Muse

My whole issue is why would y'all name them wood chucks if you know they can't chuck wood? Like, what's the purpose of that? And then to add insult to injury, you make a whole tongue twister or nursery rhyme talking about the very thing that you know they can't do. Talking about if they could chuck wood. You know they can't. You know they can't. So why are you talking about it? And then you got everybody else talking about it, making them the butt of the joke. The craziest part about all of this is that wood chucks can do a whole bunch of other things with wood. and yet the one thing that everybody is focused on is the fact that they can't chuck it even though that's what their name is they never said they could so why would y'all call him that like no they never said they could y'all said that they were woodchuckers so now they gotta get made fun of because what y'all called them they can do so many other things but y'all want to focus on what they can't do i don't like that i don't understand that to be honest that feels like a whole motif for how people go about looking at your skills and the things that you're good at that's like being like oh okay well you know you can't dunk but you know if you were taller like how high would your vertical be you know i can't dunk so why are you even asking me that i don't have the the statistics or the data to answer that question why can't we focus on what it is

that i can do t b t l guess what day it is guess what day it is it's friday friday gonna get down

on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend. Well what are you? I'm a chicken lady

can I get you a beer? Would you like to just drink out of the toilet? A beer No definitely

yeah literally no yeah yeah no for sure

no yeah. Do you have monkeys running around the house? No they have their own house. I don't even know

what that means. No one knows what it means but it's provocative in 1971 bill greats invented microsoft wouldn't it be cool if i could remember

my dingus password for my email all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live gotta have that root beer my name is luke burbank i am your host i'm so excited about this show coming to you from the madrone studio whoa hold on wait a minute all right calm down aaron covey coming to you from the madrona hill studio perched high above the mighty columbia now it's time for that oh ma pa it's just beautiful absolutely gorgeous friday here uh the 10th of july as uh we are getting ready to head out to Valley City, Ohio, for the TBTL-a-thon.

I'm, like, seriously excited. I'm kind of shy, but mostly excited.

We are mostly excited. Of course, we still have to bring you episode 4768 in a collector series. That's today's program. Let the fun begin. With all kinds of stuff to talk about, Thon-related, other things. Let's just get the cast of characters here on the line right away. This guy's the longest-running Cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

This shiny guy, oh, he's worried.

He's got a lot on his plate. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Good morning, Luke. How are you feeling? I'm feeling okay, but I'll be honest. It's because I've got another link in my travel chain before I get to Valley City. And so I've kind of got a few things. Oh, by the way, let's also welcome TVTL employee numero uno, John Sklaroff. I would say his skills are sort of almost unlimited. Unlimited. As are his responsibilities around the TBTL-a-thon. This is really his time to shine. John, welcome to the program.

Hey, guys. How's it going?

Good. Good to see you. Pretty good. I'm actually, right when we're done recording today, I'm running to the airport to fly down to Sonoma for a couple of days to do this kind of birthday celebration for a friend with Becca. And then I'm heading to Valley City on Sunday. But you're heading, Andrew, are you heading out Saturday morning? When are you leaving?

Yeah, I'm heading out early tomorrow morning. I mean, the flight isn't especially early. The flight's like 9 maybe. But, you know, I like to get there two hours early, especially for a work trip where there's so much riding on this and knowing there's only one direct flight to Cleveland from Seattle a day. Like, you know, I'm going to get there nice and early. I'll have some radio equipment in my bag, which could also complicate things. I have a little news update for John that I feel like he'd be interested in if you want to see this signee guy get nervous. The box of equipment that I shipped to my folks that was supposed to be there on Wednesday has still not arrived yet. And when I use the tracking number, USPS just keeps saying, oh, it's going to get there on time. And I keep telling my phone, but on time was two days ago. And when I say I tell my phone that, I'm just yelling at my phone.

it's not accomplishing anything so there did you pack any like cans with string attached to them or anything that we can use if in just as a backup plan yeah that's the most technologically advanced

way to do a podcast these days isn't it it's not ideal it's not ideal but we got to be thinking oh what happened there what's happening to luke uh i keep talking i'm just but this is working on

some stuff i'm trying to figure out ways to make this podcast more visually successful and i thought So maybe if I integrated these googly eyeglasses, that closed. Oh, interesting. These are special novelty glasses. Does that solve our technology issue? It doesn't help at all, but I just was getting bored with the shipping conversation.

It introduces a new technological issue.

Should I bring these to Ohio? You look like Christopher Lloyd at the end of Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he's revealed.

