Muse

This is outrageous. Where are the armed men who come in to take the protesters away? Where are they? This kind of behavior is never tolerated in Boracua. You shout like that, they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing. Journalists, we have a special jail for journalists. You're stealing, right to jail. You're playing music too loud, right to jail, right away. You're driving too fast, jail. Slow, jail. You're charging too high prices for sweaters, glasses. You write to jail. You undercook fish, believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken, also jail, undercook, overcook. You make an appointment with a dentist and you don't show up, believe it or not, jail right away. We have the best patients in the world because of jail. T.

T. T. B.

T. L.

Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is.

Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday.

singing that wrong. How? I made it up. Have you all gone insane? This is not good. The point is at

this time of national peril we all have to do our part and by do I mean don't. We all have to don't

our part. I have never heard someone say so many wrong things one after the other consecutively in a row. Uh-oh. He's starting that funny talk again. Well all right hello good morning and

Welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

What is this? Only my favorite podcast of all time.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host. You paint your bald spot? One bald spot. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia, where it's cold today. Like, I'm having trouble, you know, like, operating the keyboard here because it's so cold in the Madrona Hill studio.

Yeah, bathroom is just a library with a cold seat.

I was explaining to Andrew during soundcheck that the issue is, I come out here to the Madrona Hill studio kind of earlier in the morning, and I jump on the old treadmill, the old Nordic track. And I don't want to have the heat on in here when that's happening, because I'm already a little nervous of kind of like turning this into a, like a gymnasium, like that over the course of time, it will start to, I don't know, have a certain funk in here. And somehow it feels to me that if I have the heat on and I'm sweating on the treadmill, that's like adding to the problem. I don't know if there's any science behind that. So I don't have the heat on, but then I come back out here a while later to do the show and it's just friggin' freezing. It's okay though, I got this, you can figure this out. You may hear me doing this during the show. That's just me overcoming the odds to bring you episode 4000 668 in a collector series let the fun begin you know me i'm terminally online always always falling for some new internet thing uh and there are these uh two nuns on the internet that i really quite fascinated with actually welcome to the internet i actually thought it might be ai when i first saw it or a parody of some kind but it's not we'll play the audio for you And I would very much like to try to, if I can. And this is, you know, it's a long shot, I'll be honest with you. But I'm going to try to see if I can in some way rehabilitate Andrew's relationship with the actor and musician. Or maybe I should say musician and actor. Billy Bob Thornton. Would you say that to Tom Petty? You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty, would you? I'm going to try to do the impossible here on this Friday show. Speaking of my friend Andrew Walsh, he's the longest-running co-bro of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of tall ships. I asked him how he was feeling about today's program. I got the time if you got the diapers. A direct quote from him. He's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. Could you tell that I had neglected to take the Billy Bob Thornton audio from my email and put it into my soundboard so that entire tap dance was me going into my email, finding your email, saving Billy Bob Thornton to the desktop of my computer, finding it on the desktop of my computer, which is a real pigsty, and then playing it? No, you did that very smoothly. I had no idea. I felt like this is taking forever.

The only thing that, well, it always feels a little bit like that. So, you know, you've really set the precedent there. Level set. That's what I'm all about. But, no, I was surprised. I was a little bit slightly surprised that you decided to use the version where he says both statements about Tom Haley. Well, because I didn't have a chance to edit it. But now I know why. But I actually thought that was just a decision on your part to play them both in a row like that. Because as listeners need to know, both of those are on the same file. And I sent the file to you.

you and i said you can play one or the other and then you played both and i liked it and but and i had no idea it was a mistake i thought you were just like an auteur that you're playing by your

own rules uh-huh well that's the thing about art and i've been thinking about it a lot a lot lately because i've been working on that story about robert therry and the artist and i did have the experience i think i mentioned this on the show but when i was in his workshop where he also lived in the upstairs of this workshop that he built i had the experience of not i was chewing gum when i showed up for the interview i'm always very worried about being the cbs correspondent who has rocking breath but then i'm not gonna be chewing gum during the interview so i've got to find somewhere to throw it and everything was so perfectly preserved this guy has been passed away for a while now that i didn't know what was art and what was just a functioning garbage can oh sure so i'm carrying the gum around because i'm like i don't can i throw gum in this thing or is this preserved because it was how he left it and this is a view into his process? And the other thing I had to ask, there was this ladder that was in the upstairs, this sort of gallery area. There was this ladder that was built into the wall, this very ingenious ladder, but also had all these foot scuffs, like toe scuffs in the wall, like people had been using it. And I asked them, is this a ladder or is this art? And they said, that's just a ladder. Sometimes a ladder is just a ladder. So that's what I've got you thinking. I'm so high level with this that you're like, is this art that Luke's doing, or did he just forget to do the minimum of his job, which was drag the audio over into the soundboard?

I like the idea of you getting so confused, like, by the time you're leaving the museum or the place, the installation, you're not sure if you're art anymore. I feel like there could be a whole story there.

I mean, I feel like maybe you're being slightly jokey, but slightly not jokey.

I could actually see that as being sort of a story, like a short story by, I don't know what author I want to attribute this to, maybe they would Dave Barry I think we can do better but anyway, but like one of my favorite, I would say one of my favorite sleeper, I think you should leave sketches, is where Tim Robinson is on some sort of a game show with his son, it's a very short sketch and they put a virtual reality headset on him and suddenly he just says, I can't breathe, I can't breathe and it's just over his eyes right but he locks up and then they take it off and i think that it broke him forever and like he continues to not be able to breathe because he somehow got so into his head about this vr thing and i'm sort of thinking along those lines well the thing is

that um when i was talking to the curator of the broad uh in la who had um was the guy that brought in this this he's kind of a sort of i guess an expert on this guy robert therian and we were talking about art like before they started recording and i was talking about this thing that i had seen and i know i've mentioned this on the show before but like years and years ago on my first honeymoon we went to italy we went to venice and it happened to be this thing called the venice biennale which is a big art kind of world art exposition where every country picks or the countries that are participating pick an artist and then that artist does this you know gallery not gallery there but whatever you want to call it insta installation and i was so underwhelmed with the american installation it was this guy named robert gober because so many of the other pavilions were just like incredible like detailed work that looked like it might have taken years of someone's life and then you go into the american one and it's just a piece of styrofoam in the corner of the room i was like what a this is american exceptionalism at its worst and for years i used that as shorthand in my mind of like um just like modern art like being dumb because it's like i know you're trying to be ironic like it's a big art thing but i'm just going to be like hey styrofoam is art and then i found out later that it was made out of gold and it was a very you know made to look like kind of nothing but it was itself very both valuable and also a ton of work to put together and this i was talking about in the the the gallerist guy at the broad was like yeah it's kind of like a trap door he goes i really like art that's a trap door i like stuff that brings you in thinking one thing and then something else kind of happens and he also said i really like art that puts me on my back foot he goes i like walking into a room and kind of not knowing how i feel and i was like wow that is really instructive to me because i always like to know how i feel that's why i don't like movies that confuse me that's why i don't really get david lynch so i don't really because i have this idea that for me to be enjoying something it has to be going exactly the way i expect it to go um and i thought wow what an interesting thing if i can start to think about stuff whether it's art or i'm not there with music yet but let's just go with maybe art and movies and like thinking that when i'm on my back foot a little bit when i walk into a room and i kind of don't know is this art or not or i kind of don't know do i like it or not not assuming that's a bad thing right away because that's how i've gone through my whole life so i really did have this kind of i wouldn't call it profound but like a big thought for me about how I'm going to try to think about. So that could have even, I guess, applied to that happiness movie that we were talking about this week that, you know, I mean, I definitely enjoyed it, but I also wasn't kind of looking for anything that didn't work for me or for like a moment that like I didn't fully understand and then use that as a reason to disengage from it. Now, I don't know if I was like consciously thinking about my conversation about art that puts me slightly off balance but yeah i just think i i don't know why i'd never really thought about that as like maybe actually a feature and not a bug yeah you know the not knowing exactly how it's

going to go or exactly how i feel about it and that's okay that's the process i know what i'm describing is literally like the first day of any kind of like art 101 or art criticism so it's kind of sad that i'm about to turn 50 and i'm figuring this out but you know i guess better late than

never well it's interesting because all kidding aside you and i will joke about a time we got a little touchy with each other about like some avant-garde sounding music in the middle of a record that you otherwise liked and you were just like yeah and you're like why would anybody just make this just to be mean to us or something you felt like it was an assault like it was just like they're only doing this to be annoying and i looking back at a lot of the music that i loved in high school and college i actually am not the same person anymore like i put on a sonic youth record that i used to love and i'm like wow some of this stuff is a little bit sophomoric and also um actually i i musically that stuff stands up for me but there's some other noise related stuff or like i had a like i had a japanese sonic youth um ep or something that was literally three versions of a song where they just screamed the word no over and over again you know it would be more like it was more like a screamo art rock you know like almost and people say this people are very dismissive of yoko ono in a similar way right and and and now some of that stuff doesn't hit my ears the same way like i'm not in a situation where i want to be listening to that or sometimes i'm like wow why was i so into this stuff that was like just what you would hear is nothing but screamy noise but it's like well i just think at that time in my life i liked something that wasn't predictable i liked something that didn't sound like everything else that didn't follow the same rules now it doesn't appeal to me quite as much but i think i truly do understand the reason why art sometimes while uncomfortable it's like there's this music is weird though right because it's music art you're not going into a space necessarily to be challenged by it you're sometimes a lot of people are but you also have the end of the spectrum where it's like no i I just want to bop my head to something while I'm driving around in my geoprism.

