Muse

We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways.

Oh, yeah. Oh, you got it.

One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville, I needed a new heel for my shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they call Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was a style at the time.

TBTL! I got recognized on the street today. The guy had already met me and then forgotten he met me and then recognized me from TV and then remembered me again.

What a space. Like, what is that about? I don't actually think that that space is real. I think people just keep saying that it's real and saying that, like, that there's stuff out there, but it's like, well, we're never going to know for real. You can't go there.

What I love to think about this is a puzzle, and each of every one of us is an integral piece that puts a big picture, and once we're all together, it puts a big picture. The show lets us to see the big picture. Yeah.

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

That's a tuna, bro.

My name's Luke Burbank. I am your host.

I'm in it to win it.

Coming to you from the shadow of the Smithsonian Institution here in Washington, District of Columbia, where it's a beautiful November day.

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

And we've arrived, everyone, at episode 4,500 and at 99 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. We got Russell Wilson in the news, people. Mr. Unlimited. Cancel your plans. We all need to sit down and take a moment to consider what Russell Wilson is up to. Because it's surprising, even by Russell Wilson standards. We're going to talk about that, a lot of other stuff, with this guy, longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. I've got an update on him, by the way.

I do have an update on his physical status. He's still a beast.

He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now.

Good morning, my friend. Good morning. I am hitting send on a text, and now you have my undivided attention. I wanted to explain to my dad what Hemingway cats are, because they are visiting the Hemingway house. Are they going to Key West? Yeah, they're in Key West, but don't worry. There's somebody staying at their house. Nobody robbed my parents. They have a lot of security, and they have a military. An arm of the military is actually house-sitting for them, so nobody get any ideas. But, yeah, they're in Key West right now.

They've actually requested the National Guard be deployed to their house in an unusual move.

Anyway, yeah, they're in Key West.

Are Hemingway cats just cats that like to hang out at the Hemingway house?

They're expat cats. They like to go to cafes in Europe.

They famously said bankruptcy starts very slowly and then all at once. Is that a Hemingway quote? I think they're known for that.

Is that a Hemingway quote?

I always attribute it to Hemingway. I'm not sure, but I literally just said this to Becca the other day. It's one of my, and the listeners of the show will know this, It's one of my most oft-quoted things, which is bankruptcy starts slowly and then happens all at once, I think was maybe what Hemingway said.

I definitely know that quote. I think I know it through you or whatever. I definitely know it's something you say a lot. I think it can be applied to a lot of things, like relationships, which is also a sad thing to think about. And I don't want to think about that on a Monday. But I think the thing that makes them Hemingway cats, and I think there are still a lot of them. I've never been there. This is my understanding. I do think there's a lot of them still around his home that he lived in in Key West. But specifically, I think they have extra toes on their front paws. I think that's known as a Hemingway cat. Oh, sure.

Like Maine Coon cats have that as well.

Do they? Polydactyl or something? Polydactyl. Yes. They're polycats, basically. I see. Did he like those especially? I don't know that he knows what. He just texted me and said he's going to go see the Hemingway house.

No, I meant Hemingway.

Oh, I thought you meant my dad. We've got to be specific here.

What's Bob's policy on polydactyl cats?

I think he's about to learn. I don't know. I don't know. I've exhausted my knowledge of this.

I'm trying to, on my phone, so I don't take down our internet connection, I'm trying to search Hemingway bankruptcy quote.

Oh, I thought you were looking at Hemingway cat. Okay. I can tell you that.

It's not Hemingway, but it feels kind of spiritually connected. I watched Citizen Kane yesterday on the flight here.

Oh, I could use another rewatch on that. What did you think? Did it make you feel good about the press?

It was shockingly prescient. Yeah, right? I mean, it's really crazy because it's basically Rupert Murdoch. I mean, I think it was about William Randolph Hearst probably, right? Was that who it was? But I mean, I was just like, oh, you could have made this yesterday about Rupert Murdoch, you know? It's crazy. I guess as long as we've been around, or at least since we've had the written word, there's been some asshole white guy trying to run the media and start wars, basically. Yeah, yeah, essentially. The reason I watched Citizen Kane on the flight was because they did not tell us until we were already in the air that the Wi-Fi was not going to work on this cross-country flight, which I know that's not really on the crew, but I do feel like the airline needs to let you know days, if not weeks in advance of that. I need to, first of all, emotionally prepare myself for no Wi-Fi, and also I need to download a million things. And sometimes you'll get an update on your phone in the Alaska Air app that says, hey, by the way, there's going to be no Wi-Fi on this flight. They did not do that for this flight. We just got up in the air, and I kept trying to join it. And then at some point, the flight attendant said, oh, by the way, the Wi-Fi doesn't work on this flight. Just casually. That wasn't impacting our lives in an intense way.

And you said cross-country, so this was west coast all the way to D.C. direct flight? Portland, Oregon to District of Columbia. Damn, that is a long flight.

that's at least five hours right more pretty much and now now again to their credit you could watch all of the stuff yeah i don't understand by the way how that works there's no wi-fi but they can still stream movies and television to my laptop device that you choose yeah i don't know either

because it's kind of all through the same tube right but i don't know it would seem so but yeah

so they had and it was it's fair i have such a weird first of all i always use the wi-fi when available so it's rare that i'm just like using their kind of their whatever you would call it like you know downloaded movies or something but even then i i mean i mean oh i also watched her that tells you how long the flight was i watched citizen kane and her i finally watched her for

the first time i know that you you watched it back when it came out but i finally watched it for the first time on an airplane a year ago yeah right i meant to write a blue ski which i couldn't

because there was no Wi-Fi, which is, I've never done Ayahuasca, but I've watched her on an airplane, so I think I get it. Like, it was emo. Like, did you have a strong emotional reaction to that movie when you were watching it on the airplane?

I remember...

Her, not Citizen Kane.

Yeah, I remember liking it. I don't remember having a specifically strong reaction, other than just, like, literally... I remember when it came out, I was living in L.A., everybody said this movie would push a lot of your buttons, you would like it, and it just took me 10 years to watch it. That's all I remember. And I remember enjoying it on the plane.

I'm just amazed at how much they got it right. Like, it is such a roll of the dice when you do a sort of a movie about technology and the future and what it's all going to look like. And, like, they killed it. I mean, from the sort of earbud to the, and this is before, I think, you know, we were talking about AI, really. Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? like they're calling him operating systems but like even his phone like i want his phone and they made this movie 10 years ago like i want the technology from the movie her that was made

10 years ago you know what my reaction is to you saying this is you talk about this came out 10 years ago and it was so prescient i think that i watched it about a year ago and what has happened in the past year makes it even more prescient if that makes sense like i recognize the modern society in there but we weren't having as many conversations and we are having a lot of conversations about humans entering romantic style relationships with AI or at least like personal relationships with AI and I obviously that was you know that's been a conversation in sci-fi for a while and it's been a conversation in real life for a little bit but I feel like just in the past year since I've seen that old movie it's like really ramped up yeah I think

one of the things that they really nail about it is that we will eventually our phones will not even be like everything will be ai and our phone will just be this thing that sits in our pocket that kind of like the way that we use our phone right now is it's a big screen and i look at a lot of things on it but essentially the way that this the way that the movie her kind of describes it is he's not even looking at his phone most of the time i mean he's using it as a camera for his AI girlfriend to see things.

