know the like the the particular thing that like the queen wears when the like coronation and like it means a lot to the people of england like okay don't steal that but like i was actually underwhelmed at the real actual story of the thing when they said that was a louvre heist i was like well they got the mona lisa right shit and it was like no they got a bunch of technically valuable but basically to me obscure jewels yeah i i i think

i have a very similar reaction to this and i wonder if like i know you often talk about like how you grew up and like the kind of upbringing you had and like and your relation it was no scarsdale well that's what i'm saying it's like your relation to money and and things and like i feel like i've again i definitely grew up very privileged but like not as privileged you know So it's like you see these obscene items of wealth, and it's like, so I was fortunate to go to Rome a handful of years ago, and we were walking through the Vatican, and it's like we're walking through these halls, and it's like there is, my biggest takeaway from seeing all these items that have been pillaged over the centuries is sitting in the Vatican is tax the churches. you have so much money i know church church is different but the catholic church doesn't have

a history i mean in fairness the catholic church has a spotless record right of behavior right throughout time so they should have more fucking stolen shit than they could ever use in 10

lifetimes right it's like it's like i'm not like whatever like i might make it weird going from museums there's all this kind of complicated stuff but it's like you see this stuff that right could feed a nation or whatever and it's like yeah okay some diamonds got stolen from the louvre cool like yeah i know it's a security guard who lost their job yeah i feel like and

also i don't even blame the security what is he supposed to do fight a bunch of guys who just freaking chainsawed their way in the building like you're not paying me enough right for that like i think that also and to our listeners who are historic jewelry fans i apologize if i'm yucking your yum but like rome is a great example we were in rome like two summers ago and went to the vatican and like went to the vatican museum and it's like i just glaze over at some point you're walking around you're looking at all this stuff it's like it's just like i can't i can't stay interested i can't stay interested in this amount of this stuff right it's to me it's all connected with a period of time where people even more oppressed like you could only the thing that i say about billionaires now is like the only way someone can become a billionaire is because of wealth extraction absolutely i think that i feel like bill gates and warren buffett might be the only sort of like and even then if you got down i mean here's what i'd say about bill gates by the way we're in the badlands people i'm allowed to speculate about what what lies in the heart of bill gates i feel like bill gates is really doing his best to try to make the world a better place i do think the gates foundation does really good work i don't think that bill gates i'm sure that there's some kind of there's some something that he supported that supported something that you don't support john i know you've got a list i know you've got your aria stark list but what i would say is i would say is to me bill gates it meet to me bill gates is not the same as jeff bezos i like i think there are billionaires i i my basic thing is i don't think it should be legal to be a billionaire because i just don't think you can ever get that much money without people getting their their lives um ruined in some way yeah um is my general thought on on billionaires um i do think bill gates is also trying to give away all his money which again makes him to me a little bit more of a forgivable billionaire than the rest

but yeah yeah so this is my position i'm billionaires and this is uh i'm the resident swifty on the on tb at tbtb and uh taylor swift famously a billionaire and like a lot of people criticize her and come after her for that like there's no ethical billionaires and i'm sure i'm biased because of like i'm a fan for work and i i do think i mean who knows with any celebrity ever but like i think she's probably a good person at heart it seems but like seems to be my stance on this kind of stuff these days is like there there is billionaires like you're saying through extraction exploitation like if you're a billionaire because your family owns coal companies that's not the same as somebody who's a billionaire because they're a musician and people choose to buy their

music choose to go to their concerts like obviously jay-z is probably a billionaire too right do we