Well, I mean, I would say music probably is definitely art. And it's probably like other art, like maybe visual art or whatever. It's kind of the mood that you're in. And there's some days that you want to go look at a Monet or something that's just sort of objectively very beautiful. And then some days when you want to walk into a room where there's what you think is a piece of styrofoam in the corner. Or at least there's, you know, I just, and with music too, it's sometimes you want to listen to something really catchy. And sometimes you want to listen to the silver juice. Of course, that's why I didn't get your, by the way, very funny, but lost on me joke to Stu in the criminals text chain. Oh, that was such a good joke. And I was like, I don't know what Starlight Express is.

Oh, that is a silver juice record. Well, I looked it up because I was like,

but I understood the premise of the joke. I was like, this is a really funny text from Andrew, but I don't know what that thing is. Now let me look it up. And I saw Silviger's like, well, that's something Stu would obviously know about.

Let's explain this and also because I'm –

No, let's not. Let's leave them on their back foot, Andrew. Have you learned nothing from our – I'm Art Luke now. I don't explain anything.

The joke was I was going to send this long, complicated, somewhat off-the-wall question about sports to our friend Durs, about just some thoughts about the upcoming baseball season. That is like not where anybody's brain is right now, looking at the end of the season and one specific position player and whether or not we think we'll see him at the end. So anyway, I just had this weird question that I was going to shoot der's because sometimes we sideline those conversations just between him and I. But then I was like, you know what? I'll throw this entire question to the text chain. Like, is it an interesting thought experiment about where JP might be by the end of the season? But after typing it, it seemed like such a long, bizarre question that then I decided to loop Stubot in, who doesn't really, I think, follow the Mariners all that closely, about, and I asked a similarly deranged, overly complicated question about the album Starlight Walker. And I do think the song that I talked about was the one that you did not like, by the way.

LOL. That's great. That's like full circle for this whole thing. I want to just read this if I can get to. What is my, boy, I do a lot of text. I never realize how much texting I'm doing until I'm trying to go back to like a... specific thread like in my mind the criminals that should be like you know in three texts ago for me but i guess it's not oh and by the way a message i sent last night i want to point out i was not drinking it didn't go through i guess but probably just as well because it was unnecessarily mean to the seahawks new offensive coordinator um uh it was i just saw a clip of him and he is it went through oh it went through i'm it's it shows not delivered on my screen oh i don't have

the photo, I just have the text Have you seen a photo of this guy? No, let me look it up. This is the new offensive coordinator

What's his name again? Well, you gotta see, now I'm gonna send it as an SMS, it'll go through to you, Andrew. This is, this is what happens is that is that, you know, we have, and we don't have to get into it, but sometimes the phones, sometimes the iOS's are having trouble. Now I reset it as an SOS, and maybe you'll see this guy, like I know that we're going to the side I wanna, our, there's a certain, like, football coach guy look, and it's usually, it's kind of one of two things it's either a guy who looks like he might still be able to play that's mike mcdonald right or guy who looks like he played a long long time ago but he's lived a really good life and he's had access to lots of spicy nugs and he's andy reed you know or mike tomlin he's like there's just kind of like a there's a sort of like i don't know there's like an older coach who who looks like an older football coach guy and then there's like a young guy who's like like a sean mcveigh a guy who's still kind of working out with the with the players and whatever and then there's this new oc who looks like he just crawled off of uh world's deadliest catch or sons of anarchy sons of anarchy better better reference and like i don't know why it was so jarring to me last night i mean there's nothing to do i know we try to be careful again about looks and people whatever i feel like this is if anything punching up because the guy's highly paid offensive coordinator for an nfl team but he just looks like a son of anarchy who just got jumped in or as i put it he looks like he's three clean uas away from having a real shot at supervised visits with his kid again is a ua like a p test what is yeah that's like a urine analysis that's like something you would do with your like your your parole officer but like he just doesn't he he does and again we'll see the proof's in the pudding who cares how the guy appears but for some reason i found his appearance really surprising like last night when i because i've never seen him before i think his name is brian flurry and again i'm sure he's great at his job i'm sure he'll do really well but i don't know what i was

expecting but it wasn't this yeah me neither until you sent this right now i didn't know what he looked

like and this is not what i had in mind either but the exact text that you sent that was uh that was very funny was um well for some reason i'm having trouble locating but i just want to tell you andrew i appreciated it i thought it was hilarious even though i didn't know that was a silver juice reference i knew it was a funny joke between you and stew and i'd like to see that

happen okay now i did want to talk about art some more because it's kind of weird how this conversation we're having about art relates to some strange internet reading i was doing last night and more like internet sort of sleuthing about is it art i'm doing the meme now of the kid with the butterfly in his hand and he's saying is it art i don't know if i know that meme oh really it's i i find it hard to believe that you haven't seen it it's an off you and i have very different fred schneiders yeah i guess so but i mean it's a it's got to be like in the top i got every meme i got every meme imaginable like it's got to be one of the most he can destroy us with his memes um you don't know that it's like um it's like a kid and he's it's like an animated it looks like it's an animated thing it's like a clip from an animated movie um anyway is this art

I feel like part of it is because you do a lot of stuff with, like, photography, and you're a visual person more than me. I wonder if you sometimes are getting memes that are more connected. I'm trying to Google this, by the way. Is it art kid meme? Oh, no.

I'm saying art because you could put anything in there. Put butterfly meme. Just put butterfly meme. Okay, butterfly meme. And then it's the is it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's anime. Yes, I couldn't describe it well. I'm like, there's no way you haven't seen this thing.

I thought it was a real kid. I definitely have seen this anime guy. I don't think I really ever understood, like, the meme of asking, is this fill in the blank? But I definitely have seen this cartoon kid and the butterfly.

Well, I was him yesterday with Lana Del Rey album covers. And I don't know why.

How about Lana Del Rey wedding choices?

Oh, what's going on? I don't know. She's married to, like, a gator wrestler. Oh, really? But she's been married. It's not in the news now or something.

It's never going to leave the news of my mind because it is highly, highly unusual. But keep going.