But basically, like, his phone is not, like, it's all AI, and then he just, the phone is just kind of the thing that brings it to his ears and his eyes. But, like, when he's playing that video game that's just, like, projected into his apartment, I don't know if you remember this, but he's, like, it's some character that's trying to walk up a snowy hill. Yeah. And then he encounters this kid that's a, this, like, round kid thing that's a huge asshole.

Yeah, right. I did forget about that. Saying F you to him all the time. Yeah, right, right, right.

but he like one of the things too is so great about the movie is he's like empathizing with this character in this video game because he's like just he's just a kid on this planet and no one's taking care of him it's why he's so angry it just was it was just it's just such a good and also i really i need i need to figure out who did the um the style the wardrobe on that movie because i just want my look to be joaquin phoenix in the movie her yeah yeah it's very very nerdy hipster right nerdy hipster kind of sort of high-waisted pants and also by the way the design touch that i didn't notice the first time i watched the movie but i'm in love with it is so because his phone he needs the the camera on his phone to be sort of peeking out of his breast pocket so that scarlett johansson can see everything but i always i remember thinking well would the pocket fit that no it wouldn't he has a large like clothes pin or like a diaper pin rather he has a diaper pin that he's looped through his pocket so that it closes his pocket off just enough so that the phone can sit where it needs to sit and all of his shirts have this diaper pin through the pocket so that scarlett johansson can see everything and i just love it as a touch oh i don't think i noticed that

i also might have been watching well i guess you watched on a small screen too if you're on a plane

but i didn't was on my laptop and i was nervous you had this experience it sounds like the other day when you were watching the chair company oh my god there's quite vivid scene at the end of the fifth episode like dude there was like an almost sex scene in this movie where the scarlett johansson character like hires a surrogate oh yeah yeah right yeah like a physical surrogate for him and i was watching i was like please please please do not take your clothes off please do not take and then I thought of you on the plane with a very explicit Santa Claus-related scene.

No, wasn't it? It was Dickens, right? Oh, Dickens. Oh, it was Dickens. So Ebony's your Scrooge? Appropriately enough, yeah. I don't want to give anything away, but the very—

I don't think you're ruining— I don't think you're spoiling anything.

Well, I don't know, though. It was a moment that it sounds like everybody's talking about from that show, so I will just say this. The very last shot of one episode of the show the chair company that we're talking about is extremely graphic and you see it for maybe what two seconds for five seconds tops or something and it's literally the last shot of an episode and you're just watching the show and there's you know it's you're watching with headphones on it's totally absurd there's tons of weird stuff but you don't have to worry about people looking over your shoulder or you know just being across the aisle and glancing at your phone which is a natural thing to do I was watching the guy in front of me like you know kind of catty corner to me watching his uh transformers movie which i don't understand why you'd re-watch that but whatever everybody has their own uh weaknesses but anyway i uh i see this last scene and i don't know if you'd be surprised by my reaction i was surprised by my reaction because what i did was i just immediately i was watching on my phone so it's pretty small screen oh yeah i just put my hand up over the phone and laughed my ass off now i think let's see this was the flight where i had an entire row to myself i was still in the aisle though i was in the

nobody nobody could see maybe behind you well the thing is nobody's super close actually the truth

is if i had been at the window seat and nobody in my aisle nobody would have seen it at all unless somebody was happened to be looking between the chairs right when you are on the aisle your media is a little exposed though like anybody with kind of a wandering eye could just be looking but it happened so quickly but it was also so unbelievably funny to me and it was funny to me that it was happening to me like the whole thing was so funny to me that I don't think I usually have this reaction usually I would be really nervous or scared I'd start crying I'd call a flight attendant over to help me but I just like put my hand over it and I just think I started belly laughing so hard in that moment because everything was so absurd and suddenly my life

was absurd because of it well speaking of watching your neighbor's media the person the guy next to me on the flight was also watching a joaquin phoenix he was watching like joker 2 oh even jokerier but say it for that you know it was a it was a weird experience because i've all i've heard is that that movie is just an absolute disaster so i was watching it but of course i'm not hearing the sound i'm just kind of looking at it and i'm trying to assess

without audio if it's really bad which is it's impossible like i can't tell that the movie is bad or good um without being able to actually hear the dialogue but at some point my computer was paused and his phone was paused and we both had joaquin phoenix on the screens in very different sort of you know performances and i i like kind of tapped him on the shoulder i said we got a lot of joaquin phoenix happening oh you said that and he yeah and he didn't seem as like intrigued by that as i expected i thought that was a weird coincidence that we both had joaquin phoenix on the screen and again very different joaquin phoenix's i could see somebody

being a little bit unnerved by that he was across the aisle from you but in the same row he was next to me oh he's right next to you oh that's even that that seems even more normal honestly um but uh yeah i guess people people are protective of their space on planes and It probably just came out of the blue and just didn't know what to say.

It did a little bit, but, like, you know, this is a five-hour flight. Again, enough time to watch both Citizen Kane and her. And I sort of tapped him on the shoulder, and I said, hey, we've got a lot of Joaquin Fingis going on in this row. He goes, oh, yeah. And then not another word for five hours, which, again, I'm not looking to make a friend.

But he doesn't know that.

Yeah, that's what he was, I guess, worried about. But, like, dude, you should be so lucky. I'm a good friend. There's a lot of people that would like to be my friend, and I'm just trying to chat with you about Joaquin Phoenix and you're too cool for that?

He was wearing a Joaquin Phoenix hat and I asked him to name 10 movies. Oh, by the way, speaking of movies, I saw Begonia this weekend too. That's still on your list, I assume?

Yes, and in fact, Becca and I were considering going and seeing it on Saturday, but we ended up doing other stuff. But how was it?

I liked it. You know, it's Yorgos Lanthimos. so like he Lanthimos Lanthimos I want to say he writes really dark stuff and so you know I think the last time I saw one of his movies Kinds of Kindness I was talking about how much I absolutely loved it but also felt like there's a lot of people in our listening audience who would not love it so I would say kind of the same thing about this I really liked it and if you're going to see it I really like the favorite I want to re-watch the favorite that's the least sort of weird weird right he did the lobster which was very weird

Yeah, so if I like the favorite, that means I'm probably, like, entry-level Yorgos versus the, like, high-weirdness Yorgos.

Didn't you see Kinds of Kindness? Did you not see that? Oh, see, I thought you saw that. This is, yeah, I don't remember the favorite as well. I remember loving the favorite because it's, of course, got Emma Stone because she's in all of his movies, but it also has Olivia Colman in it. I think Olivia Colman.

