Muse

Listen, every day at around 2.30, my armpits get sweaty. Okay. And I used to hate raising my hand in class to answer a question. But one day I had to say, who cares? I have swampy armpits and I'm going to answer all the questions I want. I'm swampy and I'm proud.

Tina, where are you going with this?

I'm saying just because you think something is embarrassing doesn't mean you have to be embarrassed by it. We all have our swampy pits. My swampy pits is swampy pits. Have you tried dad's deodorant? It's like military grade.

He gets it on the dark web. TBTL

I'm a man of few words but those words will count and so will my actions you like are definitely you're the real thing that a lot of people say so do you think if you weren't I mean if you were less fake do you think you would be or you could or you have a desire to

if you feel uncomfortable at any time give me the sign

I keep losing it deals and I don't want to make a deal anymore Well, all you have to do is study it out. Just study it out and you'll see. You haven't done your homework, buddy.

Hey, you know what time it is? It's time to get real.

Hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Oh my God, guys, we are crushing it.

My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

If you've got cute hair, I'm going to say, damn girl, you've got some cute hair.

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia, where we're looking at another rainy day. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. I am reminded of the fact that it does usually seem to rain about up until and just through the 4th of July. I remember as a kid being very disappointed in that because I wanted to light off fireworks. Now I'm an older fella with two standard poodles living with me, and they don't like the fireworks and so i'm just fine with it being rainy right now i'm just fine with uh tamping down and dampening the fireworks enthusiasm speaking of the dogs actually their last day out here at the madrona hill studio lord's machine says the dog days are over uh gigi and dj are going to be um going to be heading back down to portland later today when i take them down there and if nothing else it's been a lot of good content for the program so gosh i don't know what we're gonna do at least we've gotten them around for one more episode as we've made it to episode 4761 in a collector series let the fun begin yesterday at about this time

i activated this audio drop i'd like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism

and it was in relation to this story that came from npr about how they had published an incorrect article on their website about samuel alito retiring would that he was uh but in fact it was i the bunk journalist all along i was doing the bunk journalism and i did not even realize i'd

like to point out to anybody watching this is really bunk journalism so much like npr i will

correct the record today on the program also seattle has uh achieved a high and important culinary title this is special this is special they were picked by the new york times wire cutters having the very best something i don't mean to hide the pickle on you there but i just got to keep you listening and sticking around a little later in the show at least until the point where i've introduced this guy longest running cobro of the show maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships is he blowing up on blue sky absolutely i've got a pretty strong following on social media why don't i put out a blast he's andrew walsh and he's joining me right now good Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Now, listen, there was a little audio mistake at the beginning of today's show. Instead of, you didn't know it. You couldn't hear it on your end. I guess. But when you said hello, the first part of that was muted. It just sounded like, hello, everybody, instead of hello. Hello. Oh, everybody is what it's like. Oh, everybody. And listen, I know you're thinking. Was it a Guffman-ing? Oh, R-U.

I'm having a hard time finding that.

I thought you were finding it. I was trying to give you space for that. I know. Thank you.

I mean, how many different ways do they spell L-O-R-U?

Do I have it in mine? Then I'd have to stop the music. Oh, here we go. L-O-R-U.

There it is. Worth it. That's how I spelled it. E-L-L-O. Good. Capital O, lowercase W, uppercase A, R-E, double O. Why wouldn't I be able to find that on the fly? Yeah, right?

L-O-R-U. I think we were playing that a lot when that social media platform, L-O, started way back.

Well, that was also that one, and then something from Labyrinth, right?

Yes. Did you say hello? No, I said hello, but it's close enough. Yes. That's my imitation of a British caterpillar, I believe. Wait a second. Okay. Do you have it? Well, Andrew. I might only have that one.

I have it here, but listen. I have something called L-O, Labyrinth Clips. Okay, good. But it's four minutes and 22 seconds, and the article is...

is a band that i like called avi buffalo that's not right that can't be the file no something i do have this one hello oh that's classic steven a smith who is that really no it's herm edwards

is that herm edwards again um anyway all i wanted to do was apologize for the mistake at the beginning of the show but also not take full responsibility it actually was not my fault it was maggie and swarthmore swarthmore's fault okay because she's got you all hopped up on fig newton because i did not have breakfast today and so i grabbed a little figgy newton on the way down here and then i don't know if you noticed but i turned my camera off while you were doing your intro so i could these things yeah i figured you wouldn't notice i didn't want to distract you but i didn't want to be recorded eating these fig newtons as quickly as i possibly could and i was so dedicated to finishing them before it was my turn to talk that i momentarily forgot to unmute you so yes partially my fault but mostly maggie's fault would not have happened if maggie didn't

give me a truckload of fig newtons you know there are some shows um that have a strict no eating

food that people mail us policy you mean we're not one of them out of safety concerns yeah i mean

again our our listeners are we know them almost i mean they were to a to to a person and these were sealed and again our listeners are the absolute kindest sweetest most non uh you know threatening non-harmful people but it is kind of funny to think that like you mail it to us

we'll probably eat it yeah well it also i mean not that i wouldn't trust maggie anyway but like these were sealed within seals within seals you know it was a box that contained boxes that contained individual packages like uh i don't know maybe the last one's got a surprise in there for me but um I think I think I'm in pretty good hands what am I I don't know what you just said that made me think of this but everybody and I'm a little bit late to this game I realized this about a month or two ago everybody was asking are you watching the new Apple TV show I want to say

Widow's Bay Widow's Bay Widow's Bay Jeff Hiller in it yes and have you been watching because I'm

about four episodes in now and I am enjoying it I have been meaning to I know it's Stephen King correct oh it is oh i don't think i realized that uh i didn't i could be wrong about that don't quote okay i don't know i don't i don't remember seeing that name in any of the credits

or anything that would that would maybe indicate it's not a stephen well it also indicate that i'm

not a very observant viewer but um it might be it might be inspired by it directly written or

created by stephen king okay is it indirectly yeah uh you know what it feels like the first

episode feels like it sort of feels like jaws meets the shining sort of it takes place on a very like small new england island remote island where scary things happen and the thing is like i'm not into scary stuff but it's like the perfect balance of like it's i did not know it was going to be funny like and it's matthew reese who i know i love like the americans i love him too and uh and and steven root by the way who's just like if steven roots in it it's good i can't Didn't we just say this the other day? Can you think of anything that Steven Root is in that is not worth watching? I mean, maybe there's some stuff out there. But, yeah, I mean, incredible range. News radio.

You forget he was Milton in Office.

Yeah, right? That's what I mean. I mean, the guy's got range. He really does. And then some other folks whose names I don't know who are also really good. And it's just like the first episode, you're laughing. But then also there are plenty of parts where the hair on your arms is just standing straight up. Because it gives you the real creeps. and I'm just really enjoying it, and everybody said, you've got to watch this thing, and I was like, well, I want to just, I don't watch a lot of TV, and when I do, I want to finish up this other series. I was trying to re-watch the show Legion, but Legion takes so much of your attention. You cannot do anything but, like, really focus and sometimes rewind Legion to figure out, like, what did I just miss here? Whose memory palace are we in? Like, what is going on? And I love it. It's really well done and incredibly stylized.

oh right that's the one where they're like in the swimming pool that's the guy there's a swimming pool scene yeah and it's starring I watched that too it's starring Matthew from Downton Abbey

oh yes yes that's right I forget that you couldn't have watched the whole thing though I must have watched the first season so anyway DJ says I watched the whole thing I know I can't believe I told you yesterday no more dogs barking

somebody told me by the way that when I play that dog barking sound effect it makes their dogs If they're playing the show They're amplifying the show in their house It makes their dog freak out So I'm trying not to play that

That's a real thing Our friend's dog can't even If a doorbell rings or a dog barks on a commercial She goes bananas

I was noticing that with these two If I'm watching something on TV And there's like the sound effect Of a dog in the background

sometimes you don't even realize it they're just trying to do the kind of you know the sonic i don't know environment of the whatever commercial and they pick that stuff up i mean they are very very but no i've been meaning to watch uh widow's bay i just i don't have apple tv so it's just one of those things where i'm gonna have to sign up for it again and then watch it and then try to remember to cancel it or what have you but people have been telling me i want you want to do a little

trade on the air here you want to do a little tradeio what are you what are you packing over

there as far as television packages are concerned my friend heat because i unfortunately i've been i've been signing up for lots of these things and forgetting to to dump them so i think i definitely got the home box office i've got the netflix i've got uh i guess you could say ironically i refuse to get paramount plus even though i work there okay we got that but that's kind of a sharing situation with some other family but the the other night i was actually sitting down to i was contemplating watching widow's bay but again the the barrier to entry of signing up for another streaming service stopped me but i mentioned this in passing i ended up watching i thought that it was and excuse me i'm going to sneeze here but they're going to swear a long time ago we decided that um we were going to leave the sneezes in and then i started muting myself and i think there was a couple of a couple freaks out there that

were like leave the sneezes in and take your shoes off and keep them on the can you're welcome

you're welcome freaks um but uh so what it was was this show called or it's a documentary and i thought it was just it said it was a series but i didn't believe it for some reason because i thought this can't be four plus hours it's about this guy who's a rock climber and a base jumper and a highline walker named dean potter and before um alex honnold came around who got famous for that movie free solo and is like a phenomenal climber this guy was one of the kind of most um celebrated and daredevil adventurous folks who would get out there and just you know climb all these routes that had never been climbed before and do these things that were very very scary like walk on these tight ropes without a tether and stuff but he also had a lot of kind of personal problems i it it said uh episode one but episode one was like an hour and 20 minutes I was like, that's enough for this guy. That's as much, you know, free solo about Alex Honnold was an hour long or something, an hour and a half. So I just thought HBO had, like, mislabeled it or something. So I watched the first episode, and I'm like, well, this is a good movie. And it ends up, do you want to watch episode two? I was like, gosh, dang it. So I go from, like, thinking I was, like, committing to an hour of television to end up watching, like, four and a half hours of this. Meanwhile, it was actually quite fascinating.