Well, I actually want to start this kind of – I'll tell you where I landed last night, okay? But before I do that, where are you with Lana Del Rey? What is your –

exposure to do you like do you dislike do you not care one way or the other do we have thoughts because i don't know i don't know what the world thinks of lana del rey i think the world has a

lot of different thoughts about lana del rey um and i think what i think when i hear i'm i would not describe myself as somebody who knows a ton of her music certainly that first was it born to die was that her big her big sort of first one out that people knew about i i definitely like of the songs i've heard from lana del rey i really like them i really like that she particularly in those early days had this incredibly like specific intentional i'll use the most overused word of all time aesthetic kind of so i am pro lana del rey as a concept as an idea um and so that's that's that's all i can say about that is i don't know a lot about her but the music that i've heard from lana del rey i've thought is really good yeah and for the most part

that's my experience as well like i kind of don't know the backstory i know that there's a certain kind I think she has a certain kind of fan that is a very very obsessive fan because she very much and so I'm sort of familiar with that a little bit and I came into some of that in my research last night too that was kind of funny but also like what is her vibe in her look if you listen to her she's almost like she's got this you know it's a modern day but kind of uh female crooner sort of sensibility very very sensual sounding very sort of big and I know that she's got like a songwriting partner and producer that she's worked with for a lot of this stuff but i don't really know that much about her i know that and i'm looking up when this record came out yeah this times out perfectly in 2014 she released a record called ultra violence i think i got that on cd because i was going through a cd phase because i was in my car a lot in los angeles california and also a good place to be listening to lana del rey exactly like this very west she's always

singing about the west coast which is funny because she's i believe she's from new york city

Yeah, and there's a song And went to Fordham And there's a song on there called Brooklyn Babe That I think was my favorite song off that record That is also very much about I think a little bit of juxtaposing Her West Coast sensibility with the Brooklyn sensibility So all of that is to say I enjoyed that song But I also enjoyed it in this level That I was kind of like She's a little silly too It's a little silly in how self-serious Some of it comes off But also I started thinking She's kind of knowingly silly like sort of like in if you take every word as seriously as i think some parts of her fan base does then you're kind of like oh well it doesn't deserve that kind of pedestal treatment you know what i mean so anyway i'm just going around with this stuff and i put on a record last night uh called uh which one is it specifically uh oh yeah norman and so uh earmuffs kids uh norman fucking rockwell is the name of the record that she released in 2019 and i was listening to know

that but that perfectly encapsulates i think what you're saying about the work yes but i think so

here's the deal if you were to listen to her and kind of based on like what and maybe this is just my own preconceived notions but you would expect her always to be in like some sort of like sort of um very a character but a character that would be very kind of serious and also like sort of maybe like kind of overdressed or or in like some you know like over like like a ball very manicured or manicured in that way but when you look at her album covers that is actually not it and for this particular album cover could you look up the album cover i'm looking at it right now rockwell right now yeah it's very like a lot of the batman yeah she uses these like um old school comic fonts it's not comic sans but it looks like an old school 1960s bam pow kind of yeah like font with like with splashes of color around it and it's her on a boat with like an american flag and her arm is around a guy do you know who that guy is i don't know the guy this record cover yesterday because i was trying to figure out like wow who is she what's going on and i really this really ties to this art conversation like what is she saying with this yeah and it did you figure out who the guy is yeah it's the grandson of brando i think is it oh wow wait it's somebody

no no it's not oh god damn it's an american it's the grandson of some big time american actor

ray uh i'm gonna type in lana del rey grandson and hopefully it doesn't tell me who her grandson is it's uh no jack nicholson it's duke nicholson is who that is oh and i think that he's in i think

this guy is in things now like he's in some okay he was in a horror movie called smile and the thing we'll just keep going and then we can talk about i'm sorry yeah i i'm sorry that i

got that wrong it's duke nicholson it was at the last minute i blanked on his name but um so but it's not he's not part of the album and there's something about the photo that seems very like just kind of a throwaway photo and it turns out her sister took it i don't think

I think her sister's a professional photographer or anything like that. And so in a certain way, you would picture her based on like kind of the persona that you hear in her songs is always being like sort of like very glam.

Video games.

Yes, very glam and very luxurious and everything. But her album covers kind of belie that a little bit. And I was reading a breakdown of the album covers that I thought was a little bit too dismissive and a little bit snarky because I do think that she's doing something here. And I do think there's something about this album cover that is kind of hideous that I think is very intentional. And I got a little obsessed with this album cover yesterday. And it's so strange that we're on this conversation today about art because I wanted somebody to tell me. I wanted somebody to explain. But instead, I just found a bunch of conversation about it. And then I found myself in some Lana Del Rey subreddit from this album came out in 2019. and I think maybe she released the photo of the album cover before the album, maybe like a month or two before the album and so I'm in some subreddit from this year, from 2019 I should say, from the year that it was released and people have only heard some of the songs and they're so excited and this album cover came out and one person is like, I'm literally crying right now, I need this album so bad and I can't wait for it but I don't know what she's doing with this album cover, it's so hideous I'm literally crying and somebody somebody wrote underneath it people are dying Kim which I don't know is that is that is that internet speak I had never heard it before I don't know but it was just I think they were just gently razzing this person but it sort of spoke to like the fandom and also like what the image is of her but then what she's trying to say about America and Americana by naming an album Norman fucking Rockwell and having and being on a boat that implies a certain amount of wealth but also a casual sort of a kind of casual relationship with that wealth and then to use this really janky or not janky but very surprising superman font i don't know batman so i was just like spent way too much time yesterday looking at this album cover and looking for somebody to tell me how to feel about it well a couple of

things i mean this is my constant particularly because of my daughter's age and the stuff she's into and like when i'm hanging out with her or when you know she's sending me stuff like go check these guys out there's a there's a um a band i guess it's it's a guy but he plays this band is called um this is lorelei and uh then he had a spinoff band that he did and stuff and like i'm looking up this is lorelei and then i'm looking up his uh spinoff band which i think is called like water from my eyes and i cannot wrap my mind around the fashion decisions of the people in the band and what i can't understand is kind of like you're thinking with the lana del rey cover is like is this either like such a high level of decision making and and and and choices made around these outfits to say something or is it a complete lack of caring which is its own kind of which is just like I'm not gonna overthink any of this I'm just gonna wear what I want to wear because whatever I'm just gonna use whatever font cuz who cares like it's it's hard to understand it's hard to know if things are super duper intentional and curated and thought out and therefore high art or if they're just like somebody's like Anna just use that because whatever it looks funny to me and who cares and and then not knowing which it is it kind of leaves you in a little bit of a you know in between state I guess it also that particular Norman effing Rockwell cover is I'm looking at because of course and I'm sure you were on these reddit pages yesterday and true there's all these different like people weighing in on all of the album covers and there's a very clear vibe to all of her album covers except for this one maybe with the exception of lust for life only in that lust for life she's like smiling very broadly big old smile on her face which is in contrast to her other album covers where she's being very sort of like kind of, you know, I don't know, serious and staring into the camera in a certain way. But yeah, this Norman Effing Rockwell thing is just completely like, is just a complete departure from every other album cover that she's done.

One thing that I thought was really interesting looking at her album covers, and again, there might be references even to, you know, like self-references or references to her fan base or decisions that are made that I just literally have no context for whatsoever. but I think it was her very first album cover I was looking at yesterday that I really liked a lot. Which album was that? I'm looking to see here.

Was it Born to Die, Paradise, Ultraviolence?

Oh, no, it's just called Lana Del Rey. It's called Lana Del Rey, a.k.a. Lizzie Grant.

Eponymous.

It's Lana Del Rey, a.k.a. Lizzie Grant. Oh, that's her real name. So I don't know if that's her real name for sure. I assumed that. But what I like... about it is like this to me does speak to she is i mean she is definitely saying something about america in her music like it's and especially the west coast and and and you know southern california specifically but like she's obsessed with something and this uh let's see when did the first record come out i can't tell here but pretty early 2010 it looks like and she's uh obviously a lot younger but she's wearing like a kind of it looks like almost like a it looks like almost like a letterman's jacket only is that a does it say Midas or something on it is it but it's like a

letterman's jacket but she's wearing it oh yeah no it's a Midas like it's like somebody who worked

at Midas mufflers work jacket yes but she's wearing that over top of like a sparkly ball gown like she would wear to prom or something like oh is that a bra you don't think that's a

gown is that just a bra there's another picture of it where oh I'm only looking at the actual

album cover so I assume that was a prom dress okay well that's a little bit different then yeah okay i was filling in prom dress there and so i sort of thought that was sort of saying something about duality of of man or something you know what i mean but wearing a a blue collar as you pointed out to me yesterday luke like kind of a blue collar working man's jacket over like a very sparkly sexy it still is over a sparkly sexy uh dress up glam kind of situation and that's

certainly intentional the thing that i and i mentioned this earlier and then i'll try to keep this short but because i don't think it's the not the sort of subject matter that you tend to want to weigh in on one way or the other andrew and i'm not even myself trying to weigh in on it as a positive or a negative but only as something that was truly shocking to me so lana del rey very as you've already pointed out um very uh obsessed over very beloved musician and uh and person of note she goes to like louisiana with i don't know by herself or with a group of people she goes on an airboat swamp tour and she starts dating the guy who drives the swamp boat who's like 15 years older than her and like just like a cajun dude who i'm not thinking was in anywhere in the reddit subreddits about the lana del rey album covers and not a person of with any kind of like connection to that world that she's been in but also not even like like again i'm assuming a lot about this guy and i don't i don't know him but just based on what i can i think reasonably assume about this person's lived experience somebody that couldn't be further away from the lana delton from the lizzie grant life and uh and then she uh falls in love with him and they get married and they're just married she's just married to a swamp boat operator in louisiana and i find it so fascinating like i'm so curious like does she is she gonna move does she move to louisiana does he move to los angeles and try to run a swamp boat business there like what is their life like together coming from such wildly different backgrounds and is this something

that has been in the pop culture now for years and years and you're just still obsessed with it or is this relatively new? I think they got married in 2024. Oh, okay. So yeah, so it's been a while because I just typed in Lana Del Rey husband and there are top stories of after being labeled a MAGA husband, Lana Del Rey's husband, Jerry Dufresne, speaks out. So yeah, I'm new to all of this. I don't like the MAGA implications. We'll find out. But putting the politics of that the side i'm loving the fact that she fell in love with and married somebody outside of what see that's this is her marriage is like one of her album covers but andrew my question is is it

intentional is it or does she degaff i can't breathe i can't breathe too much art it's too

much art we was hoping for some razzle dazzle razzle dazzle that's right man razzle dazzle

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle, dattle.