Oh, he was even in that movie. Good call. He's the judge. Yeah. I think the way they're supposed to work is, see, the problem is I have these headphones on, but they have a little string that's attached to the eyelids on this thing, and there's a clip. You're supposed to kind of like cinch this to the back of your head so that if you move your head a little bit, it causes the eyes to close, the eyelids to come down. So you could just be like talking to someone, and then you just like, I'm pulling the string, but you just subtly move your head, and you close the eyelids on it. Sorry, I didn't mean for that to become part of the conversation. I was legitimately just testing them out.

No, but I have more questions now. Like, one, why and where do you have those?

I saw them on TikTok, and I thought they looked cool. They were $8. And I literally thought, maybe I'll use these on TBTL, and it'll be funny. That's pretty good. Now, this is going to sound in some way like victim-blaming, Andrew, and I really don't mean it to, because, as I say a lot around the program, you and John are doing so much work to make this THON happen. You do so much more work to make TBTL happen. And, of course, there's no reason. I would have done the exact same thing. There's no reason why you wouldn't have done this. But for some reason, I was always picturing this as a FedEx delivery gone awry. This is a USPS delivery gone awry. Is there any difference? Is one of them more or less reliable? I don't know. I guess for some reason I was imagining this gear as being sent FedEx, but you sent it USPS. And do they just use FedEx if you pay USPS, but then they just kind of like subcontract out the gig?

No, I don't think so. I think they deliver it themselves. I don't know if they're – I use USPS just because I was there already picking up stuff. It's where our post office box is. I was picking up a bunch of stuff. I was shipping stuff out. It just sort of made sense to me. Does USPS have a – I've never had an issue with it before. I spent the extra money to make – because there's no guarantees unless you pay out the nose. You have to buy them a special airplane or something like that. But there are various tiers, and I bought one of the more expensive tiers so that it would get there earlier than we needed. Like Wednesday, I thought, will give us tons of time. Now here we're talking on Friday morning, and so we'll see what happens. I mean it doesn't take down the whole operation. Some of the actual key critical things we're doing. I'm really sorry about this. My dog is in here, and she's found something to chew on that she shouldn't be chewing on. I'm trying to fix that.

Before the show, we were kind of dialing this up, and John was like, okay, I'll be there in 10 minutes. I'm walking the dogs. And then Andrew was like, just give me five minutes. I'm going to take this dog outside. And I felt very left out. I'm the only member of the staff that doesn't have a dog right now, and I think that's unfair. Have you checked the roof?

Are you sure you don't have a dog right now?

You can never be too sure around here.

Anyway, no, she's being a good girl. She found something to chew on the bottom of my chair, and I was distracted there for a minute. But anyway, yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe USPS has a lesser reputation.

No, no, no, that sounded like I had an experience, and I was like, Andrew, how could you use USPS? That isn't even really what I thought. I guess I just, because I don't go to the post office very much, because I'm always returning stuff that I bought online at the UPS store in my neighborhood. So if I've sent things, it's through UPS or maybe FedEx or whatever. But, I mean, I have faith. I have faith in the United States Postal Service that they are going to get this stuff to where it needs to be in time for us to take use of it, make use of it.

I will say, as the person that does the most shipping on behalf of Too Beautiful to Biz, I use the post office almost religiously. Like, anyone that ever gets a Thon gift, that's all coming from the post office. I know the folks that are over there kind of. Some are a hassle to work with. Some are really great. And for whatever reason, this specific instance for the – because I had to ship some technology to Mr. Robert Walsh's house as well.

Yes, we're shipping these to my parents' house. I don't know if I made that clear. And honestly, you ship stuff that is much more critical now that I'm – sort of inventorying it like and that has arrived and that i did use fedex for whatever reason i just i think it's because i didn't have the right box and like going to the post office and like getting the box like that just felt like more of a hassle so i just went to fedex and i said here's my object these i know i already measure the dimensions do you have a box for this and they actually packaged it and like bubble wrapped it and sent it out i like us using usps because i

like supporting it as an organization i feel like it's and also the fact that these other companies oftentimes use the usps because that's the last mile like that's you know these other companies whether it's amazon or even you know fedex and ups i think that there are some places that they don't really service so they lean on the united states postal service which is supported by all of us the taxpayers to get stuff into areas where it doesn't make financial sense for them to drive their trucks and stuff like that so i i'm a big fan and defender of the idea of the usps it's

capital it's uh capitalism and privatization until we need socialism that's what yeah that's