oh jay-z yeah absolutely and so beyonce and so it's like it's like capitalism is broken and and we live in a broken society in terms of that kind of thing like period but like yeah and i know like around like taylor swift especially there was like with errors tour there's all this stuff of like the prices for the shows were outrageous and how much control did she actually have versus secondary markets and ticket master and all this stuff and it's like but no one has to spend three thousand dollars to go to a concert like yeah i really wanted to go to whatever shows i couldn't afford to go we didn't go and so like there's a difference between people getting incredibly wealthy off of something like that or taylor's famously and other artists do too a lot now uh like she'll sell like 10 different versions of an album like in different colors so people feel like they want buy all the colors and and it's like again like it's exploitative in the sense that like you're you know your fans will buy into it but like nobody has to buy into it we all need to heat our homes right and so like if you're wealthy from energy or something it's not the same thing to me or if you're wealthy because you own uh uh uh a financial institution that does predatory lending like these are not the same things and so i do think like yeah all billionaires are evil i think capitalism is the problem and there are levels and nuance within that of like who the uber wealthy are versus like so i don't know that's

my big hot take on on billionaires well whatever like i feel like the the these museums that are full of of stuff that was you know either plundered or just created at a time where the only way you could make this crazy you know jewel encrusted thing was because most of the people in the area you lived were serfs right right it's like i just don't it's just and again this is my personal thing is i just i don't care about it anyways and i just also don't like i kind of wish that they would have gotten away with it and they just would have robin hooded it you know like get away with it shave it down sell it use the money to get to help some people you know who need help and you know i don't think that's what was going to happen i think they were trying to pocket it we'll never know because they got caught yeah they did which i but also we talked about this the other day but i was shocked to find that it also seems very french to me that nobody at the thought to call 9-1-1 it was a person cycling by right like that actually decided like oh those guys look legit they're in the vests but by the so so this kid pedro he is all decked out he shows up at the louvre he um it's closed because it's just been heisted and uh and i think the story is actually very cute because he started seeing himself pop up and he basically decided that he thought it was fun that nobody knew who he was and there was a mystery so he set his instagram account to private so nobody could find him and he basically just thought like this is funny let me just like let's just see how this plays out let's see how long it takes them to figure out who i am and then they finally did find him and he just basically said um he one thing i thought was pretty funny was he said i've been dressing this way for like two years for i think he said i've been dressing this way for less than a year he goes uh which i think is kind of cute that he admits to the fact that when you're 15 years old you couldn't have been doing anything for very long like he doesn't try to he doesn't he's not trying to go like yeah i don't know man it's just how i dress whatever like this is how i've always dressed since i was two what's the like the the way an adult would handle an affectation yeah might be to be like hey this is just who i am man this is like whatever he's like yeah i've been doing this for like about a year i've been trying it i'm liking it it's working for me like he the in the interview in the ap which i just would recommend everyone go find if you care about the story this kid comes off to me as very charming very self-aware he's not trying to be something he's not he's just like i like dressing this way because i think it looks kind of cool he says i like to dress chic i think he says in the article and like he's not he's also not trying to overstate the case and you know i just i don't

know he seems he seems like a likable kid to me yeah i'm i'm 100 on board with you and anti-andrew on this one um like if i agree like if it was like the detective i would be like all right come on bro like you're not the pink panther or whatever right that would be maybe a little it would also be sort of a little unprofessional potentially right but like the fact that it's like just a like a random passerby and he happens to be 15 and like you said like he's like trying something out like good for him like i love the confidence like if i was 15 i'm just doing whatever my friends are doing and like not trying to like go against the tide in any way this kid's like just doing his own thing trying new stuff and he looks he looks great and he looks yeah he does look good looks dashing and so like i i'm happy for this guy i think he looks he's like a sweet He sounds like a sweet kid or I'm with it. Yeah, we support him.

Good. Andrew is outvoted. Okay.

Well, don't look at me, Lewis over there is this real man.

Before we did the show, you're fitting right in as the co-bro of the show, John, because you and I did the classic thing that Andrew and I do, which is we did not an entire show, but we did a healthy amount of content that we didn't record about the latest in the world of the sports gambling kind of sort of. Well, there was some new, I guess. a new indictment over the yeah over the weekend or late last week with these um with a couple of major league pitchers including a guy named jonathan class a who's a guardian emmanuel class a sorry jonathan class a is a different what is jonathan class a he's a jonathan class he's there's another oh he's another different pitcher yeah john he's more jonathan john there's no h yeah okay uh emmanuel class a you're right who's by the way if i remember right A pretty well-regarded pitcher.