All right, let's thank some dazzling donors. These are the folks that are donating a dazzling amount of dough each month, and it is absolutely vital. It's vital to TBTL existing. Without these fine folks and our other donors, there's no show. there's no two middle-aged guys speculating on Lana Del Rey album covers you don't get that if we don't who will thank you we're the one if not us who if not when wait if not now when if not who when some of the listeners are saying how about if not no how about don't

Maybe the show today, if not who, when.

Love it. If not Nick Sleeveys, Andrew, of Stafford Springs, Connecticut. Now, here's the problem. It's Nick Sleeveys, Andrew's favorite joke, but this is Andrew. Is that because it's...

It's Nick Arms.

It's Nick Arms. I believe the proper pronunciation of Nick's last name is Arms. But I'm so confused about it. And the joke was, where does the king keep his armies in his sleevies? It is sleevies.

But the question is, but I think what's been so catastrophic about that is that it's not Armies, right?

Nick's last name is not Armies. I think it's Arms.

But I've never been able to, like, I've never been able to decouple those two concepts in my mind all these years later.

I know, me too. That's why I'm always confused. And so Nick actually submitted his name as Nick Sleeveys.

Which, again, Nick, I mean, thank you for all of the love and support over the years. And I really mean that. And thank you so much for the just, you know, being ride or die with this show. I mean, the perfect 10. I mean, it's right there in the name. It's the art of our time. What does that guy say?

It's the necessary art of our time

It's the necessary art of our time It's the necessary Nick of our time But don't make it more confusing by saying Nick Sleeveys This has set me back probably three years

But as long as Nick doesn't care See, this is the thing Nick loves the chaos He's like the Joker Some men just like to watch the world burn And that is what's going on here

Well, mission accomplished Nick says, hey dummies Shout out to Jake, the perfect daddy whom I will be seeing this summer when my wife and I tour the Chicago and other baseball parks at the end of this year will be at 15 MLB ballparks. Oh, that's awesome. I assume you're going to Comerica.

Which one is Comerica?

That's the White Sox park or whatever they call it now. That would be a joke because can you imagine going to Chicago? And I say this with peace and love to Sox fans, but if you're going to Chicago to see an MLB game, you've got to go to Wrigley, right?

I'm guessing he's going to both. He says to tour the Chicago and other baseball parks. So, yeah, I guess he's good. But you're right. Like, you don't take a pilgrimage as much to.

If you were going to see one, you're right. He's talking about two. Andrew, we don't have. If I start, if I open this can, we're not going to get to any nun talk today. We're not going to get to any of my nonsense I wanted to share with you. But have you heard about this absolute travesty that is potentially underway involving the Chicago Bears football team and where they are going to play Chicago Bears football?

Well, they're pulling a Cleveland, right? It's going to be, well, some people are, they're threatening to take it out of Chicago, right? To like a suburb area or something?

To take it to Hammond, Indiana. Oh, Indiana? Not even Illinois.

It wouldn't even be this.

Now, technically, I mean, it's close. Listen, have I taken a car to Hammond, Indiana when it was the closest casino to Chicago? Maybe. So it's, you know, it's probably 45 minutes away or something 50 minutes out of the heart of chicago but like soldier field along with just being an absolutely iconic stadium and being a stadium that i was always so impressed with what they the last refurbishing that they did they they built this whole new inside of the stadium they built all these boxes and new seats and it's this glass that comes up from from they sort of hermit crabbed into soldier field this amazing new design which i'm a really big fan of i've heard that kind of architecture described as sort of frankenstein architecture when you've got two different architectural styles kind of at the same i like that personally i consider that to be the silver jews of architecture sure i like that it's slightly dissonance there slight slight dissonance i really do like i've just always thought that soldier field was one of the coolest i've never been in it for a game but just from the outside because also it's right on lake michigan it's right there at millennial park it's it's like it's in to me the heart of chicago like i mean it's not literally in downtown it's not like wrigley is in the middle of wrigleyville but it's still it's such a part of the city of chicago to me and the idea that now everyone would have to go to hammond indiana to watch the chicago bears play because hammond indiana is willing to give the billionaire their owners of the Chicago Bears a more sweetheart deal right tax breaks yeah it's just it just absolutely kills me it kills me for some reason I'm obviously making too big of a deal out of this but well no I mean it feels like part of a bigger just like societal problem to me and I

gotta admit I only heard people sort of chatting on the radio about this and and only the back half of the conversation so apologies for not being super read up on this in fact I thought it was a suburb i didn't realize it was going to be well i mean it kind of is it just happens to be in indiana but i um i sort of got the impression that and again these owners you know all the owners are assholes right they're just horrible the system is except jody allen right don't sell um but anyway i got the impression that they're they're threatening this yes because they wanted like

Like, you know, go for the most extreme. They're holding them. They're holding the city over a barrel to say, oh, you don't. I said tax breaks a moment ago. I didn't mean tax breaks. I meant they want taxpayer money to go towards the stadium. And so they're just. But yeah, I mean, it's awful. It's so gross. It's so ugly. It's so ugly. I just don't think that's actually ever going to happen. Right.

I hope that it's just posturing. Yeah. But like some people that I like, there's a sports writer named Jeff Perlman, who I'm a really big fan of. He was at SI for years. And now he just kind of has actually kind of made this whole thing on TikTok, which I find really interesting, which is he just tells a lot of stories about his time as a sports reporter and like run-ins he had with athletes are just interesting things. And now he's expanded into kind of talking about just the state of sports in America. I follow him. And he seemed to be talking about it in a way yesterday that said that it seems more than likely, which I'm hoping he's wrong about that. I'm hoping I, you know, I got misinformation on that. i'm hoping that it is just just one of those annoying leverage kind of you know sort of leveraging it um which also just bothers me but whatever i mean they do have jb pritzker is on the case and he seems like a pretty pritzker he's the governor of illinois he seems like a pretty like competent dude to me honestly like in my knowing i mean he also was a guy who he won a million dollars playing blackjack in vegas and had to declare it on his taxes he's already a billionaire he's from the pritzker family which is like one of the richest families in america but he also low-key won a million dollars playing blackjack and was interviewed about it because he declared it and he was like yeah i just got on a run man wow which was i mean i've

never won a million dollars on blackjack i think it was a five dollar table i think it was probably

about a five dollar table wow that's a long really ran it up yeah but um anyway i saw pritzker talking about it saying that like he's you know he's rallying the the various people but it's just it's also because it's going on sorry to devolve into like sports like sports franchise location

talk well this is really up nick's alley no joke like nick knows a bit of this world right

it's also going on with the portland trailblazers right now and it's just like it's just so it's just makes me so mad you know portland is a town that i now really kind of love and and have a lot of affection for from my time spent there from the fact that my girlfriend works for the chamber of commerce there and i just am rooting for portland and of course it's been so maligned by trump and stuff and like here it is the trailblazers they get sold to some guy from texas who also owns like a hockey team in north carolina and they've been playing in the moda center for the last however long but now they're saying the team the new owners are saying it doesn't work for them. It doesn't have enough revenue potential. And so now the city of Portland and Multnomah County, everybody is scrambling to try to figure out what are we going to do? How are we going to build this new thing? Because if we don't build the new thing, they're going to take the team somewhere else. And it's just like, also the Blazers leaving Portland would be so bad for the city. It's like one of the, one of the few things that the city can point to like, Hey, we still have an NBA team. We've got a lot, a lot of tough stuff going on, but we've got this basketball team and we're proud of that and they're a good they've been a good team historically you know just like and the fact that i don't know the fact that it's like cities kind of have no choice it's you either bend the knee to these teams and their demands or you don't get to have the team which is like kind of a worse outcome i think for a place like portland anyway it would be a really sad thing for them to not have the blazers yeah so i don't know i just uh i'm feeling very sensitive around the topic right now of teams holding cities hostage because it feels like it feels like the cities have absolutely no good options in this particular negotiation absolutely it's

