Muse

I'll have anything. I just want a hamburger, fries. Hey, guys. Hi, how are you?

Johnny. Hi, Johnny. Welcome to Around the World in 80 Plates. Have you guys eaten with us before? No. Oh, you haven't? All right, well, let me walk you through the menu. We do things a little differently, a little quirky, a little fun. I think we're just hungry. I'm just going to do a cheeseburger and fries. This place really is a culinary voyage across the seven seas of flavor. Our menu is divided into seven different cuisines. And we do have specials in each of those sections that are not listed on the menu. For instance, Craig's Crazy Guac Docs, which go great with cervezas. I'm just gonna do a cheeseburger and I'm gone. We don't have cheeseburgers. We do have slam burgers. Yeah, yeah. Would you like your slam burger in a traditional sesame bun, in a taco, on French toast, or rolled up in a naan, which is this traditional Indian flatbread? No, I will skip that. I'll have a sesame bun.

And I'll do the torpedo slam burger.

Torpedo slam burger as a taco, good choice. And to drink, I'm gonna have an iced tea. No, we don't have iced tea. We have smile teas. What's a smile tea? It's tea with ice in it. That sounds great. Would you guys like to double down on your meal? I don't know that saying. It's twice the amount of food for twice the price.

That's just ordering the two of each.

You did say you were hungry.

We could double down and then share.

I'm sorry, there's no sharing in the double down. So what do you do if people are sharing? There are cameras everywhere. That's not fun? The camera's here to ensure that fun is happening. He looks at the camera and they go, those two people are sharing? Yeah, correct. He also does the guac tax. So he's making tacos and then he's looking at this. He has this taco station right on the security station. And you can just look at the video while he's making his crazy guac tax. Do you want to lobster-rate your meal? What is that? We just put a whole lobster on top of the meal. I doubt you do that. It's an extra $31.99. I doubt that's even in existence.

TBTL.

Hello, I'm Gil Gerard. Tonight's special edition of Code 3 focuses on high-risk sports and the dangers inherent in them. For example, at full throttle, this nitro-fueled funny car can travel the length of a football field in less than a second. But there's nothing funny about a funny car when it blasts down a road toward disaster.

Can you say hot dog? Hot dog. Thank you, baby. Hot dog.

Hot dog.

Are you on the computer? Yes, I am, but I'm having trouble with my computer. I had a computer for 10 years and enjoyed it, but it died.

There's nothing classier than boring jazz music. I'm here to tell you.

I love these guys. They make funny with their mouths.

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Just study it out, and you'll see. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

I don't know who that is, and I don't care to find out.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the very mighty but also very foggy Columbia River. We've got the fog. I'd say I can see about 10 feet out this window here at the Madrona Hill studio. Thankfully, this is an audio product. We don't need visuals. We can just go on instrumentation to bring you episode 4,655 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. A coyote managed to swim to Alcatraz. I'll say, what's up, dog? And now the National Park Service, such as it exists in this day and age, is trying to figure out what to do with this animal that's living out there, possibly on Alcatraz. Also, the Kennedy Center, I use that previous name advisedly, The Kennedy Center is going to close for construction. It was literally a major disaster. Very interesting timing for that. We may get into that as well. And we'll definitely get into talking to this guy. Longest running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. The guy is a nut bar. A nut bar. He's Andrew Walsh. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. I just learned that this is a very exciting time for me and my family here apparently because i got a very exuberant like someone's about to do some scam baiting no no well i mean it's probably a scam in the grand scheme of things as in almost everything is a scam these days but century link just sent me a note just saying basically they're just saying at&t bought us buddy so god knows what your future is but instead it's draped in this excitement good news. Your CenturyLink internet plan won't change, and if you have an existing price for life plan, that's not going to change either. I don't think I have a price. Do you have a price for life plan? No, I don't. Do you have a plan for life? I barely have that. A plan for today.

I don't know where I put it, but I love this. This is an exciting time in your transition to AT&T. It's like, yeah, this is super exciting. I'm sure this is just really good for the consumer.

Oh, absolutely.

I know what's going to happen is it's going to get better and cheaper.

Yes. If we could just get it so every company in America is one company, I think that would serve us, the consumers, nicely. That's what we need. I'd like to pay my internet and my car insurance and my DoorDash and what else? Is it my health care? Yep.

And we're going to bundle that. We're going to put a lobster on top. Oh, would you like to lobster rate this?

Yeah, we're going to lobster rate your... That's where we just put a lobster on top of all of your services.

They just put a lobster on my internet, I believe. So anyway, I'm excited over here. You can probably tell I'm still buzzing a little bit from that news. But anyway, I'll let you know in great detail as it progresses.

How is the construction project going?

Pretty good. I think the workers are on their way over here now, should be here any moment. I don't think it'll affect the broadcast at all. Have they put anything in? Are you still in the sort of demoed phase, or are they starting to rebuild it? I see. Somebody just showed up outside my window, but I don't have to answer the door or anything. We are still in the demo slash, I think, electrical work phase. I think before we're putting anything in, we're getting all the electrical set with this new switchboard. Or I'm sorry, not a switchboard. That's more of a telephone situation. You're going to have kind of a breaker board.

You're going to have an unmarried woman living in your basement going, Hawthorne 352. That's right.

Plugging in a three-quarter inch to three-quarter inch. That Lily Tomlin outfit I got Genevieve for our anniversary is finally going to find some good use. Ringy-dingy, ringy-dingy. I love keeping the cultural references young and fresh on the show. You're the one who said switchboard. I know. But anyway, I meant, of course, Breaker Box. And so I'm excited about that. But I know that Thursday is going to be the really big day on that because they're going to be taking the electricity away from me for a day.

Yeah, we're going to have to do a whole special system. You're going to be, I don't know if we can say where you're going to be. You will not be in your normal home studio.

No, I'm going to be in that dumpster that's behind the bar that used to be called The Back Door. It's not called The Back Door. What is that bar where I illegally dumped my shrimp? It recently closed. I always want to say The Back Door, but it's like... But it used to be, well, it was The Hideaway, right? Wasn't it The Hideaway? Oh, I think you told me it was The Hideaway before I knew it as The Hideaway. Wait, was The Hideaway the gambling place? That's not the place that's now Aurora Borealis? Maybe. I haven't been... Is that a weed place? No, that's just another, I think it's like a nightlife spot of some sort.

That would be a good name for a weed place, by the way. Aurora Borealis. On Aurora Borealis. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the hideaway was the card room, but the place where you illegally dumped your shrimp was not the hideaway. Was it next to it? No. Because the hideaway is a Kumon now, right?

Oh, is it? Okay, then I am getting confused. Because, so, yeah, the Kumon and all those, I guess we're just doing this.

My apologies. A change of customer base between the hideaway card room and it became a kumon.

So the Hidden Door is the restaurant that I was referring to. And now you knew it as something else back in the day. And just recently they announced that they, the Hidden Door, are closing down as well.

Due to illegal shrimp dumping.

Because they could not handle it. They couldn't handle all of the shrimp that people were dumping in their dumpster. But just to be very clear, those places, so that you know that I'm describing them properly, they are on the west side of Aurora and 145th, right? That's what you're picturing?

The hideaway was on the west side. Okay, the Aurora. Although, if you saw, Andrew, I did have to go never eat soggy waffles.

I saw you swing your finger around.

That was me remembering what direction Earth face east.

Now, this is not helping the conversation at all. It gets you no closer to understanding what's going on in my basement, as it were. But now I'm trying to figure out what the Aurora Borealis was, because that was another one of your favorite haunts that was a card room that I went to with you one time, I thought. Oh, was that the Drifton Inn? The Drifton Inn, that's what I'm getting confused about. Aurora Borealis is in the Drifton Inn, as opposed to the hideaway, which you're describing. I don't think I was ever familiar with the hideaway.

Well, by the way, the back door, the hidden door used to be the hideaway. I'm getting eyes on it. Now I understand that.

I was confusing the hideaway with the Drifton Inn. So I'm totally unfamiliar with The Hideaway other than you referencing it on the show, I believe.