Really? How does it separate itself from the things? Now, keep in mind, I have a distaste for both this activity and this activity being sort of celebrated and this activity being sort of documented. Because it gives me the bad feeling. I'm afraid of heights. I also think it's kind of irresponsible to put your life at risk like that just so that you can get your kicks. And I think it's irresponsible to the other people in your life personally. I just have kind of weird, strong feelings about that. So I know it wouldn't be for me. But I watch part of Free Solo, I believe. like how is this different how does it set itself apart and why four hours instead of like a movie

why four hours i'm not exactly sure although this guy had sort of phases to his thing he started out as this rock climber and then i think as that became more difficult as he got a little older he got into base jumping and became this very very like sort of um experienced and adventurous base jumper and then he also got really into walking this tightrope thing um called a high line that they'd string between you know across like not quite the grand canyon but basically these very high points just imagine a tightrope essentially and um and so there were the different phases of what he sort of did he was also very troubled Alex Honnold was not troubled what was really interesting was first like two or three episodes it's all about this dude Dean Potter and he's battling his demons but he's also doing all these amazing climbs and he's planning these other climbs and then this kid just shows up in a van Alex Honnold and just goes uh yeah I think I'll do that and just does all of his routes faster and doesn't even understand that's why this ticks the guy off and then the guy has this big plan to free solo the face of el capitan in yosemite which at that point had never been done but it's really hard and free soloing means he's not gonna have a rope and so he has come up with this very tortured route where he goes up the way way way side of it that's a little easier and then he walks through this kind of crevice in the rock and then he meets up with the last leg of it would kind of be this part that he'd already done once that he knew how to do. So he was kind of piecing it together. And this guy, Alex Honnold, and by the way, I don't even know till the end, I'm pretty sure the guy is dead, Dean Potter, but I didn't want to gorgle it because I didn't want to like skip to the end and learn the manner of his death. But I had a sense because he's not in the movie and everyone's kind of talking about him like he's not there, but I don't actually know for a fact that that's how the movie ends. So Alex Honnold gets on there And he's just absolutely. roasting this dude really he's just yeah he's like that wasn't even hard what he did it was so easy and like i think alex honnold may have identified as being on the spectrum uh himself and i believe you know is kind of known for his blunt talk but it was you rarely see in a documentary which is kind of a celebration in a way of this one dude this dean potter guy then the guy who just came in so what alex honnold does is he like he hears that this dean potter guy is going to try to do this funky route of climbing this thing and he's like dude that's so lame he's like he goes they're gonna think that you really did this like you climbed el capitan and you kind of didn't you kind of did this cheat thing so he just goes out there one day and just climbs it that way and this is honnold who's sort of honnold just so the other guy can't do it he's just like on an afternoon decides to just go and climb the thing to just screw the other guy out the other guy's been planning it for like months he's got his whole thing and honnold just goes like that's dumb i don't think anyone should climb it that way and so you won't climb it that way i'll just go do it first and there'll be no there'll be no uh draw for you to try to do it yourself and that's where

honnold's documentary free solo comes out or is this all pre is honnold free free solo okay and

in fact okay so free solo isn't about el capitan it is but it's him doing the what was thought to be impossible route oh straight up the thing okay later with no ropes later i think this guy's been dead for a couple of years by the time alex honnold does free solo but you just rarely see and and again towards the end of the movie and the end of this um dean potter guy's life he and have kind of a nice dinner together and like beef squashed but you just rarely see somebody who's like um in a documentary people are just usually more diplomatic about things and he's so alex hon is so undiplomatic he's just like he goes i just didn't oh so one of the things this dean putter guy pioneered was something he called free basing now not in the way that we've heard free basing before but he wanted to prior actually he actually did he he climbed with richard prior often yeah um but uh he would he would climb up these like without any ropes on any safety ropes he would climb up these like really high really scary routes but if at some point he fell off of the rock he would he had a parachute on his back and as long as he was high enough up he could base jump away from the wall and throw out his parachute and potentially survive it's actually less of a slam dunk than you would think like it's not that base jumping thing i learned is it ain't like jumping out of an airplane with a skydiving instructor it is there's a bunch of ways you can die doing it even if you have all the right equipment and everything so but anyway he he had this thing where he had this parachute on and he would climb and he was getting written about in the magazines and then they cut to alex honnold he goes i guess that's a cute trick i mean if you really want to do it just don't have a parachute like and can i ask you a question so negging the

guy at every turn and i realize that i'm getting into some tedium here and i don't mean to be and if the answers to these questions aren't interesting honestly just tell me and we'll

move on listen i invested four hours of my life in this i'm glad we're getting some all right

sounds good now you're gonna write it off whatever whatever platform this is you can write that off um when honnold is talking and again yes honnold is the free solo guy we already know his name he's already a name that we know from free solo when he's talking about these interactions that he's had with what is this fella's name again dean potter when he's having these conversations with dean or he's re is he in like 2025 2026 talking to the camera remembering these interactions he had with dean or are we seeing footage of him and dean interacting back in the day before

free solo even came out he is being interviewed after dean potter has been dead for a few years okay and i believe maybe even free solo has been out okay so dean potter is never going to hear any of this but that's also interesting because he doesn't have any of that reverence that sort of retroactive reverence sometimes we'll have for the dead sure it's like he is he is and again you know he doesn't dislike the guy but he just has no like this guy was so tortured hence his name the dark magician or whatever it was which is pretty corny but like he would just agonize over these things and he would come up with something he'd be so proud and then alex hall would be like i just when i heard about that i thought it was kind of dumb like you got a parachute on just do it without the parachute man like he's just saying this about a dead guy which is and then the real the part of the movie and there were lots of parts of the movie andrew even i and i'm probably less afraid of heights than you where i was like puckering watching various people you know out on these these crazy rock faces without any kind of safety equipment but um at at the towards the end of this guy's career and life this is the the guy dean potter whose whole thing was like i'm not in this for the money and we're just you know counterculture people we live in yosemite in our vans and whatever it's about the climate

and stuff over time he became more famous started beyond the cover of magazines and he's kind of like he's drifting in his life eventually he's getting older he's in his 40s and he gets he gets paid 250 000 by a chinese tv company to coat to go to china and do his three like uh kind of terrifying things he can do so to like rock climb something without his ropes to base jump off of something and to walk across this tight rope and it's it's it's like any of those movies it's like spinal tap it's like any of the movies where like the the the tour is breaking down the the people that are involved or you know it's even like real kind of documentaries rock documentaries where it's just like the wheels are kind of coming off for this guy he so he goes to he goes to china and like they're not giving him the money and he they want to put this big net underneath him when he's walking on this tightrope but he thinks the net is going to look really dumb and everyone's going to laugh at him so he's like no net but they're like you have to have a good reason to put your life at risk and andrew as he is practicing it's like two days before the tightrope walk right so they agree no net and he's doing the tightrope practice and for the practice he has this little safety line on it's called a leash and it goes from his waist down to the tightrope so if he falls off the tightrope it catches him he has never managed to get like more than three steps out on the tightrope because he's he's kind of old there's a million people there bothering him he can't do any of his concentration it's a weird place uh it's just like his energy is all messed up and this is being televised live to i want to say i mean it's a shocking number in china they said it was like you know 80 million people or something like everyone in china is tuning in to watch this guy walk this tightrope with no uh with with no tether and no net beneath it and he has not been able to get more than four steps out and you just watch him and he's just got these like bose headphones on actually the kind that i have that used to be real top of the line and he's just like he's just mad at everyone and he's screaming at his one friend he brought for not smuggling weed in in his butt he's like where's the butt weed and the guy goes what are you talking about he goes didn't you bring weed in your butt so he

needs weed to like kind of do this to kind of calm him down i don't know if it was always bananas i

don't know if it was always his system but he was so like he was so struggling in that moment i think he just was like i you know he just was like anything i'll take anything right now that might change this so the day comes the cameras turn on it goes live he is you know he's a thousand feet above the floor of the whatever you want to call it in this particular region of china with this line strung between these big columns of these rocks and he just steps out there and he starts walking across the thing and he's almost falling the whole time and he's somehow just not falling And again, if he falls in the middle, he will die. Like there is a much more likely than not chance that he will die in the middle of this thing. And he's just somehow putting one foot in front of the other and then the next one. And then his whole body will jolt and his whole, he'll go up on one foot and one leg will like careen out. And then he'll just kind of get it back down. And then he gets to the other side of the thing and he jumps and he lets out, a triumphant yell for a second and what he really does he gets down on his knees and he just weeps like weeps like not and somebody said later in the movie maybe his friend it was like he willed himself across that tightrope but it literally permanently removed some part of him like not to overstate it but he traded some core part of his humanity to get across that tightrope I mean it was intense television

I thought he was going to get to the end and take the last step and then step on a banana peel and just careen backwards.