Is he a closer? Yeah, he's a closer for Cleveland, and he's an absolute stud. He's been one of the best relief pitchers in baseball the last four or five years.

And he was pulled last season, right, over suspicion around this? Am I right about that, or was he just hurt?

I don't know if it was him or his teammate, maybe, or he's, like, who I think was also one of the people also that got arrested or indicted over this. I don't think he was hurt. The class had been hurt. Maybe he was hurt. He was hurt. I'm looking, actually, I'm looking up his numbers right now, because he was hurt for a season or so dude his era is 1.88 he he like seriously he is unbelievable like he has he's had this run like yeah since 2019 really where he's been oh interesting i i forgot this in 2020 he did not play because of ped suspension oh that's what it

was i knew that what i remember was the guardians got this guy or there was some talk about i don't know if probably the mariners were going like we got to try to get this guy or something and it was like and then he got popped for peds and it was like well thank god yeah we didn't get this guy um emmanuel class a and luis ortiz have been placed on administrative well they were placed on administrative leave in july while mlb investigated them for potentially violating gambling policies now they're being indicted on this and basically the doj alleges that between may of 2023 and june of 2025 class a and ortiz coordinated with at least two bettors in order to manipulate prop bets on specific pitches. According to the indictment, the unnamed bettors won at least $400,000 on these prop bets. The mechanics of the scheme, as described in the indictment, are simple. The bettors, using multiple gambling platforms, would wager large sums of money that Class A or Ortiz's first pitch of a specific inning would be a ball or would be under a certain speed. Ortiz and Class A would then start the inning off with a breaking pitch well outside of the strike zone, and the bettors would cash in. Now, this is all alleged, obviously, and I know Class A's attorney is saying that he has never done this and he would never do this, so this is alleged. But what I will say to this is I am shocked that there was a bet that you could put down that a pitcher would throw a ball as their first pitch because the whole thing with the sports betting, The reason that I've always said it's not rigged was because I was always thinking of of it in the larger sense of team sports where it'd be so hard for like the Seahawks as a team to agree to not cover.

Right. Like I've always been the White Sox, the Black Sox scandal.

Yes, that was a whole team. Right. Yeah. Like I've always been I'm I'm so naive. I've always just been like the reason there's not like, you know, the reason that there's not more cheating as it relates to gambling in team sports is because you have to get so many people on the same thing. page and even then it'd be hard to do because you'd have to actually it'd be as hard as just doing the thing you were like it'd be as hard as winning to nail some exact you know point spread or under or whatever yeah but what is really easy to do and what we're learning too on the basketball side with the allegations against like Terry Rozier yeah excuse me it's like if you have a bet where all the pitcher has to do is throw it in the dirt for the first pitch that's insane to

yes yeah and you could see or now that we're talking as we're talking about i do remember it came up like in this season there was a game where ortiz literally like bounced the pitch in the darkest first pitch and everyone at the time was like that's a very fishy like that's not even like guys have wild pitches and stuff but like it was it there's the situation of it it was like no sense it seems so deliberate at the time even the people were like there is something fishy

about this yeah so i mean you were saying before we were recording that like one of the i mean what here's what i was saying i feel like we're gonna hear more and more about this and there's i mean you got the nba thing although the thing about the nba that the terry roger thing and the chauncey billups thing is i was reading an article today that's saying at least as the chauncey billups and chauncey billups is the coach of the um well he is technically the coach of the portland trail

blazers right now although he's on suspension technically tiago splitter is the coach of this the blazers right at this moment that definitely sounds like a dj that you would see in vegas but he was with the spurs back in the day with duncan and stuff tiago splitter big brazilian

dude but um the chauncey billups the erstwhile coach of the portland trailblazers was one of people named in this investigation and that