And let me add in a third confusing element. The thing that is now a Kumon wasn't The Hideaway. It was a different weird casino that had, like, room for three tables. And it was called, I want to say, the Golden Nugget or something. It was a really, like, even by the standards of Aurora,

casinos, the thing that is, or at least at one point was a Kumon. Before that, it was a strange little card room that, again, had like three tables total to it, which it's unsurprising that it didn't survive. They didn't have enough capacity probably to make the money, but that was yet another casino that I'm talking about. And it's interesting that neither one of those

establishes are casinos anymore because those would be as close to Seattle as you can possibly be, right? Because there are no casinos in the casino. 145th. 145th, excuse me, but that's the demarcation between Seattle and Shoreline.

If you dump shrimp on the south side of 145th, that's life in prison.

Do you think I would dare dump shrimp in Seattle proper? My goodness, my boy. Mama didn't raise no fool. I did hear, somebody told me that it looked like there was a lock on that dumpster after that. I remember hearing that. By the way, for people who don't know what we're talking about, I'm talking about a little bag of shrimp that I had that was causing issues in my trash bin.

I'm sorry, I believe it was an yet unidentified Baltimore Orioles fan.

I mean, not me, but I mean, the cold case that I'm investigating involves a green, I believe, I don't think it was huge, I think it was my small green bin, I had put some shrimp in there, and it had gotten disgusting, and then I thought that I had missed the compost pickup, the yard waste pickup, which is, it's sad to call that yard waste, but that is what would be labeled as officially and so i was so scared that i was gonna be stuck with this mess for another week before the truck came again that i raced to shoreline i thought i know there's a dumpster and i just remembered seeing this dumpster and thinking like someday i may i am still like that i'm that way with dumpsters and bathrooms and god please never make me need it but like i am are you like this like i'm in ballard i now know where there is an unlocked bathroom in my like kind of in my doctor's, the facility that my doctor works out of, you know, the medical center in Ballard. And I'm always like, oh, okay, if I'm in an emergency and this place is open, and it is attached to, like, a kind of a critical care place, so it could be open 24 hours. I'm not sure. But I know exactly what floor there is a single-use, unlocked bathroom I can use. And I've got a couple of those staked out across the city. And when I pass a dumpster that doesn't have a lock on it. And, again, the shrimp one was a couple of years ago. And sometimes it can be both. Why not? It is both. Exactly. I just think it's good to clock these things. It makes me sound like a sketch ball, but you just never know.

Well, the dumpster thing sounds sketchy. The other thing sounds like undiagnosed Crohn's.

Yeah, right. Or pending Crohn's. Or just the assumption. The absolute astonishment that I don't have it. The 100% chance that it will eventually be the case. That's right.

I saw the other day on the weather app that they said it was a 100% chance of rain here where I'm living. And I thought, nothing can be 100%, right? Like, that's an impossible number, because that's saying that there's no chance that it won't rain. And you can't predict that. I mean... 99 is the highest percentage it could be, right? Of anything or just of weather? Of anything. Like, can anything be 100%? Because what you're saying when you're saying there's a 100% chance of something is that there's no chance of it not happening. And if it is the future, the future is not written, right?

And I guess the cliche would be you can't even say it's 100% chance that the sun will rise tomorrow.

You can't.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, I mean, we're fingers crossed. But you can't say that because we don't know, right? Like, there can be no 100% chance of anything.

I don't know, man. I guess I never thought of it that way.

I'm quibbling here, but you know what I mean? I guess you're right. Did it rain? Did it rain? I don't know. I didn't pay attention.

I mean, I guess you're right. You can say it's 100% chance that we're talking right now, but that's not a chance. That's just a hundred percent. I mean, it's a fact. It's occurring, as you like to say.

But now also, but wait, there was another thing that we talked about recently, which is my misunderstanding of what the rain, what I thought was being predicted, it still can't be 100% chance. I messed that up. But it was something like when you see like, let's say 70% chance of rain, it means there's a 70% chance that there will be measurable precipitation on the day, not that it will rain 70% of the day or something.

I'm not weighing in on that because I thought that we had covered this on the show like years ago and had some major eye-popping realization that we'd always thought about percentage chance of precipitation in the wrong way.

Yeah, I think I thought it meant that 70% of the day was going to be raining, but I think it was saying that there's—

Oh, definitely. Yeah, I don't think it's that. It's not about the time, but it's about the chance. And for a while there, I was bandying about this theory that I thought I'd heard somewhere that it says it's within this area. I thought I was combining both percentage of chance and percentage of area covered or something like that, which I don't even want to get into again because I think I was just not even loud wrong, just weirdly mumbly wrong about that.

I was trying to look up that Kumon that I've been talking about, and I will once again take the opportunity to mention I find the logo for Kumon to be really odd. It is a confused child. The O of Kumon is a confused child. I guess the idea is if you have a confused child, bring them to Kumon, and we will teach them how to be less confused. So I guess it's sort of, I guess like a proof of concept, but it makes me think whenever I see one, like this is, like they're turning out additionally confused kids. Like it should be, the kids should be jumping for joy with comprehension, not kind of being, not puzzling.

I still don't know what Kumon do. When I think of Kumon, I think of that Chris Fleming bit from that special that our friend Kat directed. You know, Chris Fleming, the stand-up comedian. Of course. And I can't remember what it is. He's talking about modern parenting or something. I'm looking for it here. I guess we don't use it. Do we use this as intro tape or not? Let me look again. But he's like, I know he's talking like a kind of a parent who maybe gives their kids too long of a leash or something like that. And, yeah, I guess I don't have it saved. I guess I was just watching it a lot when it kind of went viral. And he's like, do you want to go to Kumon? And I just like, I wasn't sure. Like, is Kumon something that we reward kids with?

or like what is a kumon it's a learning center i think it's like if your kid is maybe having some challenges at school you take them to kumon and they get some extra sort of tutoring or whatever but the o in kumon is a kind of crudely drawn confused face yes which i feel like doesn't instill i know what they're saying if your kid if your kid looks like the o in kumon bring them here but it also just it just see i don't know it's like i feel like it should be they should be

showing us the after not the before yeah i guess i mean is that the idea behind it or is it just childlike is my question you know like i i've always been confused by that whole thing also doesn't the kumon and shoreline right on the seattle border that we're discussing isn't it was it possibly a bikini barista stand at one point or is there a barista stand in that parking lot alongside it is there one in the kumon is there one in the kumon that's That's where I would bring my kids.

Is it a bikini kumon?

Can we just, I don't know if this is going to pay off, because I can't remember how visual it was. A bikini kumon. You remember this. Now that I'm looking at it, it was Chris Fleming's bit. And again, our friend Kat directed this about, it was called, what was it, Parents in Structured Hats? Is that what it was called? It's probably too long to play the whole thing, and I don't know if it's going to translate. put your hats

with their child then you know that that child's gonna be your responsibility cause they're choosing the hats over parenting they're not gonna be willing to injet their hip and risk the loss of their father John if Steve's a top even their child

is probably going to name something like Facebook bankroll cause it with ground Immunity And they're gonna be too busy Talking about their friends Giving with Beck To notice the hell That Bishop Bankrow Croxon's causing So now this child In an LCD sound system onesie Is an unspoken word of the state

Now this child In an LCD sound system onesie Is a word of the state It's so great

Can I, on the subject of Chris Fleming who I think might really be, along with Caleb Heron, I think maybe the funniest, and Stavros. That's like the holy trinity. That's my Mount Rushmore of funny people right now. Chris Fleming, Stavros Halkinus, and Caleb Heron. But this is Chris Fleming. You want to talk about something that probably won't work? This is Chris Fleming talking about two things you and I don't think have seen. Well, one, because I don't know if it's out yet, and the other because we haven't seen it. He's talking about Wuthering Heights, the reboot, right, which has, I think, like Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in it. And then also Heated Rivalry, the hockey show that, again, you and I are not watchers of, but that is very big in the culture. This is Chris Fleming talking about that stuff. This made me laugh so hard the other day, despite the fact that I have not seen either of these things.