how a successful corporation works well you know we're going to be asking the listeners next week that's why we're all gathered here today to you know kind of talk about the tv telethon that's happening next week to to help us pay the bills that we do have to pay to keep this operation running socialism and the truth of the matter is this is a i mean john let's talk about the conversation that you and i were having via email a couple of days ago when we got a notice that our po box is up for renewal again and i remember when i first ordered that po box or purchased it or whatever rented it filled out the the paperwork i was surprised at how expensive it was now back then that was we were with american public media so it was sort of like i didn't you know feel the impact quite as much but i remember being like wow po boxes can be expensive and john you pointed out that we have for the past two years quite a bit luke and for the last two years there's been a 10 increase year over year for two years now you pointed that out which is quite a bit so yeah i don't know if that speaks to the state of the post office right now if it's related to this administration but i do think that our listeners should know that even just having the having this po box is not exactly a cheap affair i know you guys know i don't have strong political opinions

or thoughts um but there was this act like kind of a who would you like to have a beer with kind of voter right yeah yeah yeah yeah or a few on the back deck of a wisconsin uh airbnb um i don't i'm blanking on the name of it now i'm trying to figure out but it's basically called it was like called like the usps responsibility act or something like that fiscal responsibility something like that this was a law that was passed under george w bush and it's the reason the post office is so screwed and this is a bipartisan act so this is not saying bush and republicans but like if you look into this history of this it was the act that very famously at the time uh mandated that the usps have in funding reserves uh the pension payout for 99 years of budgeted and put aside and ready to go basically saying like all your employees like for the next 99 years you have to have like billions of dollars that you can't touch because that's the fund the pension and that's in reserve so that's like one example of one of the things that they put into this act um just like very ludicrous uh handcuffs on how the post office can spend its money and how it uses its money uh in benefit it's in the ultimate service of like corporations like fags and ups and all these other kind of companies because of the donors of congress so it's just like it is very intentional by congress um i'm getting way too tech it's impossible that the

TBTL through the thank you gifts that we mail out using USPS through the P.O. box that we've retained. Is it possible that we are the number one, the largest supporter of the United States Postal Service in America? That this humble podcast that TBTB is keeping the USPS afloat

essentially to the degree that it is afloat? That's my dream and my goal and aspiration

in life, Luke. Now you've said some of the people, John, are helpful and some of them are less helpful. Would you like to name any of the less helpful people here for the record? Would you like to put any of the people at the local St. Paul post office

on blast? There's two people specific I will not name as unhelpful, but I will say Angie is super helpful. If you were into Angie at the West 7th USPS, she is the best civil servant I've

ever come across in my life. And don't forget one of our listeners actually works at the post office that we use and will sometimes slip us notes

into the P.O. box. We can't get a discount. well i don't know we'll see could we set up something that's a little like i don't know it's a little side hustle like maybe it's not officially a po box but it's where uh that listener uh just kind of puts our stuff when it comes in right you know kind of gives it to us when we come on yeah a little or maybe i put maybe i put little treats

in the p.o box that he can access from the p.o i'd never had a p.o box before and i was pretty fascinated by it you know how maybe you don't know how but for my life when i would go to the grocery store and i'd grab some milk out of the cooler i didn't really think about what was behind the milk right but then you get to a certain age you're like oh there's a whole world back there there are people walking around in this cooler restocking these things from the back it's where

nine-year-old luke is walking through to use the bathroom yes exactly you go through those

those plastic slats that hang from the ceiling like a car wash and you're just like why why do i do this here well then you start thinking now when i grab milk i'm always like kind of trying to get a little peek back there well the the uh p.o boxes are kind of similar you you know you just open it up and you get your mail you don't think too much about it but then you're like wait a second if i open this up and i just kind of crouch a little bit i can see back into the inner workings of this post office a little bit and so what i'm saying is is not unlike that movie the lake house which i have a vague grasp on what it's about yeah i can put little notes you know and i'm blanking i want to say evan or i think it's eric who works there let's go with eric eric if that's not your proper name maybe we can change that yeah exactly you and i can pass notes and little treats through the p.o box and then you can do a little math on the back end

that maybe knocks some zeros off of this price saying help help your favorite podcast out now Now, because I'm assuming there's – is there tracking on this box?

Yeah, I keep clicking on it.

And where is it telling you the boxes?

Well, that's what I'm – this is why it's incredibly unhelpful. Right now – so here are the – the entire transaction history is the day I dropped it off, it says USPS in possession of item. That was on January 2nd at 4.59 p.m. And then it departed the post office almost exactly 90 minutes later at 6.25. And then it arrived at a USPS facility, but in Seattle the next day on July 3rd. So it went to the big processing facility. And then on July 5th, which was what? That was Sunday. On July 5th, it says, in transit and arriving on time. And I'd like to remind you that on time would have been Wednesday of this week. Oh, boy. Wednesday night I we kept on opening this thing and tracking it on Wednesday night and it was already almost 10 o'clock eastern time I want to say uh which is you know Ohio's eastern time it was getting pretty late and there was a notice that said your item it has been delayed and it's going to get there a little later than expected but will still be there on Wednesday and I'm looking at this and again it's like seven o'clock or something our time i'm like that's already 10 o'clock are you telling me that somebody's going to roll up to the walsh residence in west lake ohio and drop this off in the wee hours of 10 p.m or 11 p.m that doesn't sound right to me the next day i log back in to say hey did they ever drop that thing off that message that said it's going to arrive only a little bit later than usual is totally gone and it just says oh don't worry about it it doesn't say don't worry about it it sort of says don't worry about it it says your package is moving within the usps network and is on track to be delivered on the expected delivery date and that's it like the last update we have is from july 5th already missed it's now missed by two days the expected date was wednesday and that's what i paid for andrew i just noticed