main allegation to him i think there's sort of two things but the main one is that he was involved in these illegal poker games where he was the like celebrity there to get rich guys to come play but then the game was rigged what i was reading this morning is that the fbi is gonna have a really hard time proving that chauncey billups knew that those games were rigged sure now it doesn't mean he didn't do it but it does mean that the case is probably not rock solid ironclad and that also that the the point shaving that there's also some some allegation that chauncey billups may have been involved in some point shaving stuff but that's also going to be very hard to prove what i was reading this morning was like the fbi's case against chauncey billups is not it's not

a slam dunk so to speak you know with the crack team at the fbi these days that's really shocking

to hear yeah and that's the thing too it's like of course with this fbi led by cash patel yeah of like i would be i would be very unsurprised if this whole thing ends up falling apart

Also, the irony of, not to get too political, I know people listen to TBTL to get away from politics. John, we're in the Badlands. We can say whatever we want. Horse cock. You don't have to celebrate, sir. The irony of Kash Patel, the FBI director who famously lives in Las Vegas and is flying back and forth from Vegas, D.C., is like, the irony of him living in Vegas, presumably because he loves Las Vegas, a city known for gambling it's just i don't know something about that i don't know if it's irony but it's just very funny to me the coincidence of it all well and the fact that this that this fbi

is obviously now i mean unfortunately donald trump has been able to achieve what he always accused like biden of doing which is like weaponizing using the yeah yeah weaponizing the dea the fbi any any sort of governmental organization that he can yeah before the fbi I believe, was, generally speaking, maybe post-J. Edgar Hoover, a fairly down-the-middle organization, which, by the way, probably slightly leaned conservative. You're telling me these FBI agents are raging libs? Right. At best, it was fair. At worst, it was probably generally leaned a little law and order. But it was not what it is now, which is run by— Yeah, it was apolitical, and now it's just run by this guy who's— So when I see that Cash Patel is trying to go after Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier, I immediately go, what's the play here for the Trump administration politics? I can't not see. I can't not wonder what that is.

I'm guessing Chauncey Billups like hitting some game winning shots for the Pistons back in the day. Really back in the day. Screwed cash out of some cash or something.

So now it's probably illegal bet. Right. Yeah. But but all of that being said, I do think so. So, you know, we're trying to hold multiple concepts here at the same time. One is that this case from the FBI could be hard to prove and also could have been deployed because of the particular news cycle of that week. It's also possible that Terry Rozier did try to, like, you know, pull himself out with a foot injury so his buddies could make some money. That's also possible. um it's also very possible that it's a terrible idea for these sports leagues to all have gotten so friggin deeply in bed with the gambling interests because now it's just i mean and it's also possible and like a fourth thing is possible too which is that i used to always say like when when there was when everybody was betting on sports but through their bookies and stuff and and the sports leagues were being very like um high and mighty and very very um sort of like uh you know what's the word i'm looking for they were being very like um being very precious about no gambling mention ever yeah they want to be separated from it like they know

it's happening they but it's like and that drives interest in these leagues and viewership but they

didn't want to like associate with it directly they were acting like they were above it all and better than it and i remember i don't know was it like al michaels getting in trouble for like al michaels sometimes during games because al michaels loves gambling oh does he oh yeah he's actually i have to say like i kind of love him i interviewed him yeah i love about sports betting but al michaels loves gambling but he knew that he wasn't allowed to um actually talk about you were never allowed to talk about the spread or the line if you're one of the announcers so he would just say something like like someone would miss like a chip shot field goal and he would go well that's very interesting to a certain group of people right now you know he's basically i don't think i ever noticed that he was cutely referencing the fact that something just happened you know that involved the line but that's how the sports league used to be they used to be so kind of like oh don't talk about it and i always thought that was really hypocritical because it also drove interest but actually i would take that again yeah over i'm watching the mariners play the blue jays in the American League Championship Series and FS1 is starting the broadcast by showing the parlay. The lines and stuff, yeah. And not in just the lines, but like the recommended parlay. parlay right the official fox sports one whatever it is fan duel god knows who they literally are like putting it on the screen like here's our official fox sports one recommended parlay you