People are very concerned about the Olympics coming to L.A. I am way more concerned about the release of Wuthering Heights

The infrastructure we have Jacob Lorty and Margot Robbie behind our backs made Wuthering

And they're releasing it on Galentine's Day, which already is a real loaded potato skin elevator. It is going to be chaos! If you thought the heated rivalry, maybe I would like that. Those two guys look like they can barely reach the milk at the grocery store. Jacob Alardi doesn't fit into most cars And he's only getting taller Jacob Alardi

He stands up, he jumps on the stool And then the stool kicks out from under him In a very dangerous moment for Chris Fleming By the way, actually I'm going to send this to you

Is he kicking the stool out on purpose Or it's a little bit of a flub that he ends up

It's a flub that he barely survives I'm going to send you this picture to be an amazing Amazing show pic

sorry this gets kind of visual

he's pretending to be extra tall and be like jacob elordi standing on the

scientists are sure about two things planet getting warmer elordi getting taller i think maybe it's caa maybe they're stretching them out great hard style i have a theory maybe barry keoghan

is under there i couldn't hear what he was saying in the end there he lord he was talking about barry keoghan you know that guy who's like the actor of the moment is just under jacob lori or something i don't know again better better as a visual than a than an audio but man chris

fleming is just incredibly incredibly funny yeah the energy on him too and the physicality like yeah and all of it you know what i mean is not dependent on the physicality but then when you see him up there and he's it's yeah it's truly art um i'm i was looking at this instagram thing

he goes uh chris fleming's thing is any pronouns you want i believe is oh yeah pronouns that chris fleming chooses any pronouns which i feel like is one of the nicest things you could do for the rest of us you know a lot of people talk about pronouns a lot of people get upset i mean any pronoun you want is like take your you can't go wrong you just cannot go wrong with chris fleming and whatever you want to use for them i um i almost went a little wrong the other day andrew in downtown portland when i thought i was going to be possibly attacked by a mob of teens youth who are on their lunch break is there anything scarier than a group of teens no Don't youth scare me. Particularly, I think, when you get to our age, the older you get, the scarier teens are. So I was going down to that teen... Well, I would say it was a bell curve.

I was very afraid of teens when I was a teen.

Okay.

And then you got out of it for your 20s and part of your 30s, and now you're back in it. Now I'm back in it again. Exactly. Which is weird, because I do believe the teens of today, generally speaking, are probably less threatening than the teens that I grew up with.

That's what I thought. Three things. Planet getting warmer. Allure to getting taller. teens still scary so i was going down to that tv station to do that little local appearance to promote live wire and i got out of my car and um these teens were like well probably on their lunch break it was about 11 in the morning or something maybe 10 55 so presumably lunch break and it was a group of let's say eight of them some it was like boys and girls and they were walking down this kind of inclined sidewalk as i was getting out of my car and one of the teens Just absolutely ate shit Like he just tripped in some way And fell really hard But because he's a teen It didn't hurt him In fact it may have made him stronger

You know

Like I would be currently hospitalized From that fall And in fact I was really worried Because I saw this kid go down And I was like oh no Like am I going to have to do CPR Which song is it Is it Stayin' Alive But he popped right up And was laughing He was clearly a little bit embarrassed But laughing His friends were all laughing It was, you know, not super serious, but I, at that exact moment, was now even with this group of teens. And the kid had just fallen down, and I was like, oh, man, are you okay? And he said, yeah, yeah. And then he was wearing, I realized, like, I'm just going to call them Janko jeans. You know what I mean? those like really wide super crazy wide denim pants that were also and this is where i'm going to sound real respectability politics so sagging not from the fall just the way that young people maybe wear their pants sometimes the pants were well below his butt cheeks if you know what i'm talking about like he just the pants were so wide and so sagged and i could not

avoid the urge after i said are you okay he was like yeah i go i can't imagine the pants are helping it was like we had this moment we were all kind of laughing and i was like are you okay and he said yeah and then i felt like what i think again this happened so quickly what i thought in the back of my mind must have been i'm gonna give this kid a good natured ribbing kind of some sort of dad humor some like you know and i didn't say like pull your pants up i wasn't like all i said I can't imagine the pants were helping Because again How are they even staying on his body They were like He's stepping on them because they're so Long, they're under his shoes Again, major tripping hazard And I could feel The energy in the group Kind of mildly shift And one of the girls, it was with him Huh? That's fraught, yeah You know what I mean? I don't know if this matters, but I'll just mention These were all white kids, by the way I just want to be clear. I was going to ask.

I do think it's...

All white kids, and if I'm being totally honest, I probably would have been even more careful with my words were I talking to kids who are not the same race as me, just to be extra aware about everything.

Yeah, and also, I mean, like you just mentioned, I mean, just for context, you mentioned the whole thing of respectability politics and everything that goes along with that.

Well, if I saw a black teenager with their pants down, I wouldn't comment on their pants. right obviously yeah yeah um but they were like the i i the girl said something like huh or oh or something where it was like it went from like we're all laughing to like this oh by the way i was also in a suit jacket because i was about to go on tv it went from like oh this is like our friend fell down we're all kind of laughing the guy said like are you okay we're all in this together to like old guy is being judgmental old guys being judgmental and i and and by the way i'm just walking i'm like i didn't stop i'm not you know i'm not like spending time with this group people i'm walking kind of through that was the other problem was that they were kids these days andrew the sidewalk was impassable because of yeah these eight teenagers who had no sense of their existence in space so i'm like walking up on the like beauty bark of the outside of the tv station to get around them and i said my thing about like i can't imagine the pants are helping. And then the girl says something, one of the girls says something that kind of tells me that like, she sort of doesn't like what I said, but also doesn't exactly know how to respond. But like now it's like, and then I keep, I'm like 10 steps ahead of them. And I, I just hear now they, by the way, everything I'm going to say about the aftermath of this, it could be a hundred percent in my head. Nobody said anything specific to me. Nobody yelled, Hey, old man. Nobody said we're coming for you, but I just heard some kind of noises that seemed like they were maybe messing with me or they were kind of like i don't know i sensed that i had offended this group of young people and now i'm just walking to the door of the tv station and of course because it's tv station it's like totally locked yeah you can't get in there you can't get in there there's like a security guard whose entire job is to just buzz people in and so but there's a big sign that's like hit this number on the door and i'm hitting the number and i'm like i'm like starting to get again i don't even have a specific there was not even anything specific the kids were saying there was just energetically this thing of like there's 18s that are now annoyed with me and i'm trying to buzz my way into this tv station and and i'm like it's taking what felt like a lifetime for the security guard who's just sitting at this desk looking at me to pick up the phone like if i'm the security guard i'm getting like a um paperweight and I'm just putting it on the thing that buzzes people in because my only job at this TV station is to go, Hi, can I help you? And then it's me going, Hi, I'm here for Hello Rose City. Okay, let me buzz you in. It's like you could save yourself a step. I was getting in my own mind.

This is why you, by the way, have not gotten any of those jobs you applied for as a security guard.

You don't think paperweight on the security system is a good approach?

I mean, the fact that you bring it up in the interview every time. The fact that I lead with it. Guys, I have got some efficiency ideas.

A revolutionary efficiency idea. You know how you're paying someone to sit here and buzz people in? What if you didn't have to pay them because it was just a paperweight sitting on the button?

You're applying for the job. No, what if you paid somebody, but you paid him to be down in the break room drinking a soda?

Or stealing from the Avanti market. Or stealing from the Avanti market. By the way, plan, my subheading to this whole interview is also I think we should get rid of the cameras in the Avanti market.

By the way, Avanti market was the snack area where you could purchase snacks and beverages and stuff at our old workplace. As somebody who goes into these TV stations from time to time to do like promos. Do you, or the interviews, have you seen Avante markets anywhere other than Cairo Radio?

One place, and it's Ron Tonkin Mazda. Really? Okay. The only other Avante market I've ever seen in the wild is at the place that I take my car in for its scheduled maintenance.