because we have the same you sent me the tracking information yeah as you mentioned we were talking about this i just opened it up and i don't know if you noticed this but i've now for the first time seeing across the top of the tracking page yeah in there's a red banner it says alert impacts from the world soccer tournament oh come on which they don't say world cup or fifa which i think it's funny alerts uh impacts from the world soccer tournament held in major cities throughout the u.s from june 11th through july 19th 2026 may delay final delivery of your mail packages read

more that yeah no i've been saying that course they've been saying that that's been on their website for a while but like yes seattle is one but this says it was in transit arriving on time which makes me think it's well out of and i don't think cleveland is my package i ordered to lumen

field at 5 p.m on monday is going to be that's that's also i mean give me a brock usps we need some congressional oversight on this agency as far as i'm concerned because we need repeal on because like like i i that excuse bothers me so much what are the real chances that somebody has ordered something or is having something delivered through the usps and the mail carrier or the delivery person is going to be attempting to deliver it and a sea of scottish soccer fans comes flooding down the street and and they're they're on the wrong side of the of the ocean of scottish soccer fans and they can't deliver the thing to them i just like that's a total sea

a move by then. I think we're missing, I think we're looking at this the wrong way, Luke. What if Mr. Bob Walsh hears a doorbell ring, and he goes to answer the door, and Erling Holland is handing in his box? Oh my goodness. Terrifying.

That would be an absolutely terrifying experience. He's wearing the helmet. Andrew, if you find your dad in the basement cowering when you get to town, it's because he had an Erling Holland run in

in real life. John, I don't know if you're still on the page or not, but there's also and it's kind of in less severe font it does mention that in an effort to save water we will not be giving you fresh towels every day unless requested why is there a picture of a koala bear

it's not even the same it's not even related to the data centers need that water i'm just trying

to think of all of the things that irritate you luke well only when i just think that the chances of the World Cup interrupting mail delivery other than an extremely specific set of circumstances where you're trying to mail something to a physical location that happens to be literally next to where, like, a stadium is having one of the matches, that is the only scenario in which I can imagine the World Cup interrupting USPS activities. And for them to be putting that up on the website to me just feels like a catch-all. Like, anything that goes sideways, they can be like, Like, well, it's Erling Haaland's fault.

Yeah, because what would be the logistical issues there? I'm sure we're missing some of them. I'm not quite as quick to dismiss these things as you are. But I guess it would be just logistics around road closures and excessive traffic and just general congestion in some parts. But like you say, that would be relegated to the actual hot spots of the actual events themselves, not even here in North Seattle, right? Is there anything else that we're missing that could actually be legitimately consistent?

Are the matches done in Seattle now? They are now, yeah. Yeah, so I would think that the circus has sort of moved on. John, quick pivot. Is Norway now your team? Who are you rooting for? Maybe you were never rooting for the U.S. Who are you rooting for these days to win the whole thing?

I'm mostly indifferent, but you've got me on the Holland train. I think he seems, again, just from what I've learned about him as a human, he seems really cool and fun. Yes, he seems actually so great. And so, yeah, I'd be happy if they win. And I'm mostly indifferent to the whole thing, but sure.

The team that I need to see lose is Argentina because they got the biggest scam call of the tournament against Egypt. And Argentina is a perennial powerhouse. They've won it many times. They've got Messi, who again doesn't seem like a bad dude. Egypt had the most incredible goal where it was basically the length of the field. The two defenders for Egypt kind of pulled the ball away from an Argentinian player down by their own goal and then just ran as fast as you've ever seen anyone run with the ball down the field, pass it to another guy who shot an incredible goal. The whole thing was called back because allegedly there was a foul committed way back near the Egypt goal, which allowed them to get this little ball and then run all the way down the field with it. And it's this whole VAR thing that they've got this video assist recording for soccer that actually overrules the guys on the field the officials on the field are not a lot like they are they do not have the final call there's a video recording this you know they're basically their instant replay has the final call and this is one of those things where it activated the video recorder because if there is a foul that allows for a goal to be scored it is technically a violation but no one thought what if the foul was a minute before the goal and about a hundred yards away from the event