should be playing i mean yeah it's funny you talk about the al michaels thing i guess i never really picked up on that so like i maybe there's certain naivete like i i've done some sports betting over the years like in my life like but it's choosing spreads or money lines it's never been like this like we talked about before the show like kind of referencing with carrie roger like the prop betting or stuff like this but um i it wasn't until about two years ago and this is embarrassing to maybe say because i i grew up like watching sports center every morning like before you know getting ready for school like i grew up on that stuff for the first like 18 years of my life like all the time and it wasn't until a couple years ago when like there was really this proliferation of espn bet or whatever and draft kings and all these things were just in your face all the time that i realized when i was a kid chris berman big nfl guy on the spn a lot of folks know was doing exactly with me leather well he was but he was on that he was that when he was yelling at

the people off off screen or oh i don't know do you know about you're with me leather i don't know that one it's the story that like made the um you know i mean it's so rude i can't believe that

that's so damn rude was he was like yelling in between takes or something no you're with me

leather was a totally different story that was like it made dead spin like somebody's story of being i think being in i want to say it was like arizona maybe for the super bowl because you know they there's some law they have to play it in glendale arizona three out of every four years and so there i think it might have been around super bowl time somehow there was this thing and And the story goes there was a guy and his buddy and they were at some sort of event party open bar situation. And his friend, his buddy, had been really interested in the affection of a certain young lady at the at the event, had been talking to this person and had been, you know, maybe hoping that they might spend some time together later and and thought that it was going in a good direction for him. And then the woman was wearing like a leather coat or something that was memorable. and apparently right when this is going yeah go on right when his friend thinks that maybe he's making some progress in this department berman breezes through this is by the way not a young chris berman no this is a berman of 10 years ago berman breezes through and like looks and goes and says you're with me leather exits the function and i believe the person in the leather jacket may have exited the function with berman that was the story at dead spin yeah well so that chris

berman that that that feminist chris berman yes exactly he when i was a kid he would every like sunday for sunday nfl countdown or wherever they called it back then he would say like give his predictions for games and he'd be like jacksonville 27 chicago 19 and there's all these like obscure weird scores that you don't actually and it's like but not only why care but it's like there's scores that just don't really happen regularly in football and it was only a couple years ago i realized i'm like oh because he was doing that based on the spread it wasn't like 21 to 14 a very common score it was always like 23 to 18 and you're like nobody scores 18 points and then it was like i realized like later that was like oh yeah he was just telling gamblers my prediction is like you're gonna beat the spread or not here and it was like subtle but which yeah i don't know so it was always there yeah you don't really watch that much did you see that the giants fired dable today uh i that was in the group chat with my friends who are giants some giants fans i saw that yeah i don't watch so you don't watch like monday night

football very often never it's because you know berman is still doing they still have berman doing the fastest three minutes and i'm just like i mean god bless him but like we're ready we're ready we're ready to retire that bit like when i was a kid i'm because i'm older than you i remember i remember when sports illustrated wrote an entire piece about how unbelievably funny chris berman's nicknames for people were yeah and i remember reading it and being like this guy's great he calls jim deshaies two silhouettes on deshaies like these these are the worst so these are the absolute i mean chris berman just happened to be like in bristol connecticut working at espn when nobody before had ever like said funny nicknames for players during like highlights so i guess i give him credit for that but they are really the worst and it's like it's so funny to me that like they still let him do the they let him do the recap like the quick you know sports recap of the football games during monday night football at halftime because he's just manifestly bad at it yeah don't understand it he also occupies the

space that i just like find so um oh obnoxious but like so he's famously like what he went to