And how does it rank compared to the Avante that you've grown accustomed to?

Well, I feel completely comfortable stealing from both locations. So I'd say it's pretty similar.

Yes, but I mean, was it as big? Because I've got to say, it was like a whole room. It was not as big as the Cairo one. It's not an entire room. It's a little nook. Yeah, okay. But they serve non-media outlets as well. That's good to know.

Yeah, I wonder, I don't know if that's Google-able, I wonder how many Avanti markets there are, and also what the sort of, what's it called, like loss prevention is, what the rate of theft is. I mean, I wouldn't say I stole from that thing because, by the way, there's nobody there. It has allegedly some cameras you're supposed to kind of self-check out.

And, of course, my whole thing on that was the signs that let you know about the cameras say cameras are installed for your protection. Yes. That's what they wrote on the signs. And it just always really wrinkled me. I don't mind them saying, listen, this is a self-serve place and you can't trust everybody. Don't ruin it. People like Luke Burbank and John Curley work here. We have to have cameras. We have to. Does he also steal from that thing? Oh, God, yeah. Do you think he's ever paid for anything out of there? I knew I liked that guy. He thinks he deserves it all. Anyway, so it's fine. A self-surplay should have cameras. We're fine with that. But don't tell me it's for my protection. What was Dory's producer's name? Is Jake Skorheim going to jump me in the Avante market?

Is that why it's for my protection? Well, if he jumps you and there's no footage, Andrew, how will we press charges in lawless seattle the one at the uh ron tonkin said it's to save the whales we have these cameras here to save the whales which i feel is also unconnected so all that is to say um nothing else happened but it was this weird moment where i found myself oddly frightened based on nothing really happening other than some unidentifiable noises from some kids that were oh let me also mention three to 400 feet away from me like they never deviated from the sidewalk they didn't come over to the tv station a door where i was standing like i i was not in any danger and yet the fear felt very the danger felt very real and close to me from just

thinking i may have offended teenagers so i have found something that i find to be somewhat interesting here potentially a mugshot of me from the avanti yes you and curly but you both are all

do not serve this person just a big giant inflated uh whatever security can't pick of me

did nick nolte have a mugshot that i'm picturing okay yeah yeah i was gonna say you're all nick noltied up but then i started i didn't trust my memory nick nolte is top of mind for me because i still when i go to bed now i still do the game of listing actors who have the first letter of their first and last name the same Alan Arkin etc and so and I basically can rattle through the whole thing but I still fall asleep at some point but my N is Nick Nolte Bob Balaband oh yeah we've talked about this and you know what I realized last night Genevieve had Guffman on last night and two of my actors and I can because I've been doing this for like at least a year or whatever and so I just like it's not even usually at night it's more if I wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning I'm trying to get a little bit more shut eye Alan Arkin, Bob Balaban, Chris Cooper, Danny DeVito, or Dom DeLuise, by the way. It's a new one that I mix in sometime. I don't have anything for Emilio Estevez other than Emilio Estevez. I have nothing for ease, I should say, other than Emilio. Having said all of that, I feel like I have a bond with these people now. If I see a Gina Gershon, F is, oh, this is a rough one because I can't think of anybody contemporary. And so I'm always going with Francis Farmer. but I'm up for better I'm up for because I only know her more as a Nirvana song title than an actual actor

oh I didn't actually no there was a Nirvana song with Frances Farmer

Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle as a song by Nirvana and so that's how I know that name but I don't know if I've ever seen her in anything the only letters I have to skip some letters and I know that this is kind of well-worn territory I've talked about this on the show before but I skip over the I's some people will suggest Idris Elba but one name begins with an I the other one begins with an E so that doesn't count. That's racist if you think his name is I-I. So I can't find anybody with an I-I or a O-O or a U-U.

Those are the rough ones. U-U's gonna be tough.

Yeah, all of those. And I even finally went and I was looking up, I cheated one day and looked up I's. I just couldn't find any.

Are there any first names that start with U?

Eula? I know somebody named Eula. Isn't that an E-U? Oh, it is an E-U. You're right. Uncle Frank.

Umberto. Umberto Echo. But Umberto is a U first name. That's not going to help you. And my Uncle Frank.

Don't forget that. Uncle Frank.

Yeah.

Unk. Unk. Anyway, I'm trying to remember who else would be. Since I've totally blown up the. But I was going to tell you something that I thought was interesting. It's probably not. But since we've blown up the show with the stupid game anyway, who would be the two actors that I saw in Guffman last night? Because Bob Balaban is obviously. Oh, and another double-lettered actor? Yeah, Guffman cast. I swear I was like watching. Oh, Parker Posey. Parker Posey. She is my double P. Parker Posey, Bob Balaban. And my goal would be to get all of my double-lettered celebrities. And they're all from film, by the way. They're not just famous people. and direct a movie with all of them. Yes.

I mean, you've got... All the ones we've mentioned so far are still with us. Nick Nolte.

So far, yeah. Bob Balaban. Francis Farmer, probably not. Probably not. Susan Sarandon is my S. We've got her. She's still with us. Certainly.

Did you watch any of Guffman?

I watched the first half of it, and then I went to bed. I've been reading this book that I'm kind of devouring It's been on my mind It's rare that I'm reading a book I think I mentioned this to you I started reading All the Pretty Horses Oh wow I'm not a big Cormac McCarthy person But I wanted to read more I read The Road a long long time ago When it was kind of newish That's one of the darkest things I've ever read in my life

When I read The Road I literally was like I was like When's it going to turn when's the when's the happy part i literally thought that like i was reading it and i kept being like this is pretty bleak but like i can't wait till they get off the road or yeah like i just kept waiting for the like the happy ending that shows you my my misunderstanding of cormac mccarthy's oeuvre but like i remember turning the last page of the road and being like where's the rest oh it's just sad it's just unrelenting all unrelentingly sad oh i get it okay and that one

is actually if i recall and again it's been a long time but also gory in in some ways and in his restrained way but anyway i didn't expect this to be such a page turner because it starts off pretty um you know what what's where i'm looking for uh pastoral is that a word you know it's like very you know and uh and i was really enjoying it but then then something happened about halfway through where i literally cannot put it down and so anyway so i went to bed kind of early but i watched maybe half of Guffman while we played some cards and yeah of course it's just I've seen Guffman so many times that I don't think there's anything in there that I haven't that I haven't wrung all of the juice out of you know what I mean there's no scenes that pop up and it's like oh I forgot about that one although Genevieve did point out you get a very very very brief glimpse of Bob Odenkirk because remember his scene is cut out of the movie he's dressed up like a vampire or something but you see one shot of him Because it's during the audition montage, and he does an audition, which you can find. Maybe you can find this online right now and play the audio from it, because I don't remember if the audio would play without the visual. But I believe Babo and Kirk is dressed up like some sort of a tall vampire or something for his audition. The audition gets cut out of the movie, but there's a very brief shot of him in the background if you know what you're looking for. Have you found it from the deleted scenes?

Yeah, I'm fine. I'm waiting for a Peloton ad to clear here on YouTube.

I hope it pays off. I don't know. He might juggle or something. I have no idea what he does. I can't recall.

Okay, so here's the thing. This already looks like it's very low quality. In other words, it looks like someone pointing, not even a phone, Andrew. Oh, no. Like maybe an early digital video camera at the screen, but I'm going to play it anyway. It's two minutes and four seconds. It's starting with the guy, the very sort of mild-mannered looking guy who I believe is doing a scene from maybe Taxi Driver. Oh, yeah. Did you fuck my wife? Did you fuck my wife? I'm looking at the same exact thing. Just the most random guy. Do you have it there? Do you want to play it?

I can play it here. It looks like the same exact one that you have, though. It looks like it's from a VHS or something. Yes, exactly. So let's try that.

I'll do a scene from the movie Raging Bull. Oh, Raging Bull.

He actually says it here. Should I skip ahead a little bit? Although you've already said it twice, I guess. Oh, that's right. Corky just puts his hands to his face and his mouth and his eyes get so wide.