always been a problem and it might be even on your mind more because of the situation with the

seahawks and the uncertainty of the future yes i mean i didn't even like that headline yesterday i chose not to engage but it was like could the seahawks move and i'm like i bet you if i click on this it's that they're not going to move but don't don't put that don't do that to me seattle times don't put that in the subheading how dare you which brings me to nick's second point this year i started the master gardener program through yukon hey cool dude nick read up on growing herbs particularly dill and then get back to me i don't know if that's day one at the master gardener program but andrew i'm on a mission this year i've been threatening i think for the last couple of years but i'm on a mission to at the very least start an herb garden because i'm spending so much money on dill yeah right now really that's yeah i love dill in things and i love you know basil and i i like i love rosemary i do this thing where i'm making these fondant potatoes fondant potatoes but also you throw a bunch of rosemary in there and then the rosemary gets all like infused with butter and crispy because you bake it and then i just eat that like a thing and all of this stuff i'm buying it in a little plastic yeah box in the safe way and i'm like i can grow this at my house in like i don't even need a garden i could grow this in a box

Yeah, we have, I want more herbs as well. Genevieve has some, and I don't know if we just inherited this with the house or if she planted this at some point. We have a smallish, sort of struggling, but hanging in there, rosemary plant, which is amazing because I do use rosemary, especially now that, you know, when the summer months come, I'll be using rosemary even more. And I love it. I was making a recipe the other night and sort of just based on stuff we had around the house. And it was such a lifesaver that I could just walk out in the yard with a pair of scissors and grab some rosemary. I would love I would love that experience more. I have not been cooking a lot with dill.

That sounds very good, though. I just anything that I just like the flavor of dill and anything that calls for that when I put it in. I'm like, oh, yeah, this is this is really. Oh, you know what? I put a bunch in. I was just making tuna the other day. That's a tuna, bro. And I was like, I had some dill, and I was like, yeah, let's get this going in here. And it was, like, delicious. So the thing about rosemary, too, is once you get, like, some rosemary going, it's the bamboo of, like, herbs.

Well, that's what's driving me crazy. Because you're just struggling? Yeah, I don't understand.

Because it grows usually like a weed, right?

I don't know the origin of this, but it's kind of like there's some brown, like, growth. Like, I don't know what to describe the stick of rosemary. What is it? What is that? A sprig? A sprig, yeah.

It seems bigger than a sprig. It seems like a really big sprig.

Yeah, but you're a really big sprig, you dillweed. Yeah, right? How many insults are related to herbs? Herbs, I wonder. Anyway. We've thought of two. It does seem like it's struggling a little bit, and I don't know what rosemary needs as far as light and dark and moisture or whatever. So it's just a little bit weird. There's enough that I don't have to worry about running out, I don't think, because as long as it keeps generating. But something is odd about it, especially knowing that this stuff is supposed to grow, like you say, literally like a weed, like uncontrollably.

Yeah. Nick says, it's an absolute blast learning about soil and everything gardening related. I also started a gardening account on Instagram. It's ARMS for Roots. So that's A-R-M-E-S-F-O-R, Roots. And would love any follows as I grow my garden throughout the year. Well, Nick, you just got a follow from me. Let me plug this in. ARMS for Roots.

And I'll say it again. You said it right. Is it ARMS for Roots? Yeah, it is A-R-M-E-S for Roots. Here it is right now.

Boom. Smash that like and follow button. Hands in the dirt. Arms in the garden. You know what? That's the mnemonic device I needed, Andrew. Hands in the dirt, arms in the garden. Nice. Thank you to all three of you for what you do to keep the show going. I'm comfortable in saying that this show has made my life that much better and made me a funnier human being. This show means the world to me, and I can't wait for the 5K live show, maybe in Connecticut. Nick wonders.

That's 2027, right? That's sometime next year, right?

I know we've circled it I know John circled it on the calendar Somebody knows when that is

I believe it's summer of 2027 So we have a little bit of time

And we are really already talking about In very broad terms about that stuff So just yeah We're working on some stuff I think it's going to be fun It's going to be a lot to take in for me Just mentally That we got to 5,000 And then Nick says If there's any time Play a random voicemail of mine Because goodness knows There are a few of them. Love you guys. Do we have time for at least I know that Nick is, let's just say, free form with the voicemails. Do we have any that are like in on the shorter side or like should we just play like 30 seconds of one?

Actually, the last one he left, which was from February 13th, is actually 33 seconds. So that'll be perfect. I don't know what's in this. I have not listened to this for real. You told me right before we started recording, it looks like Nick had this request in his donor message. So, you know, if this is the one, if this is the one where Nick just starts going real blue or using some real tough language, my apologies to everybody.

Dummy, it's Nick, Connecticut. You, speaking of baseball and things, Cascianos, who lives large due to the audio drop.

That's Nick Castellanos that he's referencing, the baseball player. I'm going back a little bit here.

Who lives large due to the audio drop, was released by the Phillies. And that was because he was benched one day and brought a beer into the dugout and had choice words with the manager. I read the article this morning in the Times, and it was a really good piece, and I think that would be fun for you to talk about. Just make sure I get associate producer. your credit nope uh there's a drive in a deep left field by castellanos it will be a home run and so that'll make it a four nothing ball game i sent you this article too andrew did you ever

take a look at it no i don't think i saw this no yeah i texted it to you uh a while ago it because i just thought you would i thought you'd get a kick out of it it um basically says let me see I can find it here so yeah as Nick stated like so Nick Castellanos was a big kind of free agent get for the um for the Phillies but it never quite clicked and then eventually I think they were playing a road game that happened to be in wherever Nick Castellanos is from maybe Florida and he had a bunch of like friends and family at the game and they subbed him out at the end of the game as a defensive move you know like and he was so pissed that he went and got a beer and started drinking a beer in the dugout and and um that was and and what was interesting about it was that was when he lost his teammates in other words that was considered so egregious that it wasn't like the teammates weren't mad at management the teammates were like dude what are you doing yeah yeah i could see that absolutely anyway yeah so um so nick you get i'll split the so i well since andrew didn't get them didn't get the email i'll give you know what and you know i'm sorry about

I actually literally feel kind of bad about that. I don't know how I missed that. You think you texted that to me, huh?

I thought I did. I think it was right after the show. It could have been one of those things where it didn't go through.

It might have been one. I mean, I will admit that sometimes you send me stuff. I'm like, if it's a video, like a TikTok or something, I'm like, oh, I'll look at that later when I'm in a quieter place or whatever, because I don't have earbuds in all the time. So sometimes I miss stuff like that because I forget to return back to it.

I also might have emailed it from the Times, and that may not have gone through. Who even knows? But the point is, Nick, here's my point in this. Nick gets full producer credit for this because if Nick would not have brought it up in that voicemail, I would have never revisited it with you. And, Nick, you've also healed my relationship with Andrew a little bit. Look at that. Look at that.

But I do want to say to the Junior Sluggers, you're not bringing beer into the dugout. Not even root beer. Well.

Not even root beer. Avante. Okay. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready.

Hey, look who it is. It's our pal Corey Plucker in East Hampton, Massachusetts. Hey, Corey. Corey's been a longtime supporter of the program, and we really do appreciate it. Corey says, hi, guys. How about a little self-promotion this year? Yeah, how about it, Corey? He says, yikes. I've been fortunate enough to play in an original rock band with my three closest friends since high school. About 22 years now. years ago we were getting local rock radio play and performing regionally but then we got real jobs and had kids most of the local rock radio stations converted to contemporary christian and most of the original rock venues in our area closed nevertheless we still get together every sunday night to write and record music and we occasionally play shows for fun we write original heavy rock which might give luke the bad feeling cory haven't you heard i like stuff that gives me the bad feeling now. He's leaning into it. That's my new deal. Yeah, I actually prefer stuff that gives me the bad feeling. Might give Luke the bad feeling, but we'd still love some 10s to check us out. We're called Vining Hill, and the website is vininghill.net. So vining is V-I-N-I-N-G, and then hill is like hill, vininghill.net. Our latest album is called Commit. We recorded it ourselves at our studio, and I'm pretty proud of it. We're on all of the streaming platforms and Bandcamp, if you're interested. I am the lead singer, and I also play guitar. Nice.