Olivia Colman?

Yeah, I'm deeply in love with her, as a lot of people are. I watched her in that British mystery show, whatever that one was called, and fell in love. And she's just so good. And so both of them pop off the screen really well. I don't remember the plot. I remember it was weird for a period piece, but I didn't put it in. When I was watching that movie, I wasn't thinking this is a Yorgos film, where now when I go and see his movies, I'm very aware that this is going to be a bit of a trip, right? And so I would say that this movie is pretty dark. It's pretty upsetting at times. and there are some things that happened that I can't kind of talk about because it truly would ruin the movie but my big takeaway

is there a scene with Charles Dickens

there he is the very last scene the very very last shot there's a little bit of that kind of shock a little bit in kinds of kindness not to the same degree but one thing that hit me and I hesitate to say this because I guess I'm only talking to people who've seen all of these same things but there is clearly something going on in the zeitgeist unsurprisingly during this time of of our history but like i am just seeing so many through lines between like literally peacemaker um which we were talking about the other show begonia um pluribus which i'm caught up on now i mean there's kind of sci-fi elements to these things but also like the human aspect of it and like a lot of just kind of like are aliens are aliens coming to earth because we can't trust ourselves with it i kind of like vibe superman i would put in there too because that again like it kind of explores him as it both as an alien and as an other and it's just sort of interesting i feel like there are other things too what's the other one weapons a little bit too not alien but i just feel like there's a darkness there is a darkness at least the things i'm watching i guess that was another thing on

a saturday night becca and i were scrolling through the uh you know the various apps and such and i was like do you want to watch weapons she was like what is that i was like you haven't heard of weapons you haven't seen kids running around their arms stiffly as a reference to that movie um we did not end up watching that what did we watch i don't know we started something and i just fell fast asleep this is my life now andrew it was 8 45 and i was absolutely out like a light uh-huh because like i'm that guy now i'm that kind of dad energy and not even dad granddad energy where if it's like after about 8 p.m also it's getting dark so early now i think my internal clock is really screwed up because it's like i start getting tired at about 5 30 because it just feels like well it's nighttime it's been night for a while and so by like 8 45 we started streaming something and then i was just like oh you know what it was we started watching um what is it like house of dynamite or something oh i don't know the like it's the new catherine bigelow film she made the hurt locker oh okay and uh it's basically about a nuclear it's it's essentially the like the situation room where there's a nuclear speaking of dark where there's a there's basically like the the people who are in charge of like making sure that we don't have a nuclear war get feedback that says that there's been a nuclear event launched and they have to decide if we are going to respond in kind but also it could be a false alarm so these people have to decide if they're going to end the world literally it's like mutually assured destruction and do they are they going to end the world because of this information they're getting or are they going to maybe think that it's a false positive and not

end the world and like what's that feel like see that sounds like it's somehow in the vein of what i've been talking about as well what i was just blabbing about it just like yeah by the way so this sounds really interesting and am i right did bigelow do zero dark 30 too because i i know that

that sounds definitely like a thing that could have happened yeah anyway um that's that's what i traded no i mean i think it's in her kind of her sort of jaune yeah because i feel like my my

instinct when you say that name is oh i like her but then i'm like do i know anything by her and well i thought the hurt locker was really good yeah that got good reviews i never saw but anyway how's a dynamite is a movie not a not a series it's a i think it's a movie again i only watched

10 minutes of it by the way this is also how grandpa lee i am it's a movie about the end of the world and it did not hold my intention enough to not fall asleep like it couldn't be more like a gripping subject matter and yet i was like but i could also be asleep right now that's where i went speaking of i don't get political andrew but um i had such an kind of i don't know confusing and maybe positive conversation with my lyft driver from the airport last night who was um originally from afghanistan is only lived here with his family for i think like two years or something three years and totally voted for donald trump and i was like again you know i don't i try not to get too political with the lyft or uber drivers just because why but we were talking about something and somehow trump came up and i just assumed like well this person is here from somewhere else and has to be a little unnerved by all the ice stuff and everything and like he said yeah well i voted i voted for trump because i just think he's not like a normal politician i thought dude how have you only been here two years and you're already that guy like we just need someone to shake it up really dude welcome to the country by the way you're here two years and you're already ready for someone to shake it up yeah but i was like okay well i said well you know i go obviously your you know legal paperwork is in order and and as is your family's but can you imagine if they came and arrested you because of how you looked and he goes yeah that really does concern me and i was like yeah because even if you can prove that you are allowed to be here it could be a month later he goes yeah i don't really like that at all and by the end of the conversation i think i had talked him out of being a trump supporter really yeah so he's not going to vote for him next time well we'll you know we'll see if you know if given the chance but it was it was very interesting because you know you and i talk about this off air mostly but like this kind of feeling of like it's so i i'm at the point where generally speaking if i find out that somebody is you know maga or like a trump supporter I just don't even really engage on that topic because I just don't think there's any amount of evidence I can present that's going to talk that person out of that position. And this was the rare thing where I really did feel like between Reagan National Airport and the JW Marriott, I think I actually moved the needle for this guy, which was kind of, again, I'm not going to, you know, I'm going to just retire. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead on that. I'm not trying to talk. everybody you know over to my side of things but it was a rare experience where as I sort of presented also he maybe just wanted a tip but like as I was presenting what I thought was a decent

case in a non kind of you know hopefully I mean non-lectury non-threatening kind of way it really did feel like he was like yeah that's actually a pretty good point or yeah I don't like that or I felt like again heaven forbid there's this guy's on the ballot again but I did feel like this this guy that i was talking to really was rethinking his donald trump support and i wonder how common

that actually is for for folks in the world i do think that you know well actually i don't want to finish that sentence i'm going to move on to something else and ask you a question how um

how did you get on the topic that i cannot tell you i think maybe begonia he had just seen it

it sounds like he's a big begonia weird jorge he's like did you see the last scene of that

episode of the chair company what a shocker yeah um i don't remember how it came up some oh you know what a part of it was my hotel is like almost across the street from the white house and he was saying oh yeah you're staying across from the white house and i said something like yeah i don't you know something to the effect of like that doesn't you know make me feel great right now or something so somehow we got on the topic of trump do you always stay in the same hotel because i remember you stayed there on january 6th well i was slightly outside of town where they had fewer security cameras.

Oh, okay, sorry. I thought you stayed in that hotel.

It was me and the guy from Bob's Burgers. I saw that guy on, because he was also on... He was on Mr. Show, that's how I know him. The Mr. Show, and then the Mr. Show reboot.

Oh, yeah, was he on the, I think it was called With Bob and Dave, I think it was called.

With Bob and Dave. A clip of With Bob and Dave came up on my TikTok feed the other day, and then there was that guy, Jay something.