And by the way, this guy's doing both characters, I believe, in the monologue.

Okay, so I'm going to skip ahead here to, okay, the woman is playing the piano and she's like just accompanying everybody.

who's auditioning. And then it looks like Bob Odenkirk comes out here dressed as some sort of a vampire.

Basically, for the last 15 years, I have been the music teacher at Blaine High. and part of my job and a very important part is to put on a show every year which I have done completely by myself this year it's going to be different because Corky being from New York being a professional and having put on some very theatrical productions here is going to be directing the show

he is just so His reserved resentment just simmering with rage about losing the gig. So anyway, Bob is just singing. I guess he's just, for some reason, dressed up. That's great.

I had no idea. And I consider myself a real sort of Guffman aficionado, but I did not know that he made an appearance. It would check out, obviously, he's probably friends with all those people. Also, David Cross, of course. Oh, right, of course. He's famously in it.

Yeah, we use that tape sometimes.

Speaking of weather patterns, he's the guy standing in the middle of a crop circle.

Yeah, and he literally says what you started the show by saying. He says, the joke is, he says, there's always an 80% chance of rain. Always. Or something that kind of doesn't make logical sense, that it could always be the same. There's a non-100% chance of rain.

There's a point, I don't know if it's at that part of the movie or later, where they cut to David Cross trying to measure the crop circle, but his tape measure isn't long enough. So it's about half of the width of the crop circle Then he's trying to do the rest of it Just by kind of doing the splits And measure It's like for some reason so funny to me That he doesn't have a long enough Tape measure for the crop circle So he's trying to finish the last part of it Just based on his stance

You know what I wonder Because he's kind of talking voiceover While you see him doing the measurements And I wonder if I've just never noticed That he's using his splits to do it

Anyway, the good news is I survived my brush with youth, and I learned my lesson. Don't comment on the youth's fashion unless you want to be set upon.

Don't comment on anybody's fashion. I guess unless he's Billy Bob Thornton. I guess the thing that I wanted to say before was I thought it would be funny if I Googled, or not even Googled, but, like, typed into Google Maps Avanti markets just to see, like, would they pop up everywhere? Would they show an Avanti market inside Cairo Radio on Google Maps? and the answer sadly is no the the answer sadly is not yes but what i did find here is a free standing avante market luke and this is blowing my mind so this is somewhere between and i don't know this area that well it's like down uh east i'm sorry uh yeah east of sea tack market or i'm sorry sea tack airport so it's kind of let's see here between tuck willa and renton maybe if i'm looking this right yeah between tuck willa and renton there's a freestanding avante market and it from the outside it it's got an avante market sign is it positive with our corporate headquarters well i'm looking to see if that's the case because it definitely looks like a weird

corporate building that's i'm looking at in renton washington there's an avante markets

corporate office that must be it yes yes that's what i'm looking at i was confused because the preview image shows somebody in a little market with a table and they're buying things with their phone so i thought that you could actually just walk into an avante market but this is their corporate headquarters but we could pay them a visit and ask them about the security cameras and whether or not keeping people tb cellathon this summer from avante markets what if you and i each choose our favorite avante markets you me and john and we all join from different avante

markets or we do a tour of some sort i feel like avante markets walked so that those amazon stores could run yes which you know what i mean because those amazon things are you know i've used like one of those in the airport once have you seen the one that's in c i think it's in sea tack i have not used the one in sea tech i've used the one in the at the stadium yeah i've used that's what you know what i was confusing that the one at the ball at the ballpark is wild like the number of cameras that are coming down from like the the ceiling it's like hundreds and hundreds i mean i guess that's you know the whole point of it they're there for your protection they're there for the whales right exactly

thank you baby All right, let's thank some donors. These wonderful, generous folks are donating to TBTL, which is how this whole thing can happen. No security cameras. It is the honor system. It really is. Think about it. This is the Avante market of podcasting. I would like to back away from that branding. You come in. You enjoy the podcast. We hope you pay for it. Yeah, on the way out. Please do.

Don't be a Jim Curley.

No, be an Andrew. Yeah. And follow the rules and help support us. And tip, me and Andrew, tip the robots.

Here's a little something for you. Maybe that's overkill.

Yeah. Buy yourself some grease. All robots are Bender from Futurama in my mind.

Buy yourself some fortified wine.

I want to just quickly mention again that the emails, I believe now two rounds of emails have gone out to folks who are donating at the dazzling level. And if you did that and you want to send in a message, we would love you to do that. We'll read just about anything that you want to say to us. In the meantime, let's thank Kristen Kelly, who's in Willoughby, New South Wales, Australia. Wow. Now we had New Zealand yesterday.

Yeah, we did. Should we check the weather again? Yeah, let's find out. Actually, can we look at New South Wales, Australia specifically? I'm looking at New South Wales, Australia. It says it's 66 degrees Fahrenheit right now. Wow, that's not that.

I'm surprised because, like, obviously the seasons are reversed, so we're in what is, like, the kind of the dead of winter here. Shouldn't it be the dead of summer there?

I would think so. I'm getting wrong about that. But it is morning there, so it's 66 degrees at 6 a.m. So I'm wondering if maybe that's going to get a little bit warmer as the day progresses, but for some reason, progresses, I should say, but for some reason I'm having trouble finding the, let's see. Oh, it looks like the high will be 81 today. Okay. So that's summertime.

Yeah. Nice day for Kristen. Kristen, thank you so much. I'm curious how Kristen heard about the show. Do you think maybe on our trip through Australia, maybe we happened into Kristen, maybe at that subway we went to had the best subway sandwich of my life. The one in the gas station was that?

The one in the gas station. Yeah, I think so. I think you like, you know why you like that sandwich so much? because it was the first person to recognize our American accents, I think.

I'd forgotten about that, but yes, you're right. I think that's the case.

You're like, finally, somebody sees us as outsiders.

I did think it was weird that as we traveled through the just absolute hinterlands of Australia, it seemed uninteresting to people that we had American accents, which I just thought if I was in whatever the equivalent of the Northern Territory is of America and somebody had an Australian accent, I feel like I would note it.

You think you'd say something to them, but I wouldn't. But also that sandwich was so freaking good. See, that's the thing, though. I just feel like I...

You wouldn't notice it or you would think it was kind of rude to comment on?

I would notice it privately, but I don't like saying to people, oh, I don't like talking about people's accents. I feel like that's something that they have to talk about way more than they want. If you're in an area where the way you speak, your dialect is different than the local culture, if you're an Australian living in America do you want to constantly be saying yes I have an Australian accent but see here's the thing

it wouldn't be the accent I was commenting on it would be the oh are you from Australia oh right so you know what I mean to me it would be a jumping off point it wouldn't be like hey what's up with your accent it would be more like oh wow you seem like you might be from Australia how do you find yourself in the northern territory of America whatever that would be

And they would obviously say a law enforcement conference of some sort, I'm guessing.

That's how we met Brian Gordon of Woodinville, Washington, who's our second donor today. Thank you, Brian. That's right. Thank you also to Jeffrey Burke of New York City. Wow. They named it twice, accidentally. New York, New York. I'm sure that I was telling you this one of the many times I've been there in the last couple of years, But Becca and I have a little inside joke, which was when we visited, I don't know, a couple of times ago, have you seen these 360-degree selfie camera platforms? You know what I'm talking about?

Let me clarify. I have seen the results of them on Instagram. I've never seen one in person, I don't think. Or I walked right by it not knowing what it was.

you'd probably remember because yeah it's it's like a it's like a circular platform that you stand on and it's just got this camera that's on a you know a rotating 360 degree arm it goes around you and there are like many many of them in time square and everyone we walked past and then also every like either a kind of a rickshaw or even some of the horse and carriages basically the 360 degree camera things and then many of the like bicycle rickshaws they were all blasting alicia keys in new york concrete jungles where you burn and uh it was just like god that's an amazing how did they pick that song yeah so now anytime i'm in new york and i walk past one of those i have to videotape it playing new york and send it to becca and go you're not going to believe the song

they're using let me ask you a question yes is that a standalone song or is she just on the jay-z song right because that's a jay-z song is he sampling a full song that she does or is she

just featured on his song i think she's featured on that's what i've always assumed it's technically

a jay-z song not an alicia key song okay i think of it as an alicia that's what i assumed but i'm not even sure and i'm kind of looking it up and i'm not getting great answers but yeah i think i think it's the jay-z song and it features her i wasn't sure if maybe jay-z loved the song by her and then either sampled it or partnered with her to kind of reuse it.