I'm on the website now. That's awesome, Corey. It does spell hard rock to me. I'm looking at this. They have the new album Commit is out on vinyl now. Nice. And you can peruse their other records as well.

I will tell you that, like, the, you know, I was never in a band at all. Oh, by the way, yeah, I like the cover art of the vinyl. it's like a um it's like a pig dog surfing on commit the actual cover out of the record that's like that's a very cool kind of like artistic rendering yeah i'm i'm guessing that that's a reference maybe to a song or to something going on with the band i am impressed with anyone who plays you know whether it's cover songs or original music in a band type of setting because as somebody who like you know i like to mess around with karaoke sometimes i feel like given the right song i can kind of like i can muddle through i can i can kind of make it sound more or less like the song i'm trying to do but when i was in that little wilco cover band kind of dad band thing that we were doing which literally had no aspiration to even play really in front of people which is like an excuse to kind of like hang out and and like whatever play some chords and sing some lyrics it is so hard like to make the music that you're making sound like the thing you're used to hearing coming out of the radio or on a cd or whatever it is like just to sing with a live band is so much harder than i thought it would be versus like a karaoke track like there's so much about karaoke that is designed to help you the karaoke performer kind of seem like you're keeping up. And then when you get into the live version of that, I was just struck by how kind of thin and reedy my voice sounded, like trying to sing over the instruments and trying to just like, I don't know, I'm impressed, Corey.

Have you ever done karaoke with a live band? They do that at kind of fancy events sometimes, right?

They do, and I've never done it, but what I have done is I have performed with the Livewire house band, and it is so freaking stressful i told you it at christmas for our christmas show because elena always does a song elena passarella our announcer she's like a phenomenal voice and she always does a song at christmas time kind of as a fun thing for the audience and like this year she decided she wanted to do blue christmas but she wanted me to do the elvis part and she was going to do the oh oh parts and then it was like all week i just had a pit in my stomach about having to sing with the live band it was so so stressful to me but anyway so cory congratulations on the band it's vining hill go check them out everybody and cory thanks for supporting our our little show we wouldn't be here without people like you hello and welcome to top story um all right i um i already have a i'm already concerned andrew that this segment is not going to work because i'm going to try to play you some audio off of tick tock which is notoriously impossible to do because you can't really kind of like you can't stop and pause and rewind very easily so i'm going to have to just hit play on a tick that I texted myself and hope that you can kind of hear it when it starts. But it's two nuns talking, and they are not, I guess I think of a lot of, well, to the degree that I think about nuns, I think about them as being kind of older, sort of, you know, usually of a certain age. These are two women who appear to be in their early to mid-twenties. and when I was just scrolling TikTok I have no earthly idea why this ended up on my TikTok page. I'm not particularly looking at religious content, non-content. I thought it was AI though because it was like these two kind of young women but they're in full habit and outfit and they're just talking and for some reason it just showed up. They're Dominican sisters by the way is the order I guess. You would know more about this than I do. But them this is them just talking on a nun podcast i watched it like two or three times i just thought

it was so i don't know kind of unexpected do you have a favorite game at the moment my all-time favorite this is an outdoor game but in the summers when we're all home together is playing ultimate and you are so good at that i i'm a i'm a huge ultimate i'm usually on defense i'm trying

defend against people like you i can't okay full disclosure everyone sister miriam likes to chat when she plays ultimate my secret weapon i know i just i just laid it and put it out there when you're all in the field and the action's far away just strike up a conversation with it's your secret ploy i'm on to you sometimes when we play frisbee there's like 30 sisters on the yeah depending on who's home yeah i'm thinking ah they don't really need me right now you can't have a little chat your defense counts

i love that they call each other sisters so much yeah should we start calling each other brother on this show with that kind of just make it easier brother when we when you were talking about lana del rey brother like the kind of like just the i don't know the ease at which or with which they just kind of drop sister as just like a catch-all for each other and the other you know nuns and everything something very charming about the whole thing to me now i'm hoping i don't know about the particular i don't know what the kind of theology of this particular uh you know branch of i guess catholicism is or whatever like i'm hoping that they it's from some tiktok feed called open light media which i think is like somebody at the convent has like started a like a you know i don't know a page and i don't really know again i'm hoping that their theology is generally good i'm hoping they're more towards the like social justice side of things and or maybe even the jesuits like they're you know seekers of knowledge and they're not, like, the really, like, maybe out there folks. But just hearing two sisters talking about Ultimate Frisbee with each other and that, sister, you're just so fast. And, sister, just full disclosure, sister, you do like to talk. And then the other one being like, sister, I just like being out there with you. And sometimes I think they don't need me, sister.

I don't know if you have this info or if you said this and I didn't hear it, but I'm just Googling around. It looks like it's Sister Mary Bethany and Sister Miriam. Okay, did you set that up? I didn't say that.

Yeah, the tag on it is Sister Mary Bethany exposes Sister Miriam's on-field strategy. Eyeball emoji, trophy emoji.

And that strategy is talking shit, apparently. I guess, or just whatever.

I just, it's so, you know, again, you know, I want everyone to choose their path that I guess it makes the most sense for them and that brings them the most joy in this world. It is still it's it will never not be interesting to me to see somebody and I'm not weighing in on on whether or not I I'm cosigning this for their life. I'm cosigning whatever they choose for their life. But to see two people who are so kind of young and, you know, have could have just chosen a much more typical path for their life. It's interesting to me, their journey to say, I want my life to be completely and totally focused on this one thing to the exclusion of, you know, having relationships, you know, with anyone in the sort of romantic sense to the exclusion of having worldly possessions to the exclusion of so many of the things that we all might think about a little bit in our adult life to say, what I want to do is stay in sort of quiet, prayerful, you know, sort of reverence. for the rest of my life is just such an intense thing. It's amazing to me that anybody chooses that path.

In a certain way, I'm doing that with alcohol. Uh-huh. You know? Quiet. Just quiet, like putting it...

To the exclusion of meaningful relationships.

To the exclusion of meaningful relationships. To the exclusion of starting a family. Just like, just really focusing on one thing. So, I don't know. I guess I'm sort of there.

And your dedication to it, Andrew, is it's been lifelong. So we all thought it was a phase. We all thought it was a phase.

Here's a different part of Catholicism, it turns out.

Here's the other piece of tape that I wanted to play that I saw on TikTok that I already, I feel like I already know how this is going to go. And I don't know when I became the Billy Bob Thornton apologist on this show. It was probably when he talked openly about his hat choices in a way that I found charming. You found very, very strategic, very cynical. I thought it was strategic, yeah. He was basically, he knew what he was doing, and he was trying to tell a kind of a funny, slightly self-effacing story because he knew that would move more Paramount plus Landman subscriptions or whatever. So I didn't expect this. I saw a clip of Billy Bob Thornton being interviewed on the Rich Eisen show.

Okay.

And he's talking about the late actor Robert Duvall, who, by the way, we never even really got into. kind of eulogizing on this show i will admit that like i didn't know a ton about robert duvall outside of the movie the apostle which i really really loved i mean i know that he was in the godfather i know he was in a lot of things but i'm not like a i'm just not a robert duvall expert other than the movie the apostle that i thought was just unbelievably phenomenal um but so this was billy bob thornton talking about robert duvall and what i found kind of charming about it was it was Billy Bob Thornton talking about how Robert they were friends for years but they never talked about acting Robert Duvall was really obsessed with barbecue and Billy Bob Thornton has been like a vegan for many many years but never wanted Robert Duvall to know he didn't eat meat because he was trying to be cool for Robert Duvall so let's see if this works It's just another TikToker, so I'm going to just hit go on it and hope that it, let's see here. Okay, it's going to start playing, I think. Oh, see? This one's muted. This is what I'm talking about in movies. You can never know.

TikTok's better than Instagram on that, though.

Yeah, I guess you're right. I guess it could, oh, wait, hold on. Let's see here. Let's see. Get this going. Bear with me.

He was my mentor. You know, I grew up in music. I didn't know I was going to be an actor, but, you know, there are certain things. He always gets it in. I know. I know.