That was when he did the same thing in England on the Benny Hill show.

You know what? I was watching this. I might have a new fetish, by the way. I might have a new TV-related fetish, a non-sexual fetish.

Is it hearing me sneeze?

No. Let me see if I can monetize that

I need to get out of a couple of financial jams

Here's what I was doing last night I was feeling pretty good last night Genevieve and I had to record our podcast We got off to kind of a bit of a late-ish start And then I had some things to do after we got done recording Take Lucy on a little walk and stuff So I think I was slipping into Andy times around 8.30 or something like that I got to hear the end of the Mariners game In fact, the Mariners game picked up some speed right as I tuned in And so I may be a good look. arm of some sort but um don't change anything today from well actually they're off they're

off today weird broken up series because of the world cup i hate that but anyway um you know what i did i i got done oh i think i had the the mariners game on the tv as i sort of like kind of putting on some shorts and kind of slipping into andy times literally and figuratively and i'm getting ready to play some darts by the way i dominated dart bot last night i i think that like last night was like the first night after you know a lot of anxiety about monday's book event and so So yesterday, I think I was just like, all right, I'm just doing it to it. And don't say no to anything. The boys in the basement. The boy in the basement, exactly. And actually, Lucy, we've been integrating her more and more in the basement. Like, the basement is so... Is bingo a girl or a boy? Bingo is a boy. So I guess it could be boys. I'm going with boys in the basement. Yeah. And we have Lucy down here. She was going out to the streets. Going to make a big noise. And Lucy was kind of being more chill. she's getting more and more used to being down here which means she's being a little bit more chill down here so she was like kind of hanging out while I was playing darts but the Mariners game ended and usually I would switch over to podcast land at that point but I was like I don't know let's just see what's on YouTube so and I thought maybe just visual spackle in the background while I'm listening to a podcast or something but YouTube recommended the the worst films of 1990 siskel and ebert special so i didn't realize this but siskel and ebert i guess starting maybe in the late 80s through the late 90s i guess did like a special episode of their show each year that recapped the best movies of the year and then another episode that would do the worst movies of the year and this is just like without commercials it's just like a you know 22 minute show or something like that and so i started binging these these like year-end recaps by Siskel and Ebert from back in the day and I had it rigged so that like I was mostly just listening to it almost like a podcast on my speaker in my dart room the TV was like kind of behind me

it's a fairly static situation when they're sitting there in that mock theater

well they show a lot of clips from the movies but it's also one of those things where it's kind of like when I go to grab my darts from the board I turn around I can see what's going on on the TV, throw some darts or whatever but I kind of podcastified like ancient episodes of Siskel and Ebert and it is my new favorite thing like here i'm gonna play a little bit and by the way one thing i learned is gene siskel is a little horny on maine by the way he there are a couple of different there he was complaining about one movie that was supposed to be sexy with like mickey rourke and he's like and the sex isn't even that good or whatever nine and a half weeks no it wasn't it was some other one that you've never or maybe you've heard of it i had never heard of it and then there was another one where he was like well i was excited oh that's right it was the bad movie He's like, I was excited to see this. I'm a man with a libido. I was excited to see it, but the sex wasn't even good. Then there was another movie where he's talking about how athletic the sex scenes were. He's not bald.

It's a solar power sex panel.

This is the end of a movie clip that they're showing.

We have the guns.

Oh, you know, this is the George Romero remake of Night of the Living Dead, which I didn't even remember he had done. He had remade it in the, I guess, I think this is 1990, a colorized version of his own movie.

We could get away. It almost seems to me that a remake is a no-win situation. If the original movie was any good at all, it has created associations and memories in our minds that will just get in the way of the remake. And I'd even get a little cynical and suggest that the best way to recycle old material is not to remake the film, but simply steal the idea and work it into your own movie. You could never remake Casablanca, for example. People wouldn't stand for that. But Sidney Pollack and Robert Redford did a fairly interesting job of redrafting some of that material into Havana. I like that idea. If you're going to steal, at least hide your product in an interesting way. You know, the old Hollywood moguls used to say there were only seven ideas for movies, but the problem is, recently, they've only been using two of them.

I am loving, I am unironically absolutely loving this. Also, I'm hearing a lot of the inspiration for what is Tim Heidecker and Greg Turkey. On cinema. On cinema, yeah. Like, you really hear, like, where some of the tone of those early episodes sort of come from. I mean, obviously, it's a parody of this kind of programming, but it's really good. So now I just kind of want to work my way through the 90s, I think, while I throw darts.

Siskel and Ebert, just the sound of the opening theme of that show. Oh, you want to hear it? Yeah, it is such a strong sense memory for me.

I love it because they write for different newspapers. So the beginning is like you see them each like reading their own newspapers while trucks drive by with their faces on the outsides of the trucks. Yeah.

back when tv theme songs rocked and men were men men like gene siskel they're playing this at the great american state fair in dc right now To two people

And the reason that it's such a strong sense memory Is because it came on, where I lived In Seattle, it came on Sunday Afternoons For whatever reason, that's the time slot In Seattle, and of course we didn't watch it At my house, but I would watch it At Peter Williams' house And it would be this combo of like Very It'd be like Sunday afternoon at 4

Really? It feels like God, I don't know when it was on TV I don't know that I was a regular observer of it But it feels like it should definitely be like I don't know, Friday or Saturday evening

And maybe that was Maybe I was catching a replay of it Or maybe it was on I just have a very strong memory of it being Sunday And being like Really stoked Because I loved, wasn't it called like At the movies with Siskel and Ebert or whatever

I thought it was just Siskel and Ebert Let me double check

I loved the show so much But I also would always have this kind of like Sad feeling of like It's Sunday at 4 o'clock The Sunday scaries Before we called it that So it was this real combination of being like Just really excited to watch it But also this just kind of like The sadness that it also meant That the weekend was pretty much over And real life was going to start up Monday morning

Yeah, I don't know. By the way, the title screen just says Siskel and Ebert in the way I'm looking at. But it also might have been one of those things where it went through various versions of it. What you're saying also sort of makes sense to me as well. It would be like at the movies or something. But I am really digging it. It's such a great way to kind of get a little take. Obviously, I love nostalgia, but also to hear about these movies. It's fun to hear about what the movies were thought of in the moment. At the time. At the time.

With the benefit of history and hindsight. I agree. Like, I, in fact, you know, maybe when you burn through all of the like, you know, the Razzies, I think that just, you know, also watching the listening to the ones where they're just reviewing movies they like.

Yeah. From that week. From that week. Yeah. Like because it was a weekly show. I was. Yeah. And then, by the way, I'm not just listening to the Razzies ones because that brings that bums me out too much.

Like it went from one what we'll call Razzies. Someone worked very hard on Rhinestone with Sylvester Stallone and Dolly Parton.

You know what I wanted to do here? And this could be a fun little, you were talking about how you were watching this on Sunday afternoons in Seattle. And yeah, that does sort of sound like probably the local station bought this and they maybe play it in a favorable time slot in the evening on Saturday and then replay it midday on Sunday, which is probably a bit of a wasteland for TV watching in the 90s anyway. But I was wondering, can we get our hands on Seattle TV listings? Give me a year, like a month and a year. March, what?

It would have been, this also is associated with the summer for me. So let's just go with July. July. And let's say 1987. Yeah. Let's say I'm probably like, that's seven plus four. Maybe 88. How about 88?

And I'm not trying to test your memory to see if you're necessarily right about that. But there is some account I used to follow, I think it was on Instagram, maybe I still follow it on Blue Sky, but it's something about retro television. They will just take a photo of the TV guide from some random day or week in the 90s, and they'll just say, what would you watch if these were your options on this day or night? And I just love going through that.