I think that those little selfie machines, 360 things, I don't know if they've got an edit, but I swear to God you never hear Jay-Z in the version that you're walking by because it's like he's just rapping, right? But the Alicia Keys thing is the thing that's very New York-focused when she's singing it. And I swear to God they have like a 30-second loop that they're playing that's just the Alicia Keys thing. Wait, hold on.

Can I tell you a quick story? And I got to be, I'm an obtuse man.

I've got to ask Dave and Aaron Goulet of Edmonds, Washington, if they'll allow it. Because there are other donors you're thinking. They will. Dave and Aaron, thank you.

Our Edmonds tens. I'm going to be a little, I'm an oblique man.

I want an Onyx Black Men reference every single day.

I'm an oblique man, so I'll try to be opaque. Is that what he says? I think I'm reversing it now. And now I'm in my head about it. I think he says, I'm an oblique man, so I'll be obtuse, or I'm an obtuse man. I'm an obtuse man, so I'll try to be oblique, yes. Anyway, I just love that line so much. I love his delivery. It lives in my head all the time, and lately we've been letting it bubble out, and now we can't contain it. Too much for the liking of the listeners. But I can't give all the names, but I will describe this friend as somebody who I like and somebody whom we used to work with and somebody whom I go to occasional baseball games and in this case the occasional concert with but he at between you and i has a reputation for not staying past say the sixth or seventh inning because you want to beat traffic and stuff like that stuff that is like and so usually who i will say goodbye on his mount rushmore of rappers exactly i know eminem and the beastie boys are both both up there so um which is another dazzling detail about this friend who i love and i don't want to dunk on too much behind his back but it It was funny when one day he made conversation and asked me about the Mount Rushmore of rappers, in my opinion, and hearing his list contained a lot more whites than I expected. But all of that is to say I was at a Jay-Z show with him because another mutual friend of ours, I think, had won the tickets via the radio and then couldn't and invited and then couldn't go. So I had an extra ticket. Oh, now we're just saying the name. Yeah. Oh. what should i do who's on your mount rushmore of snitching you know and it's too funny i'll just leave it in just bleep it yeah you know what maybe i'll believe it but what happens is i probably said it twice i'll bleep it once and all these people are like people are always so concerned when i i told some long ass story about my neighbor one time and i left in his name like three times anyway so this anonymous man who took me to the show because he had an extra ticket the atlanta falcons hillary clinton anyway that's just for us in simpsons lovers okay so anyway i was really shocked because we went to the show and neither one of us are huge jay-z fans but you know i had several records and it was like a free show and it was like i think it was uh maybe my first time oh you know what it was still key arena that's right it was the last time i went into key arena before it became you know the amazon center yeah and um anyway i just remember my buddy this mysterious man of the night saying maybe before the show even began like all he really wanted to hear was is it new york state of mind i gotta get the name of this song whatever song we're talking about specifically Yeah, Empire State of Mind. Sorry. Empire State of Mind. But yeah, I remember him specifically saying, I want to hear Empire State of Mind.

And then, you know, this concert starts. It's actually quite great. I had not been to an arena show in so long. And they did a really good job of, even though we were way up in the nosebleeds, like still making you feel like part of the.

show and everything it was really great but then jay-z and i can't remember what the trilogy would be although i think i knew all the songs but he starts what is obviously a new york centric trilogy okay and i can't remember what the first song is we're listening to it then the second song and i think he's even referencing the fact that he's doing a little stop down tribute to new york and then in the middle of the second song my buddy's like i i think i'm gonna take

off now and i swear to god this is a true story and i was like but they're gonna play your song next man and so he stuck around he's like how did you know and i was like because they're doing the new york songs now and this is gonna be the last song of the new york portion of the show obviously

it's as big as it anyway i'm not trying to dunk too hard it was just it was sort of sweet he's like well i think i'm gonna take off i'm like dude i think you're i think if you stick around

you're gonna hear your song empire that's sort of like the uh speaking of the simpsons one of i think my favorite i mean it's very hard to pick one but like when homer goes to a bachman turner overdrive concert and he's like play he's yelling play taking care of business and they finally agree like okay they start playing it and then they just start he yells play the working overtime workout part. He just doesn't even want to get to the good part. He just wants one part of the song. Right. It feels good to laugh and thank Matthew McClure, who's in Glen Ellen, Illinois. That's a place I don't know if I've heard of, other than maybe last year when Matthew donated. Thank you, Matthew. Yeah, thanks, Matthew. Hope you're doing well in Glen Ellen. And then, of course, Eric Ryden is checking in from Seattle, Washington, a place that I know and love and think about often. Thank you very much. Eric, thank you to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. Thank you for not just fast-forwarding to the work in overtime workout part of the show, but thanks for listening to all of this and supporting it. We really do appreciate you. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. So a coyote has apparently managed to swim to Alcatraz. They've never seen this before. First of all, as a person who barely cleared the marina In San Francisco Bay That one time for a TV story I can't believe this juvenile coyote pulled this off I think animals are just made of tougher stuff

You think? Than us humans Than you and me? Certainly than me

I can't speak for you But man, having spent five minutes Really my takeaway from doing that little swimming project was like there's no way those dudes escaped from alcatraz oh like they 100 died like that water is crazy but here's the problem so first of all they they people saw the coyote swimming they saw it get onto alcatraz but it was very uh it was very wet obviously it was shivering it was cold it was like it didn't they didn't think the coyote was going to survive but now it has survived and now they don't know what to do with it because it turns out that that island is like a rookery for like thousands and thousands of cormorants and other kind of birds and they're worried the

coyote is going to eat all the birds oh i did hear that part because i know i did i was just seeing bits and pieces about this and i don't remember where but i remember saying somebody somebody saying like i'm obsessed with the coyote did they know that the coyote was heading out there before because i feel like i saw some update in one of my feeds that said the coyote made it And now he's chomping down.

Well, they found one bird skeleton that was picked clean, and their assumption is it was probably the coyote because maybe there's not anything else out there that they know of that would have done that. I don't think, well, of course, who can really know? Andrew, who truly can know what lies in the heart of a coyote other than wanting to get that dang roadrunner? But one of the theories is that The coyote Got spooked or was out for a swim Or was with other coyotes and got sort of separated By the current Again, who can know, but it seems like there's a theory That it wasn't trying to go to Alcatraz It was just for some weird reason in the water And then that was the like The closest thing that was shoreline For it to get to But to me, I don't know So they're also worried that the coyote Won't survive for long because there's no shade on Alcatraz, which is kind of weird to me. So they're trying to trap it and get it off of there. I don't know. I feel like it seems to me like it is. I guess my question is, is that nature just doing what nature do? In other words, these birds have been living there and nesting and having their babies out there because they can. But then, like if it was a thousand years ago and a coyote swam out there, maybe it just becomes.