I know. I know. I meant to preface that. I meant to preface that. Okay, strike one.

Sorry, I know that you can't stop or restart. I shouldn't have done that. No, we're just going to restart from the beginning.

I was really more of a musician, but I got an acting later. I totally meant to bring that up.

You wouldn't say that to Tom Petty, would you?

Major strike one. Okay, major strike one. He's always got to, he always has to let us know that he just fell back asswards into acting, but that really what he is, is a musician. Okay, 100% strike one.

against Billy Bob for that. Fair. Okay, here we go, from the top, because I have no ability to

rewind this. He was my mentor. You know, I grew up in music. I didn't know I was going to be an actor, but you know, there are certain things, even before I ever thought anything about being in movies, that I'd seen him in that really struck me. Bobby didn't like to talk about acting. I've spent you know thousands of hours with this guy and like i said he was my mentor i probably have acting information from him or things about his roles about as much as you could fit in a walnut shell he talked about meat and tango i haven't eaten red meat in at least 25 years Bobby was obsessed with steak and barbecue. So I spent these last 27, 28 years pretending that I ate meat. I mean, he was completely obsessed. Every other week, he had a new best barbecue in the world. It's like, well, I thought this place over in Fort Worth was the best. No, no, no. This place in Virginia is the best barbecue in the world. So Bobby's wife, Luciana, she and I had a sort of running joke about it because if Bobby had known that I eat quinoa and stuff like that, he would have hit the roof. So he loved to order for the table. So he would order these giant steaks that were for, you know, three or four or five people. And he liked his just where they would just touch it to the grill on each side. It was essentially raw. So I would just, I mean, when I was around him, when he had one of his dogs with him, I would just feed it to the dog under the table when he wasn't.

I was going to ask, how did you dispose of the meat? How did you make it seem like you were consuming it?

If you get him in a conversation about something he's passionate about, he wouldn't think about it. I remember we were in Boston when we were shooting The Judge, and we went out to a restaurant one night because Bobby said I had to try the steak. I literally had a quinoa salad in front of me, and Bobby looked at it, and he goes, what the hell is that? I said, oh, that's just the salad. My steak's coming later, you know. well they brought their food and everything and mine just never came because when he would get going on on a subject he didn't pay much attention to you know anything else i thought maybe we'll

hear some you know on the set stories from back in the day that he shared with you but i i find it fascinating that that he didn't talk about that sort of stuff and that you know i got stories i've

got stories i can share with you but they're you know i'll just put it this way bobby didn't suffer

fools you know and uh so he told anyway uh I what I I found that to be like a kind of I don't know I liked that story from uh Billy Bob Thornton unless it's another example of the calculation of of uh of him wanting to rehabilitate his image after his disastrous appearance on Q many years

ago well I was um I'm also struck by the fact that this is another um Rich Eisner thing like suddenly he's probably rich eisen right yeah sorry yeah um but uh because that's the that's the show that rob lowe was on when yes when he yes renovated his image as well about exactly rich eisen is really now maybe great yeah or he's in on it the i mean he's in on he's he's like the celeb washer right exactly like goes there to repair their image does everybody kind of not

like you for reasons they can't go put their finger on send him to the fixer rich eisen he'll tee you up for a self-effacing story that'll involve Luke then playing it

on the podcast. Yeah, he's the wolf of reputation repair. There you go, is that Harvey Keitel in Pulp Fiction? Yeah, which by the way, I just think that whole, I've always thought that whole part of the movie, like not just the fact that you have Quentin Tarantino in that scene sucking it up so badly and just saying the N-word like crazy unnecessarily. That's all, I remember the first time I saw that movie being like what the hell is he doing there? But honestly, the whole scene about the wolf and the cleaning it up has always seemed ridiculous to me. Harvey Keitel doesn't do anything. He gives them the most basic advice, which is clean the car and get out of those bloody clothes.

I never thought about that. This is because Tim Roth's character has died.

Is that it? No, they accidentally shoot a kid in the backseat of the car. Some kid who is kind of part of their gang. But he was kind of undercover This is getting too complicated But remember the scene And I can't remember any of the characters

And this is Reservoir Dogs, not Pulp Fiction I always blend those together in my mind

Pulp Fiction, Pulp Fiction, so, but they... Wait, wait, wait, it's Pulp Fiction? It's Pulp Fiction, yeah.

Oh, that was, I think Tim Roth gets shot in Reservoir Dog.

Yes, yeah, that's, and he's bleeding in the back seat, so that's, I understand that. And also, Keitel is wearing, like, the tuxedo in this or whatever, so you sort of have the black and white. I don't know if that's another reason why you'd get those conflated, but anyway, do you remember the, that's a damn, he drinks the kid's milk, he drinks the kid's Sprite. They bust into that apartment where the young people are.

You're talking about when Samuel Jackson, they're eating kahuna burger?

Yeah, look at the big brain on Brad or whatever. And they end up killing Brad. Oh, that's who gets shot? No, there's another kid there, another young man there who's part of their team, but he's been living with Brad or he's been hanging out with Brad or something. And so now, after that whole scene in the apartment, they take this young man with them, and he's in the backseat, and they're arguing about something mundane. but Samuel L. Jackson is holding his gun carelessly and accidentally shoots him and not only kills somebody accidentally who he had no intention of killing but also creates a big mess and a problem in the back seat and then they're like well how can we ever, there's only one man who can solve this and it's just like some cranky guy who says get rid of the bloody clothes and clean the car and then follow me to some place. I mean you need the connections, I know they had to get rid of that car but like it was just like such a set piece that I think is unnecessary for the movie. Yeah like

that character should if they're going to be so kind of like the wolf and it's like you show up there and he basically just says like take your clothes off right now put them in a pile on the garage go wait inside and then he makes one call and then the car's gone, the clothes are gone like he doesn't just he doesn't just tell you how to beat the heat by staying indoors

where there's air conditioning the wolf, he's a meteorologist

and he's got tips for beating the heat

I feel like he could have done all of this by making a few phone calls from the party that he left to go help these guys. I think they just really wanted the scene where he's humiliating them by hosing them down with a garden hose. Oh, that happens too. It's amazing

how much of Pulp Fiction I've just memory

hold at this point. Yeah, I haven't watched it in a long time. I haven't watched it in a long time. Do you feel

like, what I'm hearing in your voice, but I don't want to misinterpret this, but I'm wondering about this for myself too. Are we in the midst of a a slight revision in how revered we're holding quentin tarantino or maybe ever like maybe you never held him in there was a period of time where i would have said oh i think he's the best filmmaker of all time and i don't even know if i even believed it i just think guys like me said that and i did like his movies are you how do you feel about quentin tarantino in 2026 versus in

in 2001 or something well i will say this and i've been i have been consistent i don't know That's my politician voice. Very good. I feel like I've been consistent about this since the movie came out. Jackie Brown remains my absolute favorite movie of his. And Jackie Brown has, I don't have a list in front of me, but it's got to be near my top five movies of all time. So I love Jackie Brown so much, and he directed that. So I'm not done with Quentin Tarantino. I don't love Pulp Fiction as much as I did. Now, this was a movie that had such an impact on me as it did a lot of people of our generation. Like, yeah, I saw it in the theater at least five times. Like, it just became the thing that we did on the weekends because it stayed in theaters for so long because people were obsessed with it. And me and Liza and Sean and whatever whatever mishmash of people we could get together in the minivan would be going to the theater just to watch it again.

And I saw that the Varsity Theater.

Oh, R.I.P. You heard about that.

if you want to talk about like core memory you know yeah and and so like you know it's such a

part of that summer and one of the best summers of my life so anyway like there's a reason why it is adored and I'm not trying to be Mr. Contrarian by being like well actually I remember I got into it with Mike Salk off the air one time he thought I was just doing maybe it was on the air but he basically accused me of just having an affectation for saying I like Jackie Brown more than Pulp Fiction as if people couldn't debate that as if there is no argument there it's like Pulp Fiction is it and again he is like of our generation and I'm just sort of like well things do change and when you see the context of like when I think about him inserting himself in that scene like where where it was distasteful in 1994 or whatever him using the right like now it just is like I can't even imagine choking my way through that scene of him in the kitchen just

what are you trying to prove with I remember yeah even in the day and and again unfortunately I guess you would say a lot of us myself included weren't thinking about this stuff the same way that we think about it now i wasn't pro white people using the n-word then but i think i was not nearly as anti it as i am now like for like i think probably i thought well i don't know it's art but even then i was like does how is this improving the film and what and what kind of a weirdo as a white person really wants to be saying that in a movie like what a weird kink

yeah you know yeah and also in just saying his acting is so bad i just remember always even back then like it was just like oh what the heck and now even more so and also you know i think it's fair to like as a artist god we're just you and i are just like art critics today but as an artist Watch out, Robert Christigal. That's right. But I think that it's hard to separate out, not even the art from the artist, which is the cliche thing to say, but even the rest of an artist's body of work. I think it's totally fair to let sometimes that add some texture to how you feel about their earlier work. So you sort of can see, oh, well, one thing was leading to another and that can be good or bad or whatever. So I don't know. I'm not I'm not saying like, oh, I'll never watch a Tarantino again. I will say his later works. It was just like it became more and more of like, I like this scene. I like what he's doing here. I like this thing. But fewer and fewer of his movies held up all the way through.