I would love that so much. I found something, first of all, just indulge me for a moment. This is Siskel and Ebert's review in 1982 of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Oh, yes.

A partner as the madam leading her singing and dancing hookers in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

You're right, dude. Do we have to throw out the H word there, Gene?

Right. One of four new films we'll be reviewing this week on Sneak Previews. Across the aisle from me, Roger Ebert. Oh, I guess it was called Sneak Preview at some point, too. Oh, okay. Is that what it's called here?

In this version.

Film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. And this is Gene Siskel, film critic of the Chicago Tribune. How can you screw up a movie version of a decent Broadway musical that stars two of the most likable performers on the American entertainment scene? That is the question posed by our next picture, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the story of a pesky TV reporter's battle to dismantle the Chicken Ranch, a legendary Texas brothel that Dolly Parton operates as the madam and Burt Reynolds defends as a local sheriff. Parton's defense of her place of business comes in the form of a song.

oh geez all right whatever it's too much setup i mean at the time someone needed it but we don't i set it up perfectly last week when we were talking about this the the other thing i was going to say on the subject of nostalgia tv and i actually you know what i'll uh i was going to send this to you the other day let me see if i can actually find it i was you know just bopping around i can't remember if it was instagram or tiktok You but it was it was somebody who's put up i think it might have been instagram somebody has put up old television from the nineteen eighties from seattle and there was a show called top story which was basically like a new locally produced news magazine show that was um... hosted by i think it was uh... laurie matsukawa and uh... i forget the name of the guy but they were two of the regular newscaster then like once a week they would do this big kind of, you know, special half hour show and take on a particular topic. And first of all, it was just like a nostalgia, it was like a powerful nostalgia drug for me because, you know, between the graphics that they used and the theme song and the people who were hosting it and the reporter they tossed to a woman named Linda Brill, it was just like all stuff that's just like so kind of memorable for me. But the story was about the teen dance ordinance in Seattle, which was, you know, in the 1980s, there was a club that I used to go to as a kid called Scoochies, and there was a couple of different clubs that were all ages, which meant kids could go there, and they had some kind of police got called and whatever, so they basically said no more of this stuff, and it meant that the kids didn't have anywhere to go. So this is the crazy part. I'll play you a little bit.

They could make a good movie, couldn't it? And that's exactly what these Seattle high schools do.

So this is Linda Brill now, a reporter for, this is King Five for Top Story. I think I have, yeah. So it's been set up by the anchors in the studio saying, the teen dance ordinance says, Linda Brill's now on the scene. She says it could make a great movie, which is exactly what these high schoolers are doing.

A movie about the fact they have nothing to do in Seattle. And they're showing this kid. For their high school history project, these kids are making a music video about Seattle's youth with nothing to do.

The problem is that the teens don't have anywhere to go. They show this first kid, and I'm like, that kid looks really familiar. I know that kid, I think. Oh, his name's Paul. Okay, yeah, where do I recognize that kid from?

They end up walking the streets at night.

There's no place for them to... And they cut to this kid. And I go, I really know that kid.

Pour their energy into it, and they end up stealing the key of their dad's liquor cabinet and drinking.

His name is Cole. He's my neighbor who sucked. What? Luke, I saw this video. And the other guy is the other dude in the band. It's the two kids that become the band Sweetwater.

It's Paul and Cole. I thought you meant neighbor when you were growing up, not your neighbor when you were in the home. No, neighbor who wouldn't cut his holly tree properly.

This is blowing my mind. This video must have just been making the rounds because I saw this sometime in the past, I don't know, months or something. And as soon as they said these people are making a music video based on it, I was like, oh, I saw this vintage footage. That is crazy.

The first dude is the drummer in that horrible band, and the second dude is whatever he plays, but also plays the role of my former neighbor who sucked.

Oh, my God.

This is them as high school juniors or seniors making this little movie.

And for people who don't know Sweetwater, this is one of their biggest hits. Yeah. Oh, boy, don't they wish. Don't they wish. The funny thing is that you say Sweetwater. Let's not do it, but I don't think I know their music. Maybe, do you think if I heard whatever their biggest hit was, I would recognize it?

I don't think so. They were getting heat in Seattle at the time. I remember being in college, and actually the other guy in the band, Paul, was a big pickup basketball player. And so I would play basketball with him all the time at the UW. I don't even know if he went there, but he would just show up and play pickup basketball kind of on this outdoor court. And I remember hearing from someone that, like, he's in Sweetwater, and I was like, oh, my God. Because there was this period of time where there was, you know, 50 bands in Seattle that were all getting attention from labels and they were kind of like, you know, it was Seattle was just popping off so much that if you had a semi-decent band with a semi-charismatic lead singer or whatever, you know, you were getting some gigs, you might have been getting some kind of a record deal. And so you were, you know, you were sort of known around town and they were definitely a band that was known around town. And the difference just was the Pearl Jams and the Nirvanas of the World and the Sounds Garden. They just all kind of, you know, they caught a different, you know, updraft. But I do remember them being kind of, you know, a thing in Seattle.

Definitely. Would it be fun for you at all to go through some of these TV listings? Now, I was not able to find a Saturday or a Sunday listing. But what I found was somebody had listed the Seattle-Tacoma TV listings for Friday, July 31st, 1987. And I don't know if you can hear my brother printer down here printing out. Hit me. What I had to do was, for reference, because this is like posted to some sort of weird bulletin board.

This is why we have printers.

Yeah, look, I printed something out here. And so I'm going to start by telling you what the channels are, okay? So channel, and maybe, I don't know if you want to turn this into a bit of a quiz, but do you know what channel 2 would be? Channel 2... You might not have... have gotten it down here yeah i think that was in in bellingham was that cavos it says it's cbut vancouver oh cbut oh that was cbut yeah we didn't i didn't get that but i had heard about it yeah

it actually is that that's vancouver yeah that's i assumed it was vancouver in canada yeah uh then you have channel four is como seattle channel five is king uh channel seven is cairo that's so So that's ABC, NBC, CBS, respectively. Then Channel 9 is your PBS station. And then do you know, like, Channel 11 out of Tacoma? Sure, of course. KCTS, Channel 11. Oh, I have KSTW here. Oh, KSTW, sorry. KSTW, no, you're right.

And then Bellingham is listed as KVOS. KVOS out of Bellingham, Channel 12.

Channel 12, yep, yep. And then 13 is another Tacoma station. KCPQ. There you go. Which is now the Fox station. Oh, it's funny. It's listed here as newborn Fox. This is 1987, so it's like fresh, Fox. And then Channel 22, independent station.

KTZZ. Absolutely. That was the UHF station.

Oh, nice.

That was the closest the Burbanks got to cable. That was when they launched KTZZ back in the day. You could go to like 7-Eleven and you could get that UHF round antenna and put it on the back of your television and suddenly have more access to McHale's Navy than you ever thought possible.

Or wanted. You don't get the McHale's Navy that you want. You get the McHale's Navy you deserve.

It was just Gilligan's Island, McHale's Navy. What was the one that was about a Nazi prison camp? Hogan's Heroes.

Hogan's Heroes. That one always gave me the bad feeling. I don't know why some sort of television program.

No matter how funny you tried to make the Nazis.

Yeah. It's still kind of scary. Exactly. So anyway, I needed this list in front of me because now I'm going to scroll through the different day parts. And it's just listed by the channel number. So I'm trying to think. This is a Friday. So I think, like, do we want to go to, like, afternoon programming? As a child, you'd probably be more dialed into maybe cartoons. I don't really know.

Probably the cartoons. Okay. By nighttime, I mean, I'm kissing girls. I mean, I'm being, like, a really cool guy. 87, yeah.

Yeah, lock up the daughters. Let's see, at 3 p.m.

Stray cat strut.

3 p.m. on, what did we say this was, August 31st, 1987? Something like that.

I'm betting you that there were some Donahue on one of those stations and some Oprah, too, because you either had the channels that were playing cartoons, which I loved, but then you had the channels that were playing the afternoon talk shows with the Chippendales on Donahue.

And this is July. Actually, we're going to get kind of closer. This is July 31st, 87. And so at 3 p.m. on Channel 4, which, as we have already established, is Como, you have Northwest Afternoon. Yes. Absolutely. They have a description here of what was on that particular episode. Michael, a male prostitute who has survived the streets of Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco, shares his account of, quote, life on the edge. Do they also promote Cindy Reinhart's soaps update? Do they do that within the show, or is that a different channel?

That was the kind of anchor piece, the tentpole of— Okay. Northwest Afternoon was a local show where they were doing— I once went with my high school choir to promote Amal and the Night Visitors, which was our operetta that we were putting on. I played Amal, not to brag. And what they would do is— What's in the box? Precisely. They were always needing to fill up the little live studio audience. So the deal was you'd come down with your musical or whatever. You'd fill up the audience. And then in exchange, you'd get to say a little promotion for your thing. So coming back from a commercial break, and I remember I was devastated because they didn't let me do the little thing. They had Sarah Newton do it, which was actually smart. She did great. She was charismatic, attractive. It was a better call than having me do it. But I just thought, I don't know. I'm a mall. Do I get to like, you know, back to yesterday's conversation.