Yeah, I'm blanking on his last name, But it is Jay, yeah And like he was a regular face On Mr. Show

He was on the Sarah Silverman show Like he was a made man Yeah, that's right Yeah, as far as like A certain kind of level of comedy That you and I really appreciate Yeah And then just like WTF

Why the face? Jay Johnston is his name I had to look it up But of course now that I say that I know that Yeah, I'm looking to see what I mean he was in so many things That we loved I mean little cameos here and there but also, like, he was a regular on the Sarah Silverman show. He played a cop, right? Yeah, yeah. And various things along those lines.

I think, was he, like, Sarah Silverman's sister's boyfriend or something, I think?

That rings a bell. Yeah, that sounds about right. It's been a long, long time.

I don't know why, I mean, I don't know why it is that I think, well, if you get good comedy, then you would also, I mean, there is a very short list of people who have terrible politics who get good comedy, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Like, I can't think of very many other than Tim Allen.

Yeah, well, Tim Allen is a big one for me.

You got Tim Allen. You got Jay Johnson.

Yeah, Rick Schroeder, I believe.

You got Ricky from Silver Spoons.

Sure, yeah.

But, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's weird that it makes me actually think, oh, maybe he wasn't funny. He just was adjacent to funny people who put him in things. I don't know.

There is – what I'm about to say here is a change of subject a little bit, but I just – I think the listeners are ready for it. Well, unfortunately, it doesn't get us out of unstable territory. But right before the show, I saw something on the show sheet that I was a story that I was unfamiliar with that maybe we'll get to in a little bit. And I and the link that you included only had one small mention of what the headline was. So I started Googling. I made that headline, by the way. Yeah, I know. But then there but there are headlines about it. And I kind of had a feeling. So I'm like, well, there's a link within the story. And then that one was like behind a paywall. I couldn't read it. So I start Googling around for this story, which we'll get to in a second. I'm not trying to be withholding. It's just not relevant to this. But the point is what I click on first, which I wouldn't usually do was instead of a instead of an article about it, I saw a quote unquote news story from Fox News about it. Right. And so the first thing I do and this is not my usual move is I just see, well, what do they have to say about this story? So I'm watching and I don't even really know. My comment is not here about their take on this particular story. It was a set up by a man behind a news desk, you know, like whatever. And now to talk more about it, and then he tosses to, via satellite, the boys from the something or other podcast. I don't know what the podcast was. I can tell you it wasn't TBTL. But in this kind of news-style setting—

If I booked a Fox News appearance and didn't invite you, would you be mad or relieved?

I would. There are times when people actually do invite us, believe it or not, to do things on their shows. And I always say, you can just do it yourself. And you're always making sure that I have a seat at the table. So I appreciate that. I don't feel like I need that.

We're going on Gutfeld Live tonight.

Hey, I booked that. Don't you take credit for that booking. Anyway. All I want to say, it was just, Luke, I'm not doing a good job of explaining it, but I think that you would understand. I had this just like, so he says, more on this. We turn to the boys from the blank podcast, and it cuts to four guys who look, they're all just total bros. They're all white, obviously, in their probably 20s or 30s.

I promise you, one of them has a hat on that has. Yes, I think it was backwards. Or LA upside down.

Oh, I didn't, maybe. I only saw it for a second. but there was just something about this context of being now we turn to the guy from the whatever podcast and listen, I do stuff like that, you know, like I'm going to be on KUOW later this week I, they're not turning to me because I have political insight on anything, I'm going to try to make fart jokes right, and so I kind of understand like, I don't want to totally debase what sometimes I am asked to do on a local level, but there was just something about these three white, just brosify bros sitting around this like kind of like a really cheap ass looking like somewhat curved sports center style panel table or something but like in their own square and they all look like super like kind of like giggly to be there so i just hit stop right away and there was just something about i just wasn't ready for him to turn to a panel of right podcast bros and some i keep thinking there's nothing left to die inside of me but something new died inside well that i kind of weirdly a positive yeah there's like there's more in there yeah that can die i have

more toes they can cut off when they're kind of i mean i'm not a hundred percent joking that like at least that means you are still alive here's the thing let me kill off the last of it that's i bet you it's not even like a high level bro podcast it's not even the nelk boys like there are like there are bro podcasts there are bussing with the boys and the nelk the nelk boys and you know full send and whatever like that fox news couldn't even get on because it's not even worth their time like the insane thing is i bet you that was like a fourth level bro podcast that that i've never even heard of that's that's who fox news was able to get on that because the

nelk boys were too busy printing money okay i they're probably i think that i can say we here but I'll put this mostly on me, have a pretty big blind spot when it comes to some podcasters that are huge. I mean, you are more plugged in. You know what? I'll back off of that. You're more plugged in because of TikTok and stuff. But there are tons of podcasts that just millions of people know about that I've literally never heard of before. So as I say this, you might have heard of this and maybe a bunch of our listeners have, but it's four guys from a podcast called Ruthless. I don't know if you've heard of that. Never heard of it. And I queued up this video again. They are ruthless. And it almost is depicted as two words. That's not the Andrew Schultz one. Maybe it is. I don't know. But I'll tell you this. Is there a guy with a kind of a Nazi haircut? You look it up. I can't tell because three out of the four of them are wearing baseball caps. One of them has it on backwards. The other two are forward. The guy who's not wearing a baseball cap is wearing sunglasses inside.

Okay. No, I've never heard of these people. A Republican podcast hosted by Josh Holmes, Michael Duncan, and there's somebody on the podcast who has a pseudonym, and their pseudonym is Comfortably Smug, which is actually kind of a good name.

Oh, yeah, I heard him say he introduced somebody as Comfortably Smug. I didn't know. I thought that was the name of another podcast. That's the name of the guy. Oh, God.

Josh Holmes, former chief of staff to Mitch McConnell, Michael Duncan, a partner at the conservative PR firm Cavalry, and Comfortably Smug, a lawyer who uses a pseudonym.

Well, this is interesting. While I would not agree with these guys, I depicted them as just idiots like me who go on to make fart jokes. But these guys actually have political experience.

They're actually working to tear America apart if possible. Yeah, they're, I guess, hence the name Ruthless. But yeah like It's crazy that I immediately knew It wasn't the Nelk boys I just keep bringing them up But it's like these Like there are these bro podcasts Where these guys are making millions And millions and millions of dollars And are too busy to go on Fox News Which for some reason is extra sad to me

Meet the GOP insiders Rebranding as the bad boys of conservative talk Is that what you were just quoting from By the way as you listed

Are you reading my Wikipedia page?

I am I am. Thank you, baby.

All right. Let's thank the donors. We don't have that Fox News money, Andrew. We have the donations of the tens of listeners, and that is how we can do this for our job. This is 100% listener-supported podcasting, and we want to thank Mike. duncan who's in columbia south carolina hey thank you mike luke maybe you could swing by how far

away are you from south carolina right now not that far i always forget that uh dc is i think below the mason dixon line right it's actually further south than i usually think yeah it is

pretty far south but you could head down there i feel like you could have yeah no i'm saying i'm

saying i'm closer to south carolina than than i usually i think of dc and new york as being kind of in the same area but really dc is pretty far south it's very close to columbia south carolina

oh i see i'm sorry you were saying that that dc is further south than you think yes yes i never

think of dc as the south right but virginia is the south yeah it is culturally you know it's not

the south petaluma california where eric jegger is oh eric we know eric yeah thanks as always eric Did Eric animate Oops the Dirty Monster? Exactly, and has done other stuff for us. Always great to see Eric, who supports the show in so many ways.