It's like when there's a big kick return in football And the guy's on the 10 yard line And then down at the 50 there's some erroneous holding Or something like that

Which is completely on the opposite side of the field Had nothing to do with the play You just get so annoyed with that kind of stuff So anyway, I've now decided that I'm definitely rooting against Argentina Because they've already gotten lucky And they've won too much I'm rooting against England Sorry Paul and other English listeners Because they've won it too many times And that pretty much leaves for me Norway

you know i think i did see some um is it pretty unusual for a coach and a player to actually call out the refs in a world cup event like this because i saw some headlines about like it seems sort of shocking that they were blatantly saying that they were screwed over in this exact

i think it is and you're talking about the team from egypt yeah i think so yeah i think they were pretty rightfully pretty ticked about this whole thing well back to what we're rightfully ticked about i i don't know andrew i was going to say i feel confident that this item will make it this box will make it to its destination but i'm also nervous that it's entering into brazil territory

you know what i mean sort of like brazil got knocked out of the tournament

i think is it um ronaldo who's gonna who's delivering the box

It's Terry Gilliam.

It's, right. Well, that's the, that's, I knew he had a second career after moving. I didn't realize he was working with the USPS. It's just this idea that we're getting into this kind of like nonsense text, like, good news, your package will be delivered at the time that the USPS has said it will deliver it. Yeah, that bothers me. Your package is within the USPS realm of influence. Yeah. What does that mean? Good news. your package will be delivered along the timeline that the USPS has deemed necessary and prudent. It's starting to get into weird nonsense talk, which could mean someone opened the box and took out the cables and went on a crazy cable spree. I do wonder about that.

That'd be one of the worst crimes in America. Eric, if you start a podcast tomorrow, I know exactly what happened. It was a very heavy box, by the way. It was a lot of equipment in there And so now here's the deal. The truth of the matter is, I guess I don't want to exaggerate for drama, although I probably should. Like I, a lot of the critical things that I am bringing to actually keep the podcast on there, like the audio board we know is there. That's what John shipped it. That's taped to your body when you fly, right? Yeah, and it doesn't cause any alarms. No, John shipped that. We have an audio board that John shipped, and that is in Ohio, so that's huge. Luke and John, you guys are both bringing your own mics. I had shipped my mic, but if I don't get any confirmation that this has shown up in Ohio, I'll just bring another mic. There are several kind of pieces of equipment here that I was always needing to bring anyway, the things that connect our computers to the audio board. So I don't think that we are SOL if this box doesn't arrive, but we will be IOL, which is inconvenienced out of luck. Like, it's going to make life harder, but I still think we can do the show. And it's going to make my travels harder because I'm going to have to carry more backup equipment that I had shipped off. Like, I had bought a little piece of equipment so that I could have one here in my studio these days and then ship one to Ohio so I don't have to travel with it, if that makes sense. But now I'm going to have to, like, you know, kind of be loaded down with more equipment if this thing doesn't show up.

So if by Saturday morning you haven't gotten confirmation that it's made it, Andrew, then you're going to have to take evasive action and then, like, schlep more stuff?

Yeah, more like Friday, because I've got to pack all this stuff up on Friday. Like I say, I'm probably leaving here around. You mean today? Yes, that's what I mean by this afternoon. As we record this on a sunny Friday afternoon. By the way, can you hold up today's newspaper, Luke? Yes.

Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right. As folks are hearing this, depending on when they've downloaded the show, what part of the day, the newsletter for this week may have not gone out yet, Andrew. When's the newsletter going out on today?

The newsletter will go out. When we're done recording here, I'll post the show and maybe then wait about an hour or two for folks who are hearing our voice right now. And you're really excited to find out what we're going to be giving away during the TBTL-a-thon this year. You'll have to wait until Monday unless you sign up for the TBTL newsletter where all will be revealed shortly. So sign up. It's not too late yet.

If you sign up, go to tbtl.net, click on the newsletter button, and you will get signed up for the newsletter. And then we're going to reveal what the thank you gifts are. It's not going to be like the USPS. We're not going to say the TBTL-a-thon thank you gifts are both incredible and accessible. And then you go, what are they? And they go, they are currently being held in the TBTL-a-thon gift repository. They've already arrived. That's where they're supposed to be. They've already arrived. No, we will just tell you and have some, I think, visual evidence of what the thank you gifts are. And then you can find out sooner than anyone who waits until Monday for the big announcement. So sign up for the newsletter. Also, sign up for the Zoom for next week. What can you tell us about that, John?