So much Newton talk on the show lately, man.

Yeah, right? If what's her name in Swarthmore sends you a Heather Newton, we've got real problems. Maggie. But going back to yesterday and my oystertainment tendencies, I mean, this was just always in me, was like, we're going to go down to Northwest afternoon. We're going to sit in the audience. I already knew from the teacher, Mrs. Peterson. She was our choir teacher, that we were going to get to record a little announcement about when and where the play was happening so people could come watch it. And I was hoping I was going to get to be that person. Get your goggles on. You know who the guest was? The special guest. Noted psychic Jackie Stallone oh yeah Sylvester Stallone's mother was the special guest so half of the show would be some interview with whoever and then the other half or a significant portion would be this woman named Cindy Reinhart who would do her soaps update she would basically do the CliffsNotes she would do the AI overview of everything that happened on all the soap operas that day so if you missed them you didn't have to watch all of them you could just watch Cindy and what she said to this day thought was the funniest thing ever she called all my children all my kids today on all my kids that's great she was just like looking back on her again i don't know anything about her life um she was again a media legend in seattle but like would not be shocked to find out that she warmed up with i don't know just just the right half a glass of white wine before the show like just a half a glass of gallo and like two virginia slims outside the building she just had that energy coming in yeah and uh She was great. Anyway, yes, Northwest Afternoon obviously looms large in my brain.

So that was Channel 4. This is still the 3 p.m. time slot. On Channel 5, you have Hollywood Squares syndicated. Channel 7, you have Magnum. Oh, we have a description of Magnum. Let's see here.

Like as a Magnum PI?

I guess so. They have a note here. Was this the syndicated title? So whoever, I'm not seeing source material. I'm seeing something that somebody has transcribed into text. And so the person who posted this was also confused by the fact that it was listed as Magnum. It says a woman's, Rebecca Holden's, psychic powers tell her that her soldier fiancé, missing in action for more than eight years, is still alive. Channel 11. Can you tell me about Channel 11? Oh, Transformers.

More than meets the eye.

And Channel 12 is She-Ra. Oh, man. And Channel 13 is Quincy M.E. Wasn't it Quincy? Is that Quincy? That was Jack Klugman.

Oh, he was a doctor, though, right? He was a medical examiner. and it's funny because i bet you anything that's the kind of show that you and veeves would absolutely love and in fact i would even probably kind of love it now but as a kid it's like when i was hungry for cartoon yeah content i'm hoping for some heathcliff heathcliff no one should yeah and then it's just like quincy yeah it's like a also i'm probably older than jack blugman was in quincy that's a really good point i hate to think about that like an elderly man just I don't know, running around whatever it was. Was he in San Francisco?

I never watched it. I don't know. I'm looking up the age thing here. It says Klugman was about 54, according to AI Overview. Not too far off. What about 13? 13 was Quincy M.E. Channel 22 was Ghostbusters and Channel 28, which that's PBS, right? No offense. 28,

I don't know what that was. Tacoma

PBS, KTPS. and it was Cooking Now. Now at 3.30 you had Card Sharks with Bill Rafferty. I don't know if that was local or national. You had some Tom and Jerry on Channel 11, G.I. Joe on Channel 12, Flintstones on 22, and Square One Television on 28. I believe that's PBS again.

I have, and I won't do it again here, but I have burned up so much time on this show telling you about the program called Square One. It was a math show, but it was so good. it would teach you math stuff and because you know we lived in a pretty strict home there was a lot of stuff even just cartoons that would be considered like fresh or not okay certainly no He-Man nothing with any kind of like you know wizardry or magic in it that was satanic but we were allowed to watch a lot of PBS and Square One they had this Dragnet parody called Mathnet yes we watched that on the show recently which I loved as a kid I just thought it was so great So yeah, I loved Square One I looked so forward to Square One

When I was a kid Now that you say that, I do remember it And I can't remember, did we play that clip on the show Or did somebody send it afterwards Because I remember watching it It was like Dragnet, but it was a man and a woman And they shared an office together And they were fighting over the space on their desks In the episode that I had watched

But one of the things that I've always brought up When the subject of MathNet comes up Was they would have to use math To solve things To do their police job and the thing i thought that was the most clever was there was a musician who was at the time but i think he was supposed to be a bruce springsteen parody but his name was steve stringbean so my memory of it is that this this musician gets kidnapped and the way that he figures out where they're taking him he's in a van he's like a windowless van is that there is like a glass or a jar of celery juice maybe they think that like musicians drink like celery juice or something or there's a glass of something liquid that's in the kind of console of the van and based on how that water is behaving that is indicating the angle if this makes any sense that the van is driving so somehow they solve the mystery of where he is or he figures out where he is by using geometry by using the geometry of this of this my memory of it is celery juice Although I could be conflating string bean and celery juice But just like stuff like that I just thought this is so ingenious

Would you like to know exactly which episode that was? That was season 1 in 1987 Episode 3 The episode was called The Problem of the Passing Parade Now this This is just MathNet, not Square One. So I don't know if like if MathNet folded into Square One. Yeah. So this is episode three of MathNet. I don't know how that fits into the chronology of Square One. But it says a parade was to be featured until the main attraction, Steve Stringbean, a parody of Bruce Springsteen, gets kidnapped. Stringbean tries to communicate the kidnapper's phone number to the Manhattanners. No, I'm sorry. The MathNetters. In a short piece. To the MathNetters. in a short piece of music in a proof-of-life message left on an answering machine he is later

found in a musician's house that show i'm to this day i mean if i watched it now i'm probably i would probably think it was pretty corny but i have to give i got to give them props whoever was writing that show you know between the comedy which speaks for itself speaks for and and also again your job is to somehow make this like funny interesting show but that also has its underlying math principles happening all the time. I think they did a very good job with it. Which is why you're so good at math today.

Unfortunately, there was no help in me. Are you necessarily, you know, I said that, we never really, you and I admit that we're bad with directions, you know, like if we're out on the road somewhere or whatever. But are you necessarily bad at math? I feel like as somebody who plays a lot of cards, you can't be terrible at math. You're doing a lot of some kind of math. Oh, 11-11. Get her. I'm good at knowing when it's 11-11. Yeah, that's numbers. That's numbers.

but uh are you bad at math i'm pretty good at pattern recognition when it comes to numbers that are related to gambling that are related to instant gratification i mean seriously though like i mean i can't do any sort of like uh calculus or algebra at this point or any sort of um complicated math anything above just like simple multiplication and addition or whatever but what i can do is if you were flipping over cards if we were playing blackjack and you were flipping over cards really fast my brain would automatically add their value up uh-huh yeah just because i have spent so many hours of my life looking at those cards it's they're almost not even specific numbers anymore in a weird way they just i just know what they add up to i love the idea of you

like spreading out some schematics for your like you know construction in your house to your dad and he's like why does it say 10 minus ace here what is what is that what does that even mean That'd be a 9, although the ace can be a 10. Yeah, that's right. The ace can be a 11 or it can be a 1. That is true. It gets confusing. 4 p.m. on July 31st, you had on Channel 2, the Facts of Life. On Channel 4, you have $1 million chance of a lifetime. Do you know what that is? I have no idea what that is. Channel 5, you have Donahue. Let's see here. A 7 on Channel 7. I love that show so much. You love People's Court, too, right? Channel 7?

i loved but if i was ranking my love donahue uh was my very favorite i just was like because that was in that time of like the satanic panic and just they would just put any old shit on there yeah and like even just donahue's whole weird i don't know if you watched much of him when you were a kid but his whole i can't do a donahue impression but he used to just like have this very kind of specific way of like talking into the microphone and then you're looking around and you go he just like had this whole shtick that i just fucking excuse me just loved yeah why that

has me swearing i don't know well you can't contain it i love it uh channel seven was people's court channel 11 was woody woodpecker channel 12 flintstones i always felt like the old cartoons

were a letdown when there were new cartoons yeah right it felt like i was getting value village cartoons with woody woodpecker whereas if i was getting you know like i said heathcliff or transformers or gi joe i wanted i wanted yeah i wanted fresh new hot off the presses yeah yeah

um gummy bears bouncing here and there and everywhere high adventure that's beyond compare these are the sounds like something a young andrew watch no i have no idea what you're talking about i've never heard of them on channel 13 i love this it must be a uh rerun of an old rockford files now that is literally something veves and i watch a lot of and it is a legitimately good show like that's the thing like i don't think i would like quincy me because yes it's from that era but i just don't think i i just my guess is it's not great television you know i really think rockford is a good television show if anybody kind of likes that era and listen to this description of this episode of rockford files a team of private investigators isaac hayes and lewis gossett jr competes with rockford for a finder's fee on a missing heir now the thing is Rock for Files does not usually do stunt casting, so I have not seen this one before, but if that ever shows up in my rotation, I'll be excited. On Channel 22, you had She-Ra, and on Channel 28, you had 3-2-1 Contact. I can see you getting down with some of that.