coyote island now right isn't that just nature doing nature i guess i also sort of wonder was there a moment where we as a human might look back and realize oh we're a quarter of the way out we should turn around because we can't make it but maybe the coyote is like once you're on this journey you just go forward i am reminded of something and unfortunately i just famously have very little regret yeah he does not look as soon as he looks down he's in trouble so this is a show where we're taking some pretty wild swings on content on tape that we're playing even by our standards so I don't know if this works at all but what you're talking about really reminds me of some tape that really effed with me last week when I saw it and you might already be familiar with this but if you're not I'm going to need you to put eyes on this as well Luke and the listeners we're just going to have to bring them along with us but have you seen the clip that you will find if you Google Nihilist Penguin Werner Herzog. Okay. This is one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my life. So this is part of some doc, and I don't know what the doc is. I'll bet you some listeners know that I don't. But this is a scene from one of his docs that apparently focuses on nature, I'm guessing. And Werner, off camera, is talking to some penguin expert. and by the way there's no like death or there's no predator prey stuff going on here. Oh that's what I thought I was going to be. No no no I wouldn't do that. No no no no I wouldn't do that but this is sad in a different way that's going to make your soul cry. So it begins with some voices. You're going to hear Werner off camera talking to this guy asking him something absolutely batshit I can't remember. It's something can a penguin go insane i think he asked this guy can a penguin go insane and then the the camera just starts to follow like these penguins and most of them all are going to one place some sort of ice flow or something and then there's just one penguin that decides to strike out on his own and they have no

idea why dr indy is there such thing as insanity among penguins i try to avoid the definition of insanity or derangement i don't mean that a penguin might believe he he or she is lenin

napoleon bonaparte but could they just go crazy because they've had enough of their colony i'm

gonna pause it here are you watching a long i'm watching it right first of all he isn't to define crazy yes he brings up napoleon which i mean just what a wild ride in any conversation with him And so now, and so the guy's going to try to answer this batshit question as best as he can.

Well, I've never seen a penguin bashing its head against a rock. They do get disoriented. They end up in places they shouldn't be, long way from the ocean.

these penguins are all heading to the open water to the right but one of them caught our eye the one in the center so all these penguins most of the penguins

are moving way off to the right there's a very very wide shot of a of a white snowy icy expanse And then there's two little penguins left in the shot. And then one of them starts walking back to where he came from. So most of them are moving to the right. One of them is moving to the left, leaving this one lonely penguin just standing still in the middle of this nowhere.

He would neither go towards the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice nor return to the colony. Shortly afterwards, we saw him heading straight towards the mountains, some 70 kilometers away. Dr. Ainley explained that even if he caught him and brought him back to the colony, he would immediately head right back for the mountains. But why?

so now we see some closer footage of him handle that little i know first of all he's sliding on his belly yeah did you see that he slides and then just gets right back up i guess that's how they do and then there's some people out there but the people are not allowed to touch them so the people just stand stock still and let the penguin just walk right by him which must be so hard you see this little tuxedo guy they're like little buddy don't head to the mountains you're

not going to survive there one of these disoriented or deranged penguin

showed up at the New Harbor Diving Camp, already some 80 kilometers away from where it should be. The rules for the humans are, do not disturb or hold up the penguin. Stand still and let him go on his way. And here he is heading off into the interior of the vast continent. With 5,000 kilometers ahead of him, he's heading towards certain death.

I'm going to cry. Is that not the saddest thing? When that penguin walks by the human and the human is doing what he's supposed to do, just stand very still, and the penguin stretches out his little wings? But why?

Because you don't mess with nature. See, this is the thing. We take it as a given that we can't mess with nature at all. But in this case, how could it be worse for this penguin than what it was going to do to itself? Do you need me to get Wes on the line? Wait, from PETA, who may or may not be a real person. Did you get the latest pitch from Wes at PETA, by the way? No, but maybe it's in my email and I haven't checked it.

It was from a couple of weeks ago. He said, here's a letter that we sent Jody Allen to try to convince her to use a robot osprey instead of a real-life Osprey at the Seahawks games, which, honestly, I wouldn't be against a road. That would be pretty awesome, right?

Like, why not? Yeah, it's weird that the NFL, did you see this, that Roger Goodell had to go on the record as saying the NFL is not pressuring her to sell the Seahawks? I am so confused because I feel like this story whips back and forth,

but he was, was it yesterday or the day before, he was being interviewed as something related to probably the build-up to the Super Bowl, right? And I saw that he had weighed in, but I wasn't clear as to what he said. Because there is a... She does have to sell, right, legally? Right, yeah, it's in the will of Paul Allen or something.

Yeah, which I don't understand why that was in his will. Well, I think because he wanted his assets, he wanted his fortune to be sort of distributed to, I think, various charitable causes. And obviously the Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks are two extremely big assets in his portfolio so i think it was just kind of the sort of the dispersal of his of his again assets so it has to happen but like but it's also because roger goodell said you know like she's been a great owner they're at the super bowl which is all true and you know when it's time for her to sell it or when she decides to sell it we'll support her on that but i thought it's probably just it's legal right it's like when she decides to sell it like i guess i haven't looked at the will yeah it sounds like it's not really up to her yeah that's what i'm confused about in like

was there a timeline built in because it was it was pretty shocking like i think the headline broke last thursday i want to say or maybe last friday timing when your team is about to play in the super bowl yeah it was broken by espn but picked up by the seattle times and that's how i saw it as like an actual news alert like the the seahawks will be sold after the super bowl and then the jody allen slash seahawks front office came out and completely denied it said this is not true yes eventually the team will have to be sold that's in the will but the plans are not being made right now and so it sort of sounds like there are some insiders who are claiming that things are already moving and and then for some reason maybe because they don't want to take away from the Super Bowl or be a distraction to the team I don't know what but they are like pretty vociferously denying that that wheels are in motion now so I'm not exactly sure about the whole thing but I guess we got to be ready for it to happen at some point Which is kind of a bummer, because to her credit, she's hiring the right people to do the right things. She seems like such a good custodian for the team.

Yeah, if she would just get a robot Osprey, I think it would be all the way there.

We're so close.

The thing that really terrifies me about that is the fact that Jeff Bezos is being bandied about as somebody who might buy this. He tried to buy the Washington football team, I guess, and he wasn't able to pull it off somehow. like you want to talk about really really bumming me out about my football team if you let old lex

luther buy them yeah although in this day and age are there any is there anybody who can afford a football team that you know that's the whole point person like it's no no you could only get the

amount of wealth that you need to buy a football team through through basically victimizing people on some level like no like you know the singer james taylor doesn't have enough money to buy the seahawks which i think of the of the gentlest soul that i could think of and james taylor is

who came to mind or his brother livingston taylor it's my dream to someday say to james taylor Aren't you, Livingston's brother? Anyway, yeah, this conversation has depressed me. Can we cheer ourselves up with that penguin tape again? Just roll it back. By the way, don't you feel like Werner Herzog, he says he's not trying to be mean, but the second time that he refers to the penguin as deranged, as it just follows its own path. Well, we know he has it out for birds. Yeah, that's right. He hates chickens. I wonder if that's from the same doc. Yeah. Oh, maybe it's a whole doc about birds or something? Maybe. I don't know what this is from that I was playing. All I know is it really impacted me last week.

Yeah. No, and thank you for putting that evil inside me because I will never—I don't think you saw it, but I was holding up this little penguin to the thing because, you know, Addie and I have a whole penguin thing. When she was a little kid, I had this book. We had this book called Tacky the Penguin about a penguin who doesn't fit in with the other very buttoned-up kind of fancy penguins. He's kind of—in fact, he's wearing the same shirt that Nick Nolte is wearing in his mugshot. Okay. which is to say a Hawaiian shirt. And he's kind of an embarrassment to all the other penguins. And then, of course, at the end, it turns out that Tacky's sort of gregarious nature saves them from these hunters that have come to catch the penguins. Anyway, so Addy and I have always kind of loved penguins, and we have this whole thing where it's like if we ever, and oftentimes they'll sell penguins kind of in like little sculptures of them or whatever in two. There'll be a big one and a little one. So if I ever see that, I buy them, I send the little one to her, and I keep the big one or vice versa. So I feel especially connected to the idea of penguins, and that video really bummed me out.