Yeah, the Zoom, which is happening Wednesday evening, which is the 15th, you can sign up for free at the top of tbtl.net. There's a little button that says tbtl-thon Zoom party sign up. And so we talked about this a little bit more last week. It is a nostalgia hit. you get to sign up and then come hang out with us and your fellow tens and show off something that you've held onto throughout the years, maybe from move to move. Maybe it's something you found at your parents' house, wherever it is, but something that represents like your youth, your childhood,

or kind of a yesteryear sort of deal. And can we, cause I actually went down into my basement and got the thing that I'm going to bring. And it's not from my youth. It's just something that I have carried through like four movies.

moves for reasons that i don't fully understand of all the stuff that i've sort of divested of and given away or sold or what have you i don't know why this particular item has just been following me around for as long as it has so i think that's also a category is it yeah is it is it something

that bobo also has on the howard stern show um it sure is i'm just curious i mentioned that before

I can't decide if I hope people got that joke or I hope they didn't get that joke. That's something you carry around inside your body, Andrew, I believe.

I only know that from you using this podcast to communicate with our friend Phyllis about that subplot.

But all that is to say, like, I'm—so it could be something from your childhood. I think we're kind of—the working title for this Zoom is Kids in Fantasy. But it could be something that you have from your childhood or just something, just some object that you've been kind of carrying around for a while that is kind of interesting. Or even if you're like, well, why have I been saving this particular spatula or salt shaker or God knows what? They're just those objects in our lives that just kind of stick around for some reason. And we think that's a good jumping off point conversationally.

Yeah, and to that point, Luke, it's one of those things where, as always, you don't have to share something. You don't even have to be on screen. Just like if you just want to come, hang out, be in the chat, use the chat function to talk to your friends, to communicate with us. That's all welcome, and we're excited for that, too. It's a reason to hang out.

It's just a fun hang. We've been doing this for, what, like five years now, more than that now. We try to do at least one of these during each THON, and it's always just a fun hang. I feel like we've gotten into a good groove with them as well. You know, at first we were sort of trying to figure out what we were doing. I mean, the one that we did in your parents' basement was fun in its own way. With our friend May, right? Our friend May helped him with his correspondence duties. And that was – we had a technical issue that I had to solve on the fly. Remember, I freaked out and realized we had sort of a –

That was like something out of the movie Die Hard or one of those movies where like there's a bomb. And it's like, cut the blue wire, the red wire. It's counting down. We were counting down to the live broadcast. We started the live broadcast. There was something that was bedeviling us technically. And Andrew, your brain solved the problem. I want to say what, like, was it 10 seconds into the, you switched something.

We realized something. It was like, I was feeding audio one way, but not the other way. So listeners, I don't know, they couldn't hear us or we couldn't hear them maybe. And we were trying to communicate with them. But the whole thing, aside from that audio fluke, it also was a little bit like we were kind of presenting it like you and May were like presenting, like standing up and doing like an antiques roadshow thing, which was which was fun and interesting, but also maybe a little bit more ambitious. I will say that I like where we are with these now, where we're all ambition. Yes. We're all just hanging. You know what I mean? And we're just kind of telling stories and people are popping in if they want to pop in and you can kind of come and go and say hello.

so that's what yeah we found the sweet spot i think we figured out that it's not the production value from our end as far as like you know doing stand-ups or having kind of you know panning shots with the camera or whatever it's the tens of listeners getting to chat with each other in the in the comment section and with us and just kind of like being together virtually for people that are spread out all over the country and the world and that that's just that's the fun of it and we don't have to do anything particularly more sort of involved than that just getting together on a wednesday night to just hang out and and kind of you know appreciate each other that's right um now that's not the only big event next week we are also going to be uh on sunday so a week from this sunday we will be part of the valley city frog jump competition this has been going on for 60 This is the 65th year of this, and we're going to be getting a frog. We're going to be humanely caring for that frog, which is to say putting it in some kind of large tank or terrarium and giving it some water and some food and then putting a camera on it for a frog cam.

We're doing that, by the way. I wanted to ask you about the schedule. It kind of ties into the Zoom event, too. The Zoom, I don't think we gave the time. Maybe you did, John, but it's going to be at 8 p.m. Eastern time. That's our time zone. Yes, sorry, 5 p.m. And then 5 p.m. West Coast, which is, you know, we're starting this little party at 8 p.m. And then that's Wednesday night. On Tuesday night, the Daves are taking us out to the marshes of Valley City to find our frog. We're not even meeting up with the Daves until 9.30 on Tuesday night. How are you guys feeling about this party schedule that we've got lined up here?