Appreciate you. Also, Abby Vanderveer is out there in Amsterdam, in the Nordholland. Is that a district of Amsterdam?

That I don't know. What I do know is Abby is our friend who was on Spotless one time. Abby restores paintings. Oh yes, I remember this Paintings, yes, Abby is the best

Is Nord Holland just North Holland? You gotta look that up, I don't know

What's the Nord? Hey dude, what's the Nord? What's the Nord? I guess that's just North Holland But I guess spelled In Dutch

That's right, thank you Abby Thanks also to Chris Walton Who's in Arlington, Massachusetts Nord, Massachusetts

Oh, I thought with Arlington we were going to get real close to D.C., but it's the wrong Arlington. It's the right Arlington for Chris, though.

It's exactly the right Arlington for Chris. Then Karen Jenkins is in Kenmore, Washington. That's close to home here. Home of the, what was it, the Savage Moose? The Savage Moose and Kenmore Lanes, of course. Where you, and I think it was you and Camaro Kev, although I think it was mostly you. By the way, I saw somebody the other day who was such a dead ringer for Camaro Kev. Oh, really? Wearing the exact kind of shirt Camaro Kev wears, exactly Camaro Kev's build. Kind of buttoned out. And I was with Becca, and I was like, that guy looks so much like Camaro Kev. She's like, oh, my God, he does. She goes, now, if you told Camaro Kev, if you took a picture of the guy and said, this guy looks like you, do you think he would agree? And I said, I don't know, because I think none of us can really know ourselves.

Yeah.

I think that it's weird when you see somebody who looks exactly like somebody and then you tell that person and they're like, I don't see it. I think it's a question of self-conception.

It can be. Although one time you said you saw somebody who looked just like me and then you sent me a photo and it was just, I mean, I'm not even saying he was better looking than me, but he was just like, he just was styled like me. He didn't look like me at all. He was just styled like me.

Well, I'll never forgive you for the fact that you don't think that the other guy whose name is Andrew Walsh, who somehow we got connected with.

Oh, I think that was him. Yeah, yeah, I think that was him. That's who we're talking about.

I think that guy not only has your name, but I think physically resembles you to a decent degree.

I'm so glad that you read it, because I swear the listeners are wrong. I can't find the photo now, of course, if I Google Andrew Walsh.

Isn't that guy like a teacher? Didn't we have somebody who that was their teacher or something?

Somebody reached out to me on Instagram, somebody quite a bit younger than me, I think maybe in his early 20s, maybe even a 19-year-old or something. And he reached out to me on Instagram a few years ago and said, are you the Andrew Walsh who was my teacher at whatever high school or whatever?

Because that teacher made a really good impression on that student.

That's right. And he was just, oh, he was just a beloved teacher. And I was like, no, not me, but keep me in the loop. I'd be interested or something. And then I think we talked about that on the show. So somehow did we – we brought them together somehow, right? I don't know how because we had them both on our show for a reunion. And, of course, we cleared it just to make sure that everybody was comfortable with that. But I can't remember how – did our listeners find him or something, the other Andrew Walsh?

I forget that part of it, but what I can't forget is that this guy was a dead ringer for you. He was not, though.

You're the only person who thinks that.

Has Genevieve seen a picture of him?

Yes, and everybody – I mean, I just remember this, and I believe the listeners were on my side mostly, just saying that he wears shirts like me and he has glasses like me. He has a beard. And he had a beard, but those are- He had a beard, he wears shirts like you. That's cosplaying as me, and I accept that he's obsessed with me, obviously. But he didn't, if you were to, well, never mind. But we don't look alike. If you styled him differently, I don't think you would have had the same thought. If you shaved his beard and he wasn't wearing glasses, you wouldn't say, hey, that man looks like Andrew Walsh. He was just styled like me.

Well, whatever he looks like, he looks like Andrew. walsh because his name is andrew walsh but then he changed his name remember remember when he said oh i'm changing my name he was taking a married name or something or something like that that's what that's the other thing so like the dream of the andrew walsh also died on our show which happens almost every day honestly think about it and yet shannon teton of federoy washington is

supporting it all even though even though every day leads inexorably towards the death the further death of Andrew Walsh's nationwide. Shannon is also helping pay for it. Thank you so much to our donors. We could not do this without you.

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

Alright Andrew, we are probably going to have time to do one of the two Top Stories. Now we sort of, I promoted Russell Wilson. I mentioned Russell Wilson, but then you mentioned

But I didn't mention it. I never said what the other story was. So we'll come, maybe

we'll do that one tomorrow yeah that sounds good to me okay great so that brings us to russell wilson on cameo which i found out about from a listener email uh and i'm going to remember the name of the person it's ryan listener ryan actually ryan sent an email that had a lot going on in it including the fact that like we were talking about hiring like a housekeeper or someone to kind of clean up clean up the house the other day and i was saying how my house is pretty tidy when you walk in um except the reason that i've hired this person occasionally is because she does like a deep clean she'll like clean the sinks and the oven and stuff like that and ryan was saying that his mother kept the cleanest house that anyone has ever been anywhere he said something like there are surgical theaters that are less clean than his mom's house and yet she hired a housekeeper, and that the only way that you knew that the housekeeper had been there was because they had consumed the cookies and brownies that his mother would cook.

What a gig.

Cookies and brownies for the housekeepers, and then Ryan and his dad were not allowed to touch the cookies and brownies, and the housekeeper would eat them, and that would be how you knew the housekeeper. Not because there was any change in the level of cleanliness of the home, it was because the treats had been consumed. And it was weird,

I think that I read the same email I guess the housekeeper would come in through the chimney And was dressed in like Red and white Antiquated red and white costume Almost I think with a big white beard

Yeah But the other thing that he mentions In his email I think Is That Russell Wilson is on Cameo And the way Ryan set it up was For $333 you can get Your own Russell Wilson cameo Now, I clicked on the link, and I think the price may have gone up. I feel like it's more than $333 now. It looks like it's $400. Well, I'm looking at it right now, and it says $333 on his intro page. I'm looking at it, and it says $467.35. Do you think it's different in D.C.? Are there two Russell Wilsons?

I don't know. I have the same number, and it makes sense because he was number three, right? So he priced it at $333. Oh, but maybe you're looking at a different package because it says $333+. So I wonder if it says book a personal video for $333 plus, which means I think maybe for special requests or whatever, the price could go up. But I am looking at it right now.

Can you play us a little bit? Ryan also says the Russell Wilson cameo is full of potential drops. But I actually haven't clicked on the link. Could you click on the link and favor us with that audio?