brown right like he went to an ivy i think he went to an i know he went to an ivy i think it was brown okay and so like he occupies the space like and this isn't across pro sports but i think it's especially egregious in football he went to brown by the way yeah so yeah i'm so glad that occupies occupies brain space in my head no where chris berman went to college but like it's one of those things where it's like especially in football if anyone is like went to a prestigious university coaches players anyone it's like they're special because of that because they're not just like a meathead or where i mean like not to be i played football right not to be derogatory people play football but like it's just this like well look at this put him on the pedestal he's a chris berman's a genius because he went to brown and he's so much he's such a smart football guy and i think you know like ryan fitzpatrick who was a harvard mediocre quarterback his whole career i do like but come on fitz magic you're not a fitz magic guy he was a jet he had some fun like i'm not anti ryan fitzpatrick but but my but it's like people but like he still has this career in broadcasting because he was like the harvard guy you know like they're like he's funny or whatever

but like that became part of his whole mark sanchez another current broadcaster well he

usc yeah um yeah i don't know i just like i just think maybe i'm just over blowing it because burman especially is kind of grading but like there is this let me ask you this how would you

feel i'm by the way i'm with you see i didn't know burman went to brown so i didn't know the rep the rap on burman of being like smart like a smart guy who likes football exactly what i can tell you is on his wikipedia page and i have to assume he was the one who asked that this did this i feel like if we were to go into the edit history of this wikipedia page you would be it'd be bis kerman under it's brown alum oh one underscore berman that photo official photo for him is a photo of him on stage singing walking on a thin line with huey lewis in the news and he's just and it's like it's the goofiest picture i've ever seen but i have a feeling that berman thinks it's badass uh-huh should we use it for the show pic today or is that giving him undo is that giving him what he wants is that further promoting this photo i just pulled it up

as you're talking about and my meat thought was like oh should we use this for the show because i picked because i really wanted to use the kid from the louvre as the show pick but but this might have to be it this might have to be i think in following the tradition of the

photo being non sequitur to the show title because if we use the kid and then we call it right don't look at me lewis that's i think don't look at me lewis with this picture of a very sweaty chris berman singing walking on a thin line with huey lewis from the news yeah i think that might

be great so yeah that that deal that's the show pick for sure okay yeah i don't know whatever and like chris berman seems like benign other than the fact that he's kind of like an obnoxious person i

think he's both benign and banal it's the problem for me with him you know what i mean like i just don't i just i it's one of those things where i think you know what chris berman is he's the good and plenty of sports broadcasters he was invented when we didn't have as good of sports broadcast right you know what i mean he was invented when we didn't have mina kimes he was invented when we didn't have we didn't have like we didn't have katie nolan we didn't have good we didn't have the sports gossip show we didn't have good we didn't even have dan patrick and kenny main we just didn't have as good of sports people doing the the broadcast and and now we do now we have better people and and now we should use them and we don't need we don't need good and plenties and we don't need chris berman that's what i would say i wholeheartedly agree okay i'm struggling to find the uh let's see here because again have i mentioned before that i'm doing a lot of things here today you're doing a great job thank you i'm trying to find our little outro music here and i'm uh why i spelled it rods w-r-o-d-s which i think is i'm gonna say that's been part of the problem here let's see here uh i got the song here do i have the song yes words tbtl outro now now we're cooking with gas all right that's gonna do it for today's edition of the program hey john thank you for hanging out today it's really fun man yeah it was a lot of fun

great great talking to you and uh love doing it love love love talking to the tens nice uh we're

going to have uh jeff hiller on the show tomorrow who doesn't know what a 10 is but um but still was an absolute delight to talk to so um we'll look forward to that in the meantime everyone have a great monday uh stay safe take care of yourselves i've got a phone call to make to my parents now uh we'll see you tomorrow for more imaginary radio in the meantime please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all i didn't screw it up this time you nailed it dude

Thank you.

But sometimes we also record it days in advance and put it on the internet. That's what happened with Thursday and Friday because Avengers traveled. And when we were getting ready to record those shows, he said, OK, I got the show numbers for you. And he gave them to me and they were wrong.

Hi. Can I help you guys?

Sorry, John, my parents are here. I'm trying to do my job.

What's going on? You guys are saying goodbye. OK, bye. I love you. Drive safe. OK, see you later.

My God in heaven. Mom, I'm recording the show. What is wrong with these people?

All right, take four.

Power out.