When you held up that little penguin statuette, I don't know if you recall this, because you've told that before, and I always rejoined her, is that the right word, with this story, because Vives and I also have a thing about penguin, especially that little statuette, and this is hard to explain, and I think it originates as gifts from Genevieve's mom, And Genevieve's mom might be listening, so apologies, Meg, if I get this wrong. But I think, so Genevieve also has, or we have a penguin, little tchotchke about the size of the one you have there, maybe slightly taller than it. And I think we got that as a gift when Genevieve and I were on Christmas Day. This is my memory. We were opening up gifts, and Genevieve's mom had that little penguin wrapped up in something. We opened it up, and we're like, oh, it's a little penguin. And then, and this is my memory, tell me, I could be wrong about this, maybe Genevieve will tell me if I'm wrong, but then we were opening more gifts and we found a penguin that is maybe a sixteenth of the size of that thing. Like tiny, like smaller than your thumbnail was in another gift. And so Genevieve and I immediately, and this is going back 20 years or something, just started riffing about looking at the slightly bigger penguin and screaming, I said I wanted a small penguin! God damn it! And then we found this tiny, tiny, tiny guy. And that tiny, tiny guy is now living in this tiny little fake toy kitchenette thing that we have stuck to our wall in our kitchen. He's just like a tiny, tiny little guy. So we also have little tiny penguins in our life, too. So you also feel the pain of that penguin. I do love penguins. Committing penguin side. If you were to ask me as a kid, I mean, now, I don't know if I have opinions on the matter. I got to check in with Wes. But, like, I know that there is a, you know, for most of my life, if you had said, what is your favorite animal, I would have said a penguin. And I did say a penguin. I just think that they're just absolutely adorable. They waddle around. They look like they're all dressed up. Some of them are gay. That's right. That's right. We love that for them.

They're a very interesting little animal. Exactly.

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, any emails or V-mails before we get out of here today?

Yeah, somebody sent us this voice memo. I don't know if I have a name attached to it or not. It doesn't look like I've put their name in, but I think they'll identify themselves. This looks like kind of a long message, but the only thing I know about it, I haven't heard the whole thing, but I know that it is coming from the field, and it involves the conversation around backing in when you're parking. My favorite topic. Your favorite topic. Exactly. Famously. You've shackled me to you as the listeners pull you down.

Just a reminder to everybody, I don't care. Hey, Luke and Andrew. It's Dan in Seattle reporting here from the Sky Zone Trampoline Park in South Center as your, uh, back-end parking correspondent, I just walked through the parking lot, and this is interesting because this is a parking lot, it's inside a, like, garage area, like a big warehouse type thing, and this, it's tight, it gets really busy here at the trampoline park, um, kids come here a lot, and, uh, this, the parking spots are angled, and

And so as you're driving, you know, the direction you're supposed to go in the in the like road thing, you're supposed to pull in at an angle into a spot. And I just walked past most of the cars in this thing and only two are backed in. And both of them are trucks, larger trucks, kind of aggressive looking trucks.

Sasquatch stickers.

and uh first of all what that means is either they had to do a really complicated thing to back into the spot because the angled nature of the parking spots or they just went the wrong way um to be able to back into them and then uh second of all it means when they leave it defeats the purpose of backing into the spot because it's way easier to back out of an angled parking spot than to nose out of an angled parking spot they're going to have to do an extreme sort of like 135 degree turn to get out and likely a you know three to six point turn to get out of their spot in this tight parking lot and lastly the coding that luke brings up uh one of them had a ball cap in the dashboard that said make prayer great again prayer and this one i'm looking at right now has a um just black and white american flag on the gas uh like the gas area that's been my problem with american too much color too much color i know you know any changing of the american well it's a fraught symbol anyway but making it black and white it just always makes me a little nervous i don't know what it means i know what it means when it's got a blue line through the middle i don't know what the only black and white one means means punisher um but it feels like it means something especially in this context so uh for my money put a put a uh you know check in the column of little bit strangely coded behavior with the backing in of the trucks in the parking lot All right. Love the show. That is interesting. I knew I'd like that call.

The angled – I really didn't know where that was going, by the way. I didn't know if that was going to absolutely – You would have never played it if you were supporting me. Yeah, right. Yeah, because I'm so antagonistic towards you all the time. It is interesting, like, in that case, because I'm with most listeners, like, well, it does make sense if you're driving a truck. Backing in does make sense, and I think that for other people – like, I just think that it makes sense in a lot of cases. But it really doesn't seem to make sense in an angled spot like that, because it would be so much harder to do. Because as he was describing it, you're driving down, Dan was having trouble thinking of what to call it, but you're driving down, let's say, an aisle, and you have those angled parking spots. I think of them almost as cilia, sort of, like you're going kind of against the grain so you can easily nose into one. But to back into one of those, I don't even know how you would begin to do it, especially in a garage like that.

I will say that, yes, I mean, there are certainly some examples of certain vehicles where probably it makes sense. So, you know, and people have emailed me and said, well, I drive this kind of rig and this is why I need to do it or whatever. But I do think living in Red America like I do, that there is a certain weird, like, tactical nature to it. I don't know if it's that you think you need to escape the Walmart parking lot in case of an emergency or something. There's something about it that feels, like I said, a little Republican coded. to me so i appreciate that listener agreeing with me and proving me right once and for all

i mean yeah i think there's a definitely a correlation between those kinds of trucks and the political leanings that you mentioned sure and then there's a truck related more so than parking in other words yeah i do think that if you could if you drive a big truck like that no matter how you view the world it makes sense to back in but i think that those trucks go way more towards people who have the views as you describe them so right so yeah maybe it's like

The parking is the secondary effect.

That's how I feel. In other words, if somebody lost their truck in a gambling thing, I don't know how. Some guy who's got a giant truck, he's got the Sasquatch on the back of it, but then he says he's at a poker game, and for some reason he says all in. This is everything I know about poker, by the way. He says all in, and he puts the truck keys in the middle, and he pushes it in the middle, right? And then he loses it because he's only got, what's a bad hand? Oh, a Jack 2. He's got a Jack 2. That's the worst hand you can have. Right, which is also what he nicknamed his truck, the Jack 2, by the way, which is coincidental. But anyway, so then he can't afford another truck, so he has to buy a Kia Soul. Because, by the way, I saw a Kia Soul with a blue lives.

But there's four hamsters living in it.

I saw a Kia Soul with a blue lives matter sticker on it or like a little magnet or something. but the kind that Dan was describing there, like the black and white flag with the blue stripe. And I was like, wow, that might be the only Kia Soul with a Blue Lives Matter sticker on it. Anyway, I'm just wondering, what's even smaller? A Geoprism? What's the smallest car you can think of? Is this guy who lost, this conservative MAGA guy who lost his truck in this well-told poker game that I described. By now, 7-2 offsuit would be the worst possible. And I said Jack 2 because I've been annoyed.

at people betting into me with a Jack 2, but that's not technically the worst. A 7-2 offsuit would be the worst. I was going to say something, but I didn't want to embarrass you. But anyway, is he backing his geoprism in because he thinks, like, well, I'm still who I am politically. I kind of doubt it, but maybe. You think so?

I think he would. Well, you're right, because it's not exclusively trucks that I see doing this. It's all manner of vehicle, but it more tends to be trucks. That's interesting. But I think that guy, I think he would also back his you know, again, it's hard to prove sort of a hypothetical in this way, but I think he would back his geoprism. I mean, I don't think

he would... What if he got out of the truck and he was a cute little penguin and he just like hopped down like two or three hops and just keep waddling

up to you? Just walked away from everyone and everything that ever loved it? That's what I need to do. You know what?

Wait, you need to walk away from everything that loves you?

No, when I see somebody in the world who bugs me, they've got to Make Prayer Great Again hat in their truck. I just got to imagine them as a sad little penguin.

Yeah. Lost their way.

They didn't get enough love. Lost their way. Find some empathy for them. So that's the takeaway from today's episode. All right. Thank you, everyone, for listening. That's going to wrap it up for today. But we are going to be right back here tomorrow with more of this here, Imaginary Radio. So if you can, please join us for that. In the meantime, everybody have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Stay safe. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

The enormity of their flat brain, the enormity of their stupidity is just overwhelming. You have to do yourself a favor when you're out in the countryside and you see chicken. try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you it's just amazing power out