I totally agree with you, which is interesting if you think about, like, Paul Thomas Anderson and, like, how amazing I thought one battle after another was. And whereas, like, you know, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Tarantino, I certainly thought there were some great scenes in it. But it doesn't, I don't know what that movie was about, really. I don't know what the overarching message was or really the plot. It's just a kind of a collection of of scenes where people are the characters are doing something that's pretty interesting. But it's kind of like it doesn't. Yeah, you're right. I don't think it's a cohesive thing. It's almost like a Robert Altman film or something, whereas like one battle after another was this taught like thriller for me. That's also about larger questions. And like I could not I told you I didn't want to leave the theater when it was over. That's how I felt about that movie. So it seems like it's possible for these filmmakers. because i think of them as being kind of parallel a little bit you know and like i it would seem to me that paul thomas anderson is just getting better at this and tarantino also the whole thing about tarantino being so mean about paul dano in there right which by the way i don't disagree with but i'm not quentin tarantino like i didn't paul dano's performance in there will be blood didn't really work for me but again i wouldn't if i was quentin tarantino i wouldn't be saying that no i guess i mean well i don't know how do we i mean it's rude it's unnecessary also i guess i also yeah i guess you're right i get i also get annoyed when i feel like people are being not genuine so on the one hand i guess i i sort of am like for once once in a while when you hear someone just calling it like they see it maybe there's something to that but on the other And it's like, why don't and also, by the way, you sucked at acting, Quentin. Yeah. Yeah. Paul Dano. I would just post that clip from Pulp Fiction. Yeah. Just Quentin Tarantino saying the N word to just be like, should I have done it more like this?

Yeah. Yeah. That's that's absolutely a good point. So and also I don't like the fact that when I think about I did really enjoy Once Upon a Time in Los Angeles. I need to go back and re-watch it, actually. But again, I feel like, I'm blanking on the name of it, but the one that takes place in the Old West as well, it's kind of like you're enjoying it, you're enjoying it, The Hateful Eight, but then it's like at the end, oh, it's got to be a big, super violent scene that is, in a lot of cases, I guess this isn't true of The Hateful Eight, but a retelling of history that feels like, don't they stop the Tate murder or something at the end of Once Upon a Time in Los Angeles?

Hollywood, sorry Yes Basically like Brad Pitt's character Who's like high out of his mind And isn't sure if they're Basically the Manson people show up And then his dog kills them Right, right Actually Austin Butler, oddly enough Who then goes on to play Elvis and stuff But who I thought was very, very good in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood He's the guy who says I'm as real as a donut

I vaguely remember that.

Because Brad Pitt is trying to figure out if these are real people or not, because he's stoned out of his mind.

See, and that's the thing, like, Inglourious Bastards is also an alternate reality where you get revenge, where we, the audience, can have fun watching, like, this feeling of, like, revenge, you know, because this is how it should, you know, watching Nazis die or whatever. And so, like, you do that once, but then when you're doing that again with the Tate murders, or murder, I don't know. it just sort of there are just like moments that you love but you're like oh at the end and i'm trying to figure out if i'm just stealing this from lindy but like it just at the end of the movie then he just takes all of his dolls and smashes them into each other exactly like at the

end of hateful eight

Daisy Domergue stuff, like what he does to what's her name, Bridget Fonda, I think? Is that who is Daisy Domergue? I don't think so. Not Bridget Fonda? No, Bridget Fonda's in Jackie Brown.

But she has three names. Oh, Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Thank you. To quote a Lana Del Rey album cover, the ultra-violence that you just know is hanging over the movie, and at some point it'll just be just like a really gory scene that for me it it rarely improves the movie for me you just have to sort of tolerate it as part of the as part i did like to kill bill kill bill one

i did like a lot too by the way those i know i never went back and watched those because they i saw them both in the theater but they both i just didn't care for them at the time they seemed very long and bloated and i didn't like the oh now i can do it in black and white because i can and I'm so beyond norms that it just didn't feel cohesive to me. But I'm very much on the outside on that one. I've never met anybody else who doesn't really like those movies, so I might just be kind of misguided on that.

You know what never lets us down, Andrew? The first game of spring training. I know. Oh, that's right now. That's right now. Do you know what is starting in 20 minutes? Oh, that's right.

I'm going to get on this. Okay, listen, before we go, though, I've got to do something very important here.

on mariners.tv.

Yeah, I got to figure that out, too. I got to sign up for a million.

Cal Raleigh. Excuse me. Luke Raley. Cal Raleigh. I'm giving you the batting order. Luke Raley. Luke Raley. Cal Raleigh. Julio Rodriguez. Josh Naylor. Randy Rosarena. J.P. Crawford. Dominic Canzone in right field. Oh, there we go. Arroyo. Do I know who Arroyo is? Is Arroyo new? I don't know. He always had Arroyo. And then Emerson at third base. and somebody named Dunning is pitching for us.

So Colt Emerson, that's fun. We're going to get a look at Colt, Mariner's lineup today.

I have a feeling, too, that there will be one pass through this lineup, and then most of these players will all go to some hubba-bubba while they put in the new guys. But, hey, how fun to think about freaking Cal Raleigh hitting second in Arizona today. I'm very, very excited about this.

Arroyo. I don't know who this is.

Do we know? Do you know a lot more about the Mariners than I do now?

Must be somebody working his way through the system, huh? I'm looking this up now, but yeah, that's news to me. Listen, I have some important business I need to do here at the end of the show and I don't know if this is the perfect place to do it because the person probably stopped listening a long time ago, but I would like to publicly apologize to listener Eric who wrote to me yesterday disagreeing with my take on chicken wings, the chicken wing ruling uh-huh and wrote me a short polite email saying that he disagreed to which i replied yeah why should words have meaning and i was taking a nap and i just woke up and i saw i also got a note from another person who agreed very strongly with me from the logic standpoint but like cuts of meat are cuts of meat and preparing it and is preparing it a different way but i just saw somebody disagreeing with me and i just wrote back yeah why should words have meanings and wrote nothing more than that and so i feel sort of uh oh you want yeah let's give eric a little bit of this it was rude it was just it was like i think i sent it i shot that back to him within within 15 seconds of him sending it to me i was just laying on the couch and i was just like i fired that off i was like that doesn't feel good you don't have to be mean to the listeners i know

that feeling andrew whether it's the listeners or other people i will have this moment where i'm triggered i'm generating a response either text or email and i know that if i wait i won't do it and i override it's not even it's not even that i'm so triggered that i don't even think about it it's that i i don't want to give myself enough time because i know i won't send it which is a very weird thing to be conscious of the fact that i'm making a bit of a mistake yeah but but

then overriding the system to do it yes the the adrenaline is you're just like i know this is wrong but no i am fine i am i am this person and then literally like two minutes later you're like I'm not that person anymore the adrenaline and by the way I wasn't even angry I was just flippant in this case it wasn't quite like that I was just being flippant I was like I'm sure Eric appreciates it anyway Eric apologies who do you think you are I am yeah who do you think you are I am so alright

This is one of my favorite Lana Del Rey songs. She's wearing a Midas jacket for some reason. All right. That's going to do it for today's episode. And, in fact, that'll bring us to the end of our broadcast week. But I think you know what I'm about to say. We're going to be right back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for all of you. Much Mariner Spring training to report, I'm sure. Your long national nightmare is just beginning, folks. So we'll see you then in the meantime. Thank you so much for hanging out with us all week. We'll see you on Monday. Stay safe. Take care of yourself. Stay warm, which I did a medium job of in here. I'm still kind of freezing. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. Power out.