Another one, we would roll right into 3-2-1 Contact. It's the Mo...

it's the reason or it's the moment when everything happens contact i believe contact the sub show

that was woven into contact was the bloodhound gang oh that's a great song you guys would play that all the time on the radio yeah when we would do like mystery solvers i think yeah yeah like

that yeah um but uh yeah so definitely channel 13 said like we're going to counter program these other stations are playing you know they're playing cartoons they're playing donahue we're going with old people solving murders we're go not that he wasn't that old he's definitely younger

than us in the rockford finals presumably right yeah yeah and a handsome devil oh my god and charisma the thing is he's handsome as hell but he really really has charisma james garner that's why i started watching it because veves and i were visiting cleveland like years and years ago and my aunt louise was like talking about james garner i think somebody has a joke got her like a cutout of james garner and it wasn't gun smoke what was his uh cowboy um show before

before the rockford files i'm actually on his wikipedia page right now so let me scroll down he's from the era where he also had a lot of military service maverick maverick half of his pages all the stuff he did before he ever even tried to get in front of a camera really yeah so

maverick was early 57 to 62 and then you're right he is relatively old coming back in 1974 for the rockford files but man he can get it he can certainly get it now absolute snack i don't know how far we want to go on this but i'll give you uh actually why don't you pick another time slot do you want to see anything much later in the evening do you want to stick with afternoon programming maybe we can do one more time slot and then i don't think i was watching that well

let's just you know let's do 8 p.m for funsies i don't think i was watching tv a friday night at 8 p.m i would have been doing one of three things i would have either been with my family which would mean we're probably not watching tv because it's fresh i would have been at a like playing in a basketball game somewhere doing some kind of sport thing or i would be with peter and we would have rented movies at shop and save um so none of those would have led to we're watching the 8 p.m

programming but i'm curious what it was so on channel two at 8 p.m and that's the cbc station out of um vancouver there's something called rock and roll sounds like something you'd be into um Channel 4 is just movie, and the movie is The Spirit, 1987. Sam Jones, small-town police officer Denny Colt, patrols the big city as masked crime fighter The Spirit.

You say he's a cult of personality? He's going to keep at that joke until it catches on.

That's my Colt Emerson joke. He will end up being a mariner, certainly. On Channel 5, you have Stingray. I assume that was a TV show. A TV star, Jeff Conway, whose life has been threatened, hires Stingray to find out why. That sounds like another kind of—

Is Stingray a person or a vehicle? It sounds like it's a private investigator. A Knight Rider knockoff.

Yeah, let me see here. Stingray TV show. It sounds like it's a P.I. show or something, right? Yeah, definitely. Oh, wow. Look at the—I don't know if you're Googling this, too. It says 1985 TV series. It's very, like, neon, sexy Stingray, American drama series. Oh, wow. So he does have a Stingray, by the way. yeah that would make sense he drives around a corvette stingray 65 um uh there was a show on

when i was a kid that was on around this time you know slot called jake and the fat man oh yeah i always thought that was the craziest name for a show and i i always was like can you imagine when they when like they were casting and they were like we have we have good news and bad news yeah we we've cast you you're not jake yeah exactly it's like how tough was that to be the not jake

in that uh how about channel seven this is going to be right up your alley luke a seafare special so channel seven is cairo television you might have even played that on the show no that was in california right oh yeah that was something i found on a vhs tape it says a recap of the week seafare event set the stage for the upcoming seafare parade so this is a friday night so the

parade's probably on sunday is that right uh probably on saturday maybe because the hydros

would be on sunday okay that was that was the big event right everything was just so much better

yeah no well not everything i mean that's why you're trying to make it great again right isn't that your i'm just telling you is that your whole thing to celebrate the 250th of this country with

a great american fair you got the washington week in review on channel nine so that's pbs as a pbs week in review thing i would love a washington as in the state of washington do you think i think so oh oh oh no maybe not no you're probably right could this be a could this be like

programming out of dc i don't know but it would be i would love it if it was state of washington i would love to have known who those people were because they're probably people that i was becoming vaguely aware of you know at the time like sure local pundits and the like i had this extremely weird thought the other day which allow me me to if i can i'll try to quickly quickly expand and then contract this which is there is a guy named jeremy cahill and he is a one of the new um saturday night live performers he's part of like one of the newer cast members and one of his uh characters that he does that is really caught on is he does a tucker carlson and it's actually pretty good he does it like during weekend update and what's funny is i see i've seen more than one young person who's like days ago is anyone else just walking around just saying this like uh and then they're doing their like impression of jeremy cahill doing as tucker carlson and what strikes me is that these people and again you never know with someone but the people that are doing that are like obsessed with his tucker carlson character don't strike me as people who actually know who tucker carlson is like they're not politicos they're not yes they're not the blood and soil guys from charlottesville you what i mean they're like and it reminds me like and it reminds me of times where i loved a saturday night live yes sketch about someone i had no prior context for like when they did the mclaughlin the mclaughlin group from pbs so it would be it would be i think um dana carvey maybe as mclaughlin and he'd be like jack germond eleanor clift and he'd be he was be doing like going around the horn with these people and i would be laughing my ass off and i did not know any of the source material

of any of the people who were being parodied i just loved it i loved al franken doing a parody of senator paul simon i want to say i had no idea who senator paul simon was but i didn't know who al franken was when i was a kid i was like we had a paul simon singer where the bow tie and i was like oh you're killing it you're absolutely killing it i had no idea who any of these people

were. We had a Paul Simon the singer, we had a Paul Simon the senator, and I believe we had a Paul Songus. We did have a Paul Songus, yeah.

Wasn't he from Minnesota?

Probably. Paul Wellstone was from

Minnesota. Oh, I might be confusing my Pauls, yeah.

But this thing, we had two Simons and a Songus. Two Simons and a Songus. Now that's

a show title that's gonna... Forget the picture of Gigi on the roof. That's gonna get the clicks, my friends. Alright, I'll finish up the 8pm time slot and then we'll get out of here, or at least out of this segment. that I feel like I've trapped you in. Let's see here. Channel 11, which, again, is KSTW out of Tacoma. You have To Catch a Thief, the movie, the 1955 movie with Cary Grant.

Because they weren't a network. That's the thing. They were not a network affiliate. No, they're an independent station. So they didn't have, like, access to, if, you know, if the other stations would be putting on, you know, their programming that had been created by their network, that KC, whatever it was, KSTW, they had to kind of, like, go rogue on just, like, they were kind of on weird stuff that they could just kind of cobble together.

Same with Channel 12 out of Bellingham, which was showing The Magnificent Seven Ride, 1972, featuring Lee Van Cleef. You gotta love some Lee Van Cleef. Five ex-convicts team up with a pair of lawmen to save the citizens of a town besieged by outlaws. Classic cowboy movie. Channel 13, you have Elvis Comeback 68. Elvis jams with musicians from the early part of his career and sings such hits as Hound Dog, Heartbreak Hotel, Don't Be Cruel, and Jailhouse Rock.

I mean, so this is, we've established this is in 1987. Yeah, 87, yep, Friday night. And this is, the Elvis special is 68? Yeah, so it's 19 years earlier. They're just like, here is some of Elvis' most recent work as of nine years ago. Yeah, no, his earliest work, right? So they were, well, what I mean is, I guess, well, I was joking about, by that time. Well, I guess had he passed away yet? But again, that's Channel 13. Think about what Channel 13's doing. They're doing Quincy. They're doing Elvis live from 1968. They were clearly at that time again, maybe Fox didn't have enough programming up and running or something, but it sounds like they were definitely trying to appeal to the older demo.

Yeah, so Elvis had died 10 years before this aired. He died in 1977. And that is a little confusing because this description is wrong. I sort of corrected you just based on the text here, but it says from the early part of his career, but would... Oh, I see. In 68, he's older, but looking back, and he's jamming on some of his older material. I see what's happening there. Gotcha. That makes a little bit more sense.

So he's not doing Suspicious Minds. He's doing Hound Dog.

He's doing Hound Dog at Heartbreak Hotel as Elvis in 1968. Okay. On Channel 22, which is the Seattle Independent Station, KTZZ, is that right? You got Perry Mason. Perry investigates after a beautiful jewel thief is found murdered. And then on Channel 28, which again is PBS out of Tacoma, I believe, it says Shoestring is playing. Do you know a PBS show called Shoestring? Sure didn't. Okay, Eddie investigates a suicide of a bankrupt businessman who is tricked by a computer. Oh my goodness.