Yeah, just a little warning. I can't fast forward or pause or rewind this. Maybe I can pause, but I wouldn't be able to go back. And I heard this the other day. I turned on my car right as this was playing. And I was like, what the heck am I hearing?

What's up, guys? Russell Wilson here. I'm super, super excited about doing something I've been wanting to do for years. You guys have been asking for inspirational videos about faith, life, sports, anything you guys need, come your way. Unlimited videos on Canada. Let's go.

There it is. I mean, first of all, by definition, they are limited. Like, he cannot do an infinite number of them. Unlimited videos on Cameo. Maybe you haven't met Mr. Unlimited. Hey, you know what? I got to give him credit for sticking with the bit on that. Yeah. He's gotten Unlimited. He's been thoroughly roasted for that. Oh, yeah, that's true. And he is not giving up on Mr. Unlimited. Yeah. I kind of got to tip the cap to old Rusty on that one.

He's so cringey. He's so cringey. My feelings about him, you and I started to talk about this a little bit before the show, but I tried to keep my powder dry. But, like, my feeling of him just whipsaws back and forth so much. When I heard recently, and I do not follow the ins and outs of his career, but, like, he was a backup quarterback a couple of weeks ago. But then when the starting quarterback got injured, they skipped over him for the next game so like when I hear stuff like that I'm like oh man Russ Russ is really like he's just he's not going to pull out of this like whatever happened to him in his waning Seahawks years and then where he all the teams he went to afterwards like there was part of me after the initial sort of hurt like well let's let's see a little bit more spark in this guy let's see this guy's second chapter even though we did kind of leave Seattle thinking that he was better than he was and was left a little bit snottily which didn't leave a you know great taste in our mouth ew um but he may have he may have called an audible on the interception in the super bowl which yeah that's still for which i will never forgive him that was in fact an audible i think it was brady henderson reported that right and i've always wondered like how much truth there because he did some deep deep diving and that came out years later but yeah and so like there's all of that that stuff the ego of him was just always so large and it was like you know once he kind of turned on on the city a little bit you're like oh but then as he continues just dig deeper and deeper and it sounds like he was deeply unliked by his teammates unlike mr unlikable in denver and then but also like a you know kind of a nice guy i have a feeling he was humbled when he went to pittsburgh and like people generally i think he wanted to turn things around not just you know on the field but his reputation or whatever but then i was so anyway I sort of feel for him at times is my point and then I watch stuff like this I'm just like oh god man ew first of all this is something he's been wanting to do for a long time that's how he opens it this is something I've been wanting to do for a really long time and I don't I think that's why he

threw the interception in the Super Bowl yeah I think so

because he was distracted

dreams of starting cameo it was like I know I'm about to win the Super Bowl here if I hand off to Marshawn Lynch but I've always wanted to have a cameo

I always wanted to have a dialogue about faith and sports and pop culture unlimited Unlimited videos coming your way. Unlimited videos coming your way. It's just like, it's, ugh. But the question is, why charge? You can receive a pep talk. You can say happy birthday, ask a question, receive a pep talk. Shit, I'm going to do this, aren't I? I might have been buying a pep talk from Russell Wilson.

Ask him if people should be careful based on the spiciness. I will. We should come up with, this might be a good use of $333 of TBTL money. Let's figure out what we want Russell Wilson to say. get him to no but like here's my question why is he charging i understand that it's based on his number number three but like why this is not an amount of money that in any way moves the needle in russell wilson's life it should either be free or it should be 10 million dollars a video

well you know i don't think it can be free what is he doing with the 333 here's my thoughts on this he can't make it too affordable for everybody because i think you have a commitment that you have to follow through on these and so if he makes it free then literally everybody like every sports radio show everybody who cares about like you it would be way too much of an ask and then he would let tons of people down so he had to make it at a scale that is like achievable for some people but won't literally you know just grind him into the ground i guess but it's just like

i guess the real question is why why is he doing this like that it's it's the strangest thing to me because it's just time out of his day and again the amount of money is insignificant to him and all the money that he's earned in his life it's just such a weird thing i mean it's a thing that i'm sure will be doing in two years when this whole tbtl thing falls apart like it's usually the sort of it's the it's the you know the place where people who have some amount of notoriety go to try to make a little extra money on the side. It's just the strangest thing for Russell Wilson to be doing, in my opinion.

I guess, after you said all that, maybe this is something that he's been wanting to do for a while. Because you're right, I don't think there's a financial motivation. In fact, if you even told me that Russell Wilson is just going to take all of this and donate it, I wouldn't be surprised by that.

That would be smart of him, by the way.

Yeah, and I'm looking on his page now. I don't see anything that says that. But I would not be shocked to hear that, oh yeah, he's going to give this all to Children's Hospital or that school thing that he was. That's the other thing, too, is like he also got into some things that seemed weird financially. Like what was the school that you started in a federal way or whatever that was in a strip mall and then like kind of went under and left some families scrambling? You know, like you're like, and I don't know the details on that, but I don't know. That's one of the reasons why I kind of don't want to give him another $333 of TBTL's donors' money. But I don't know. maybe he really does want an outlet because you're right i don't think that he's still he's still carrying around that giant contract despite his playing on the field right so i don't think that he's doing this because he's hit hard financial times i don't know any part can't be that no no

he's also married to sierra who's also rich i wonder too for them it's very interesting because they are both in professions where you sort of like your youthfulness is a currency and then when it goes away it really goes away and it's difficult to ever get it back for him very much physically like you know he's just not as good at football as he used to be and for sierra her unless she like releases an album that somehow tops the charts which is unlikely it's like both of their worlds oh that was something else that joaquin phoenix said in her that just killed me he said this is not really related to russell wilson and sierra but his character said i'm just worried that i've already had every kind of what do you say i'm just worried that i've already had every kind of feeling i'm ever going to have and they're just going to get smaller and smaller throughout the rest of my life wow and i was like oh my god like that just absolutely nailed my sort of ennui is that i've had kind of every experience i'm going to have or i felt everything i'm going to feel and it's just going to be smaller versions of it for the rest of my life. Anyway, back to Russell. We don't need to get fogged down in that. I'm doing great.

Let me just say this, that this has been a bit of an existential show for both of us. As more and more of me dies, I found new things to die on the inside. By the way, this is really disappointing. It says 3% of my Cameo proceeds will go to my Why Not You Foundation. 3%? And it's his own foundation, which was that tied up in that thing also with the Why Not You was also part of that Little League little competition that we talked about, too, right?

Oh, right, because Armani, our player from the Little Sluggers, was in that. I mean, he was listed as the Why Not You or Why Not Me or whatever it's called was one of the many organizations that were associated with that.

Yeah, but 3%. 3%, first of all, it's only 3%, and it goes to my foundation. Like, you know, I know the idea of the foundation. What is 3% of?

I mean, like, let's just, so let's say that he gets three orders a day. So that's roughly $1,000, $333 times three. We'll call it, we'll round up to $1,000. So what is 3% of $1,030?