Frog catching and Zooms?

fraud catching on Tuesday, Zoom in on Wednesday. I feel good about it i'm a little bit i'm wondering if it's too late for me i have all of like the second that we're done here i am my suitcases are literally outside the madrona hill studio they're not even in the house i didn't even have to go to the house but i wonder if i should run down there and get another pair and if i have the room for some frog catching shoes is it going to be marshy that's a good point i have i have two pairs of sneaks and i have my running shoes and i was going to use my running shoes but if they get all soaked and jacked up then i can't eagle sore the next morning yeah yeah what do you what are y'all doing for frog catching footwear it's it's on a golf

course right like number one well i'm trying i mean they said golf course but listen and this

is just a water lesson of broadcasting here okay you guys keep correcting me and saying it's on a golf course and i keep saying it's on a marsh because i think a marsh is a better story and And so the listeners should just know that when I say marsh, it's probably actually a golf course, but I'm going to keep saying marsh because of the imagineering of it all. It is in a marsh.

Listen, you don't go out to the 18th green and there's 30 frogs sitting on the green. Where do you get them? You go down to the water where there is the kind of that marshy area where occasionally you'll see like a golfer hits the ball into the water, but they still want to play it. this is like the pga tour they got their pants rolled up and they're trying to hit out of some weird water hazard that's where we're gonna be well yeah so here's my thought luke if you want

to grab extra shoes that'd be great because my thinking is i think you know especially during the thon i do a lot of like uh social media updates for tbtl so people can follow us on our journeys so i imagine i'll be five to ten yards behind you guys with the camera pointed down you guys oh i see you'll be documenting this yeah like so we can post some updates and show people like nobody cares about john sklaroff that's not true that's not true in fact this

goes against my this goes against my plan because i thought that you and luke might take care of more of the frog handling things given my squeamishness about handling frogs do you trust me to take the video and i think what i'm hearing is john is also trying to get out of

handling the frog what do you frame himself as the camera person and he's gonna be in a pizza hut

that night yes i don't mind handling frogs but like you guys are tbtl i'm just like third wheel

in here and that's not true um but i do think andrew i think andrew would like to uh not be the the primary frog handler i'm here's the thing i don't even know how much frog handling needs to happen i'm guessing there's a net involved i'm happy to hold the net i'm happy to this is all you know this is all will be revealed to us from the daves yeah when we go out to do this but again i'm i'm mostly just thinking because i'm kind of the sort of fashion icon of the program i'm trying i'm trying to figure out the shoes well there's something that i was thinking about

the a little bit about this yesterday because i was i have these like slip-on shoes that i wear and i just got like a couple new pairs of them but i'm still like kind of rocking this really old nasty pair that i sort of do like yard work and stuff in but these are shoes that yeah get ready to cringe here these are like these are sockless slip-in shoes that i wear with shorts if you can picture that that's that's my look but um it also isn't exactly like the the best thing to be wearing these types of shoes this often without side you know what i mean it kind of yeah yeah so i was so i was yeah so i was like putting these shoes on yesterday thinking like am i gonna take these like this this is probably maybe i take these really really old slip-on Sperry top-siders, and these are my frog-catching shoes, but then I remembered something that I actually wanted to tell you guys about, which is we should also be thinking about mosquitoes. I don't think I'm going to be wanting to wear shorts and slip-on shoes when I'm out in these marshes. I think it's going to be pretty mosquito-y at 9.30 in Valley City. Ticks? Mosquitoes? How about that? I mean, that's what I would be concerned about.

I just assume we would do a tick check on each other when we

get back to the Airbnb. Yeah, exactly. Full-body tick check. I'm looking forward to that. That's why you play the game.

You were doing that when I was asleep on the last trip, John. It was a weird way for me to wake up.

Hey, but did you have any tics? No. No, that's true. You're welcome. It was effective.

I hadn't thought about that, but actually, roaming around in the marshes of Valley City in short pants does seem like kind of a bad idea. Just you never know what you're going to emerge with.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, I assume we can just pick up, or the Daves will have some kind of DEET or other kind of. Like I am placing my trust entirely in the Dave's hands and expect that they will guide us and like not least astray and make sure that we're not going to like, you know, wade into a bog or something and get eaten by an alligator.

Remember when we got to the Airbnb in Friendship, Wisconsin last year and it was on a lake. It was very beautiful, but what I noticed was outside on the picnic table, I feel like there was four cans of bug spray.

I was like, huh, they're really into bug spray around here. And then we took one step outside, and I was like, oh, that's why. We're inside a cloud of mosquitoes at all times.

Oh, no, that reminds me of what I did. Remember, I left the door cracked for a little bit because I just used to Seattle live in. And you guys were like, Andrew, you left a swarm of mosquitoes in the house.

Hopefully, hopefully. Which explains the full body checks.