We use computers to help people. Not hurt people. That's Slim Goodbody, I think. Or no. The guy with all of his organs painted onto his suit? I play this drop sometime that says, I will hope the... There is somebody who also wore a weird outfit like that who I used to confuse with Slim Goodbody.

We actually did a fairly deep Slim Goodbody dive like a few months ago, if you can believe that, on this very program.

Yes, I do. Oh, yeah, it was Slim Goodbody. I was right about it.

Well, that should take care of those two evil geniuses for a while. I hope that they've learned their lessons, that computers are built by people, for people, to help people, not to control us.

I gotta say, there's some people in Silicon Valley who should hear that right about now.

Yeah, exactly. Take that, Peter Thiel. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. Well, Andrew, I was loud wrong yesterday on the program, and I was very—I should have known, because the more confident I am ever in myself, the more likely it is that I am just fully wrong. And I was, in this case, the story of NPR posting on its website and then taking down an announcement of Samuel Alito retiring was kind of making the news yesterday, and I said, let me just save everybody, you know, let me save everybody some time. I know all about this news business, and we have, you know, we in this news business have written these articles in advance about people who might pass away or might step down from powerful positions so that when they do, you can just update a few details and fire it out there. And that's exactly what happened today. Somebody mispublished the wrong Nina Totenberg story, and that's all there is to see here. And she doesn't have to apologize to anyone. And in fact, this one was on Nina.

Yeah, I got to say, though, and you and I were both like in a text chain yesterday, scrambling to be the first in line to admit to being wrong about this, because I honestly, before you and I even talked about it, I thought the same thing. I'm like, oh, this is a pre-written piece, an obit for a, not for somebody's life, but for their career, and somebody misfired it.

Now, can I play you a little bit of this quick conversation they had on ATC yesterday? Yeah, I haven't heard it, yeah. So this is their, this is kind of sort of, they've been talking about the Supreme Court, because of course it also happens to be a very active time for them, but they bring a Nina Totenberg, and really what they do is they bring in this guy, Thomas Evans, who's the editor-in-chief. Now, my big takeaway from this is somebody needed to give Thomas Evans some goddamn celery juice, because the guy is dying on air. He's got that, like, when you get nervous and your mouth dries out and whatever, but that's not the main point. And here is Nina Totenberg, the legend in my mind still, basically explaining kind of what happened.

Totenberg joins me live now, along with NPR's editor-in-chief, Thomas Evans. Hi to both of you.

Hi.

We're here because we want to take some time to acknowledge an error we made today. We reported that Justice Samuel Alito is retiring. He's not. Nina, tell us what happened.

Well, we didn't. I did, to my boss. And I scared everybody half to death for about five minutes. And it's entirely on me. It's not anybody else's fault. And I've written to Justice Alito to apologize, and I thought I would read you most of this letter because it tells you everything. Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today's error in reporting your retirement. It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody what was going on inside, to which the answer was retirement announcements. I didn't hear the S on announcements and assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don't know what else to say except that I am so, so sorry, and I am eternally. You know, this was a rookie mistake.

Have you heard back from the justice?

No, but I didn't expect to hear back from him. It's my mistake. You know, we in the press corps always want people to own up to their mistakes. And they most of the time don't. So I'm not going to do that. This is on me and only me.

I appreciate you talking to us about it. Tommy, I'm going to bring you in as well because I'm going to slightly disagree with Nina just a little bit. We have systems in place to make sure a mistake like this doesn't make it to air. This doesn't entirely land on one person. Can you tell us what happened?

Yeah, and Nina was incredibly gracious there, but the truth is, as Editor-in-Chief, I feel ultimate responsibility for anything that NPR is reporting. We do have systems in place. We are trying to be a nimble news organization during breaking news.

and still be correct at all times. And this is something that we should learn from and go back and figure out where we could do better and be better. But I think, most importantly, we need to be honest with our audience and honest with the listeners that when we make a mistake, we own up to it and we own it, like Nina did, like I think we all are. And I think we will be a better news organization for it.

But I was the only person at the court. and I've seen people make big mistakes because they weren't sitting in the courtroom and I knew we had a special and I left early and that is also on me you should never leave these people early I mean this

so there you go I mean it's kind of right there she thought that somebody said retirement announcement and I guess assumed it was Alito

I mean what there's a million assumptions there I want to hear more about why she just jumped to that

specific why alito of all of the justices i don't think he's even the oldest is he or you know and uh yeah that's i mean and so i guess she like you know called called back to hq and said like alito is retiring and then somebody hit publish on it i mean it just shocks me if somebody and

again i'm not trying to pile on i mean she clearly is throwing herself on her sword there as well she should by the way i actually found i appreciate yeah i do too but like it is just like I still want to know, well, you're a responsible journalist. I truly think she is. Now, she's been doing this for so, so long that maybe she just sort of is able to maybe relax some of her double, triple, quadruple checking on things. But for such a huge headline, it doesn't make sense to me that she's phoning in this story just saying, hit go on that. Here are the details. You didn't get one secondary source on this? you didn't get any quote like that you just overheard somebody say retirement announcement i know right i there's still some some stuff missing here well and it's also one of those

things where if it's anyone who is not as revered as nina totenberg then there is probably more double checking i mean her her word is sort of the law when it comes to all things supreme court and so if it had been a you know a cub reporter or somebody who was more new to the game they probably would have said well how do you know that what's the you know what what's what's the reporting on this but she's nina totenberg so she calls you and says uh you know type this up or whatever and you just do yeah and it turns out it's so i mean again i i've as a as a as a frequent mistake maker as a frequent need to apologize her i actually really like the apology from her she is not being coy she is not trying to um parse the language really she's making sure that She's trying to make sure that nobody else is, you know, sort of catching some of the flack for this or that this this mistake is being spread across multiple people. She's really trying to own it. And again, as a person who my whole kind of move in life is to mess up a lot, but then also apologize a lot. I find her apology actually very charming.

No, and I do appreciate I appreciate the fact she's not being defensive or saying, well, you know, I feel like I can also associate with that. I feel like I would do this I think I would do the same thing just be like oh my god there's no excuse for this and I'm glad she is because um because I I mean I I guess I paused there because I'm also thinking about how the editor-in-chief says we're going to be stronger for this which is sort of a I mean he's also falling on his sword too but there's that that was the one thing that I cringed at a little bit sort of I know you got to say stuff like that but it's kind of like oh this is an improvement opportunity sort of attitude that I kind of growing at a little bit Right, exactly. Hey, I have a question for you. I also got distracted here, and I'm sorry to take this back to a segment that you just escaped. But what is the Seattle comedy show that preceded... Almost Live. Yeah, Almost Live. When did that start? Because that did not air in 1987. They went right into Saturday Night Live at 1130. On a Saturday night? Yeah. When did Almost... Oh, this is a Friday night. They were showing a rerun of Saturday Night on a Friday night? Is it? I don't know about that It's not Friday night videos or something No, okay, sorry I guess I'm just confusing things

But I can't tell you exactly when Almost Live started, but my guess would be It would have been running in 87 Because I remember Peter and I making Just absolutely horrendously Bad videos that were Just parodies Not even parodies, we would just try to reenact their videos And we would do it very poorly

You know, one thing I'm noticing here And I interrupted for no good reason because it actually says the show is called Saturday Night with host Richard Dreyfuss. That's something different.

I think that Saturday Night show was like, I think Michael Richards was on it, a.k.a. Kramer. Really? have even had might have had larry david on it really that was this kind of weird show that was not saturday night live but that was kind of a if i remember right if i'm thinking of the right thing it had this kind of like had this cast of people that eventually i don't know if it was a sketch comedy show or what exactly it was but i know there was some kind of a show called saturday night that's actually sort of uh you know sort of spit out a few people who became notable in later

years it's incredibly difficult to find any information about it because you type in saturday night tv show what do you think pops up nothing but smurfs no obviously the internet the internet only thinks i'm looking for saturday night live information not a show called saturday night didn't they know in 1987 that would be terrible seo well that's what i'm

trying to get to um let's see oh uh are you sure okay well there was a show also called fridays maybe? Of course, this is exactly the wrong question for AI Overview, because they're going, Michael Richards never starred in NBC's Saturday Night Live. Now, there was a show called Fridays, Andrew. I'm sorry, this is so confusing. The Fridays years. Long before their Seinfeld days, Michael Richards and Larry David worked together on Fridays. A late night sketch show that's best remembered for Richards' wildly physical characters like Battle Boy.

Oh my god! And then they would go on and so he cast them in Seinfeld.

You can kind of see why, though, because

It's called Fridays. That's really interesting, though, that they worked together on that, and then he brought them up through and into Seinfeld. Wow.