Well, I can tell you that, yeah, I mean, it's basically $10. $9.99 per cameo is going to his foundation. He charges $333 and $10 of that goes to his own foundation. Why not you? And I got to say, like, I don't, I don't, yeah, all of these foundations, yeah, yeah. And I would love to see a breakdown of the Why Not Me Foundation about where that money is going, how much of it is going to pay the people who work there and how much is actually going to the causes that it's supposed to support. I know youth and sports is one of them. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to diss, to use the parlance of the day, the mission maybe of some of these things. but it's also a way to park your money and avoid taxes and stuff yeah that's such a strange i mean

again i know he's obsessed with the number three because it's his number but like what is 33 percent yeah right like how about 300 percent how about every dollar that comes in you you double you triple it and then donate that to your foundation like it is such a so he's keeping 97 percent of his cameo proceeds and just such i just don't see how you swing back and forth you start to

you're like i feel bad for this guy then you're like this guy is a bit of a yeah d-bag look at

me louis oh i saw that we named the show don't look at me louis in your honor i did i did and

i had a i had a theory about that is that oh were you making fun of me because you knew that i wouldn't like that 15 year old kid who is a look at me louis uh who was dressed up in a fedora and

everything and was caught on i think that was what came up but this was the larger thing and by the way good job listeners john and i made a deal with the listeners which was don't tell andrew basically i thought nobody told me that i just if we name the show don't look at me lewis we were basically talking about how you didn't like the guy in the fedora and we said like look at me louis and i said which is interesting because that's your middle name and then john said it's more like a don't look at me lewis kind of a situation and i thought if we put that title on the show it might be enough to make you listen like you might be like what are they saying about me is that a goal of yours it wasn't it i didn't go into the show with that goal but like i was like i wonder if we put andrew's middle name clearly in the title of the show and we say don't look at me lewis if he'll be like wait what are they saying and then he'll listen and so we were doing an experiment and and uh you didn't listen and i think i said to the listeners don't tell andrew that this is what we're doing so good job listeners or there were just no one

no one tuned in also good good good on me for piecing that together like because on sunday so this was monday's show that you did i'm just saying good good on me nobody else is saying good on me but i'm saying good on me here's my parade um i you and i were texting with chris hayes on sunday the day before you did that show with john Yeah, yeah.

He was the one who took me off to the update on the story. That this kid has been kind of identified. And I think, I don't think I put in the text, look at me, Louie, but I was thinking, look at me, Louie, to use the parlance of the Dan Levitard show. And so when I saw the show title, I did think, oh, I wonder if they, here's what I assumed. I assumed, first of all, that you guys just thought Louie was spelled L-O-U-I-S, because sometimes Louie, you know, sometimes Louis is spelled like that and pronounced Louie. doesn't Louis Armstrong go by Louis but it's spelled L-O-U-I-S

well here's the thing a lot of people call him Louis Armstrong but I think his name was Louis Armstrong and the reason is because first of all Cynthia Doyon, rest in power used to call him Louis Doyon Louis Armstrong when she would do the Swing Years and Beyond and then when I was in New York at Birdland and there was like so and so and the Flying Geronimos or whatever, like the jazz band who was naming a bunch of like Boop Shorty Henderson and stuff he called him Louis Armstrong I feel like jazz heads people in the know call him Louis Armstrong

well here's the deal not that I'm a jazz head but I grew up saying Louis Armstrong because my name is Louis and I think I started calling him Louis because you called him Louis I think I don't know at some point I feel like somebody I feel like somebody corrected me at one point or I felt like I needed to correct my habit of calling him Louis So I don't know now what is— I think you're in the right. But is that what most people say? No.

Most people who are not jazz heads don't even know who the king of the tuk-tuks are.

That is very true. So anyway, I was kind of like—I thought that you guys just spelled Louie that way, and I was kind of like, ah, I would have gone with L-O-U-I-E, but I guess technically that is a spelling of Louie. But no, you guys were actually calling me Louis, and you were specifically calling me out. We were subtweeting you. I see. So I was close. Anyway, I'm just glad that I was partially right about one thing before all of everything inside me dies.

Just telling you, Andrew, my feelings are getting smaller and smaller. It's tough.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right. Emails or V-mails before we skeedaddle?

Yeah, you know, I can't get enough of cereal talk and blueberry talk and that. This is an email, or I'm sorry, a voicemail that came in a couple of weeks ago, I think, when I was talking about eating so much grape nuts, which, by the way, I've fallen out of that habit. Ohio broke me of that habit. I just kind of got into it.

What were you eating in Ohio?

Kind of nothing. My parents were kind of bummed because I think they maybe got me grape nuts because I said I'd been eating them a lot lately, and then I never ate any of their grape nuts. I was kind of skipping breakfast and then just having like, you know, when you're hanging out with your folks, often it means going to like a diner or something for lunch. So a lot of that kind of stuff. But right before I left for my trip to Ohio, did I tell you that I upped my old man game a little bit? And instead of getting another box of grape nuts, I got a box of shredded wheat, like unfrosted shredded wheat. And I was, yeah, I kind of like, I don't know what's going on with me, but I like sugar on it. No, I just put fruit. I put blueberries and strawberries in it and it was good. And, you know, those have sugar. So that is I liked it.

Powerful levels of old man. Let me tell you, the shredded wheat, unfrosted shredded wheat is. Yeah. It's honestly one of the last stages of life.

And then I made a pot of chili. This is a true story. I made myself a pot of chili the other day and I was living essentially on shredded wheat and chili for about a week. And my goodness, you ever see a balloon to apologize to your toilet? I was flying around the house. anyway uh i think you were saying how did you get how did you eat grape nuts as a kid warm with

honey is that right not warm no but we would yeah with honey so it would be you'd put the milk in and then you would let the milk kind of infuse into the grape nuts because of course they are like almost gravel when you try to if you try to eat them dry and then a bunch of honey on top of it that's how i was raised eating it that's how i like it i realize that's probably not normal It's just one of those things from my childhood.

I think I've been hearing from a lot of people who did something similar. In fact, here's Kate.

Hey, Co-Bros. Kate in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Listening to episode 4587, I'll be talking about grape nuts. I just wanted to say I'm with Luke. I grew up eating grape nuts in milk with, like, so much log cabin maple syrup on it.

Oh, maple syrup.

I would literally put, like, a half an inch of syrup on there. It was kind of intense. The only cereals that we ate at home were grape nuts and honey nut cereals. So I had to get my sugar cereal fix somehow. But, yeah, so I get it with the honey thing.

Pow out. Are you a maple syrup guy? Am I a maple syrup guy? Only in traditional senses, but it's very rare that I'm eating pancakes. The only time I eat a pancake is when it comes as a side at IHOP, which is not the healthiest thing in the world. But instead of toast, I think they give you pancakes there because they have pancakes in their title. But if I'm at a restaurant just choosing off the menu, I don't usually choose a main course that is going to be a waffle or a pancake or something.