The program was ABC's attempt to duplicate the success of Saturday Night Live, which at the time was in its fifth season. The show featured many recurring characters and sketches, short films, and parody news segments called Friday Edition.

Now, is yours, the fact that you knew this... Well, I was wrong on my day of the week. Yeah, but you did have, like, you have some, you know, memory of this in some sort. Do you know this from back in the day? Or do you know this from hearing about this later on as an adult?

I only know it from, like, hearing about it and maybe seeing clips of, like, a very young Larry David. Like, as Larry David's fame has grown, then people are more interested in his, you know, kind of earlier years. Have you seen that new show that he's in? By the way, they're promoting it on HBO. It actually looks pretty funny.

I've seen the tile for it, but I thought it was maybe a documentary or something. It's actually a show.

my sense is it's kind of Curb Your Enthusiasm set in like the colonial era oh okay I don't know if that's the entire maybe he's just popping up in different points in history the thing that I when I was watching HBO I think it was on HBO the like preview they gave me was it was kind of like a constitutional convention a la you know whenever that would have been you know the 1700s or something and but of course it's like Larry David is like being Larry David with all these

dudes in wigs Yes, they're covering a lot of ground. It's partially a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, Luke. It is Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. Now, I've seen this. When I turn on HBO, I see it being served up to me. But I just thought with a name like that, I thought this was going to be like a retrospective of Larry David's life or something like that. But it says it's a sketch comedy series produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions, BT Doug. Good to see it. That's right. Did they partner with Steve Stringbean for this one is what I want to know. Unclear.

I can tell you that one of the guest stars on season two of Fridays was Bob Balaban.

Oh, I love that. That's my double B. Yeah. You know what I'm doing? Oh, I have a question for you, Andrew.

Last night I was trying to fall asleep and I was doing your system and I had some real doozies. What are you doing with I? You skip I.

You spend about a year of your life trying to figure. All right. Well, night one, no success. Wait, hold on. And I think somebody might have provided, there are about, I think, four letters that you have to skip. And I think I might be one of them. Although somebody might have. X is one of them. Yeah. I think Y is probably one of them as well. I learned it was a hard way. Y. So how did you do, though? Were you borrowing a letter? Well, I did every other one.

I just couldn't do Y.

Really? Yeah. And you got all the way to the end of the alphabet? No, I'm sorry. Yeah.

Yes, I did. Although I was, here's what I was doing. I was kind of playing on easy mode. It wasn't just movie stars. It was any famous person I was allowing myself

With double letter initials

So like That really widened it for me a little bit As far as Maybe next time I do it I'll stick strictly to The movie stars like you do But I was on I I was literally thinking of you last time What in the hell is he doing with I? I was like Ivan Ira Isaac All the I names Isabella It's like nobody goes I first name, I last name.

And you got to be careful with this game because it'll put.

you to sleep because it kind of puts your mind into a different place but if you get really frustrated it doesn't put you to sleep you just right get really frustrated you start kicking your legs under the covers I have changed this to and you this would be too easy for you but I am so bad at knowing names and knowing baseball and not having a history of baseball watching that lately what I've been doing to the degree that I've been doing this at all is just trying to think of any baseball player not double not double letters just any baseball player with like a last name that goes through the alphabet starting with like acuna jr right oh i see so alphabetizing just yeah or you can start with altuve and then benintendi is who i go for for b is it andrew benintendi i'm probably saying that wrong but i know who i'm talking about um and then do they have to be actively playing no i'm just i'm opening the doors wide because i still get stuck Roger Clemens. Clemens is who I went with. And then who did I? Because E, I know that I have, that we have Colt Emerson. So like once you get into the, but what do I do for D though? What about my D? Alvin Davis. Oh, there you go. Rookie of the year. Alvin Davis. Yeah, exactly. So maybe you can play around with that one.

And if you need to do a double B, you could do Bobby Bonilla, Andrew. And a happy Bobby Bonilla day to all who celebrate. Do you know about this? Mr. Bob Bonilla. People were really on our case about the origins of that. Okay, we get it. It was the monkeys.

But it was sampled by Delva Homo Sapien, and that's the version that we know. Of course. Yeah. Is today the day? This is the day that they have to pay out Bobby Bonilla?

Today is year 16 of the Mets paying Bobby Bonilla another $1.19 million.

That's not over yet? When does it end?

For the 16th straight year, the Mets are paying Bobby Bonilla $1.19 million signing bonus. due to one of the most bizarre deals in sports history after, let's see here, after Bonilla, now 63, hit just 160 across 60 games for the Mets in 1999. The team decided to buy out his deal in January of 2000 and agreed to defer the remaining $5.9 million sum with 8% interest spread from 2011 to 2035.

2035, there you go.

He's getting this until 2035.

Or his estate. I don't know how old he is.

The Mets have now paid Bobby Bonilla more than $19 million since 2011. The total payout will be roughly $29.83, so $30 million. So instead of paying him the $6 million that they owed him, they decided to defer it and pay $30 million over the course of all these years. This is, of course, for people that don't follow baseball, a particular thumb in the eye because the Mets have had some pretty rough seasons and are in the midst of another one. So the idea that as they have a hugely high payroll, they've had really, really bad return on those investments, and they're also still kicking Bobby Bodine money.

Yeah, and it's kind of sad because they really spent this year. You know what I mean? It kind of bums me out. I mean, listen, I'm not advocating for more of what the Dodgers are doing, which is just basically buying the game. But the Mets, who have such a troubled past, you would think as the fan base, you're like, finally, you're going to actually spend. You're going to get us out of this rut. But it goes to show you that sometimes spending doesn't work.

Well, when your owner is a hedge fund operator who also is pursuing a job as a professional DJ, Steve Cohen, he's just got too many irons in the fire. Really? He's DJing? He's DJing, and apparently he's pretty good. Really? Even though he made billions of dollars in his, like, investment. Like, he's a Wall Street guy who loves DJs. He's also, he looks, imagine Steve Cohen, billionaire Wall Street guy. He's exactly how you imagine him looking, except he's on the ones and twos sometimes.

I want to know how you feel about something. I'm closing all the tabs that I had open from today's show because, you know. Let's close the tabs that close. Let's close the tabs that close. You know, you and I are talking about something. I'll Google this, Google that, or whatever. That's how we ended up with a lot of the stuff we talked about today. One of the things I Googled, and I don't know exactly why, I just typed in Widow's Bay while we were talking about it. And I'm noticing some sort of a synergistic search result thing that HBO must have paid for. When you type Widow's Bay into Google, actually, can you just do it? Type in Widow's Bay into Google.

Also, really quickly, I think I was totally wrong about Steve Cohen being a DJ. There's some other owner of a New York team, I think, who likes DJing, but it's not the New York Mets owner, Steve Cohen. Well, he might.

It might just not be a big deal, so it's not in his Wikipedia page. He might just be doing it in his basement.

Am I Googling? He's a boy from the basement.

Just Google Widow's Bay. Just Google Widow's Bay. I'm interested in this TV show I've heard about. Google Widow's Bay. Tell me what you see at the top.

well I see you mean did you mean yes you mean the correction did you mean the next Martha's

Vineyard and definitely not curse so clearly HBO has paid Google sponsored to have a sponsored did you mean because you know if you misspell Bobby as I did it'll be like do you mean this Bobby Bonilla they have a sponsored did you mean the next Martha's Vineyard and definitely not curse and then when you click on it it uh I guess that's very clever Google yeah interesting I assume that that's paid for who knows very very clever and again it has our jeff hillard guy and i don't know how much he's in it he's one of the main he's one of the main i mean he doesn't have a lot of screen time but he's like one of the kind of main supporting characters in the office so you see him at least once an episode and speaking of he gets to dj in one episode too which is a lot of fun exactly i gotta figure out you know what i think there might be a different

steve cohen who's not even associated with the mets but is a d there's some there's a wall street billionaire who really likes to dj and is actually supposedly pretty dee at it and um and uh is not the guy who owns the mets but is a different guy who i confused with him i'll figure that you

haven't figured that i'll report that is it david solomon why wall street is buzzing again about david solomon's comeback as a dj washington post maybe why wall street is buzzing again about david solomon's dj side gig this was posted in may of 2026 maybe it's been david solomon the whole time

oh yeah he's the goldman sachs guy yes okay i'm looking at him now uh when i say david solomon from goldman sachs he's exactly what you think he looks like but he also looking at this take back everything i said about steve cohen and just apply it to david solomon just play your air horn and get us out of here. Absolutely. That's all we needed. All right. It's frickin' freezing in here, by the way. I'm like losing circulation in my hand. Hey!

You know what? In all seriousness, enjoy your ride with the dogs today. I have a feeling you're gonna be a little sad to come home to a dogless house. I'll be a little sad to see them go.

You know, I've grown accustomed to their faces around here, so. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you uh so please do join us for that in the meantime have a great wednesday take care of yourselves welcome to july and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out