Weirdly, I ate a lot of things with syrup on them as a kid, because, again, we didn't have good sweet treats in the house, but we did have sometimes like waffles, or I learned how to make pancakes, and so I used a lot of like syrup, but it was never maple syrup, because my mom thought maple syrup was like the fanciest thing, and every once in a while I feel like she would get a bottle of it, but it would be like her personal private reserve of maple syrup. So that would just be for her She might hear this and disagree But I just remember maple syrup being this Very elevated thing when I was a kid So we just had the regular kind And what ended up happening was I don't have a taste for maple syrup I don't really like maple syrup

I think of maple syrup as the regular kind What is the difference?

There's like pancake syrup That doesn't have a maple flavor to it

Really?

Just google I'll try this without Hopefully it won't kick us off our connection here But like the pancake syrup That we grew up with Was not maple Flavored it was just like syrup Flavored so like Can we even say this Aunt Jemima How about Mrs. Butterworth

Right sure yeah So Mrs. Butterworth You would consider that pancake syrup

Or maple syrup well yeah it's not maple syrup Because well I don't think it's Mrs. Butterworth Mrs. Butterworth Mrs. Featherbottoms Original pancake syrup

Oh and that's not considered I don't think that's maple syrup Because I don't think it has a maple flavor to it I honestly like I'm This is shocking to me Because I would have thought I mean I think we grew up with I think we grew up with Mrs. Butterworth I remember this bottle Or at least a more antiquated version Of this bottle But I guess I'm trying to think If you sat down and you gave me Like a bite of pancakes with Mrs. Butterworth or a bite of pancakes with something that is labeled as maple syrup, it never occurred to me that that would taste different.

Yeah, it really tastes different. I love the non-maple syrup stuff, and I don't actually like maple syrup itself. The flavor of maple syrup is very specific to me.

You know what it's being listed as in Wikipedia? It says Mrs. Butterworth's is an American brand of table syrups. And Luke, table syrup is clickable. So let's do this. table syrup also known as where's my bell hold on everybody call that table syrup also known as pancake syrup which is what you were just calling it right and waffle syrup is a syrup used as a topping on pancakes waffles french toast often as an alternative to maple syrup two dings although more viscous typically I didn't notice that so it's more it's like corn syrup

so more viscous means

thicker yeah I think so I just remember those commercials you wanted to stop viscosity breakdown. Was it Valvoline commercials?

Why was that the number one thing we emerged from our childhood knowing about? Do you remember that, right? It's about thermal breakdown and viscosity.

The only kind of breakdown I haven't had in my life is viscosity breakdown, in fact. Corn syrup. So it says it's typically made by combining corn syrup with cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, food color, and flavoring. So, yes, a little bit like of a falseness there, which I just never would have made that distinction. But it is reminding me that growing up, we did eat a lot of, like, frozen waffles. Did you eat those growing up? Is that what you were putting those on? Yes.

Well, if we had Eggo waffles, that would be the, like, that would be the best case scenario. But then we would buy, my mom would sometimes buy, like, generic ones. Sometimes they would be in a bag. Did you ever have those ones that were, like, in, like, a plastic bag of frozen waffles? No, we did okay.

No, I'm just joking. I'm trying to remember what we had. I don't think so. I think I'm picturing them in a box. I don't know if they were Eggo or not. You probably had

Eggo waffles. Probably, yeah. And sometimes, the thing about the waffles in a bag was they would get freezer burned. So they would get, like, also, God knows what was happening in that house. It was a chaotic scene. But I feel like sometimes I'd be so excited to eat a waffle and I would get that bag out and then I would pull it out and they would just be all ice-encrusted. And then when you toasted them they would taste weird somehow because they had been, like, thawed out, frozen, thawed out refroze and they had ice crystals around them we called that freezer burn when i was a kid yep we still do yep and uh yeah i didn't uh but yeah if we like if we got a thing of eggo waffles i would i could eat the entire box myself in like one morning like there's nothing to this day i should actually go get some eggo waffles when i get home because like you know 11 year old luke burbank is confused as to why adult luke burbank isn't eating more eggo waffles because i just

lived for them yeah but also i've met uh 2025 luke burbank and you're you're not usually down for just like carbo loading at the beginning of the day no but i mean every once in a while i treat myself yeah i have you know i'm a little distracted here about something because i'm trying to figure out what waffle brand we would have used ego of course was the main brand in the 80s and 90s when i grew up for some reason and i could be totally wrong about this i feel like ego wasn't our go-to and this is what i'm this is what i'm struggling with right now i'm looking at ego waffles and they're round and i'm trying desperately to remember if the freezer waffles that i grew up with were round i feel like they were square were yours square or round well if they were in the bag they were square but if they were egos they were round see this is i feel like mine were square maybe ours was in a bag i don't know but i don't think we were an ego family uh we were a heinz family you know i don't have to i don't have to prove to you that we were a name brand family but we had heinz we had cloths and pickles but for some reason we did not do egos i don't think

Do you remember the Klaus and Pickles slogan?

Now, this is interesting to me and me only because I immediately picture a stork and then I remember that's Vlasic, though. Vlasic was the stork.

Oh, you're right. Okay, do you remember the Vlasic?

Oh, so you are talking Vlasic. Well, I can picture him flying. He has a cigar. Does he have a cigar? No, he has a pickle. I think he has a pickle. He has a pickle, but he's using it like the Groucho Marx cigar, right?

Yeah, it's very like Leon Reddick.

redbone groucho marxie yes and whatever he said was in this groucho something about a crunch was it something about a crunch now that's the best taste in pickle i ever heard yes more bells that's the best taste in pickle i ever hoid absolutely i feel like there was a period of

time where we were really into that kind of guy and you're right i guess it's more groucho marx than leon redbone but i feel like that was a whole shtick in the 80s when i was now that's The best tasting pickle I ever heard.

That's such a good tagline. That really is a good tagline, yeah. They should bring it back. All right. All right.

All right, sir. We should probably wrap things on up here. I am going to be doing some filming here in D.C. I'm doing a story about, it's a Christmas story. It's about a gift guide that the lobbyists for Made in America put out. We're actually going to talk to some of the people that make cool stuff, but first we've got to talk to the lobbying arm. Of the Made in America brand.

Oh, just like the idea of Made in America, the concept.

Yeah, like they put out basically a list, and it's got all 50 states, and in each state they pick a thing that you can buy as a gift in that state that is all made in America.

Is TBTL the product of Washington by any chance?

It should be. It's like a wind chime company in Port Townsend, actually.

Oh, that's kind of a reality.

But I'm going to see if I can talk to the lobbyists about getting that changed. Sorry, wind chime company. Yeah, we'll work on that. It's actually a wind chime and puzzle company.

i think but we're going to be talking to limited is what it's called that's right actually russell

wilson is the new york state yes representative so anyway uh that's my plan and um i'll give everybody a full update uh on tomorrow's show in the meantime thanks for listening everybody have a great rest of your monday take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Power out.