Yes, exactly. Yes, hopefully it will be a little less bad when we're out frog catching. So here's where I was going with all that We're going to get a frog And then we're going to need to name the frog And for the last few weeks John's been kind of Regaling us with some of the suggestions For frog names from the listeners We've said that we're not going to decide on a name Until we've got eyes on our frog Because it's a personal decision That exists within a family But we're open to ideas Are there any last Stragglers, any last suggestions For the name for our frog that is going to be ultimately participating in the competition, John?

Yeah, we did get a few more. Just not a ton, but I'll run through them quick. So a listener, Luke, not Luke Burbank.

Oh, another Luke's, huh?

Challenge accepted. Gave us Jackie Froginson, which I thought that was nice. Oh, number 42. I don't think of Jackie Robinson as like a Cleveland person or anything, but I like it.

Now, we do already have a Jackie Jorp jump. Jackie Jorp jump. So this would be the second.

That's got to be my favorite, I think, so far. I will say, and I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but I heard from a listener who also was giving some kudos to something that I said on the fly last week, which was Dua Leaper. I don't know if that actually made our list, but I hope it's on our favorites. I have that on the favorites.

You want me to read off the favorites real quick? Yeah, yeah. Jackie Jorpjump, Mr. Frog Dabalina, Rosie the Ribbeter, Mr. Ribbets, Spark Plug, Leap Day William, Erling Hopland. I love that one. And Dua Leaper. Those are the ones.

That's a pretty solid list. That's a good list, yeah.

It's funny. As the legend of Erling Haaland grows at the World Cup, Erling Hopland kind of becomes sort of more and more relevant.

Just think of the SEO when people are so meshing the World Cup and then they find TBTL. We're going to have a bunch of new listeners in Norway, potentially. Yeah, that's a good point. Actually, it might be a good idea.

It's that Valley City Norway pipeline.

Very famous. All right, so we got Jackie Froginson from Luke. We got from Louie. Listen, Louie gave us Jeremiah, which, brilliant. The bullfrog. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, Jeremiah was the bullfrog.

But that song sort of gives you the bad feeling, though, right, Luke? No, that one doesn't. Isn't that the one that has two different parts? It's got Jeremiah was a bullfrog and then Joy to the World. You're okay with that one? Oh, okay.

I think I am, if I remember. Do you hate joy? I don't think I am. Yes.

I guess I'm confusing it with maybe another song of that era that has two very distinct parts of the song that are sonically different that you don't like maybe I'm thinking of a different one

I believe that you're onto something but I also believe that I don't remember the song

I believe I don't remember too

what's the wing song where it's like two very different band on the run it starts off one way and then becomes

I think you're thinking of a different song that is on Band on the Run, when the Admiral Hulsey notified me, he had to have a bath or a cup of tea, or something like that. Is that the name? That's a wing song? That is from Band on the Run, and it's like two or three songs in one. But Band

on the Run itself. Well, Band on the Run, though, does have different time signatures. Oh, okay, okay. Sorry, not to distract too much. Okay, back to names here. Okay, so Jeremiah, Jackie Froginson, okay. Matt, listener Matt sent us three, and I want to kind of give some, so we got Hoppy Gilmore, which, solid, fine. good but then he matt also gave us croaker cleveland which i did some digging on my own so croak so grover cleveland is from new jersey but is it just was a distant cousin of the general who the city of cleveland was named after so there is some proximity to that as well and then the other one um that matt gave us uh was william howard taft pull and howard Taft is from Cincinnati So there's also like Ohio connections

And I think Ohio has the Biggest, the largest number of presidents Of people who became presidents Or it's up there or something

Yeah, you always hear that Every cycle Okay, so then we have two more Listener Corey gave us Hey, I'm jumping here Which I enjoy But that's like It's not really a name but it's like if we were allowed to name the flights or something like that I think it would be a good one and then this one I sent this to Luke because this was from a listener named Becca and I emailed Luke I'm like is this your Becca because Andrew is pre-frog a damn

Oh, Prefrogtain And I did check the name It's not my Becca But it's funny that this other Becca Because my Becca comes from A family of people Who are very into running And they all went to the University of Oregon And like Steve Prefontaine There's five kids in their family He's like the sixth child in the family In fact, when I was just Last weekend when we were staying down In Salem on Saturday night on the 4th of July, I actually stayed in Becca's brother Scott's childhood bedroom, and the number of Steve Prefontaine posters in that room are shocking. So the fact that there's another Becca out there saying Prefrogtain is

great. Yeah, Prefrogtain is really good. That was really good. So those are the ones that we got in this week. I also will, real quick, make a question. Somebody notified me. Last week, Patrick sent in a name, and I had trouble pronouncing it. I think I said frog-doubt-about-it, but he was saying forget-about-it. Oh, frog-get-about-it. Frog-get-about-it. Hey, stop remembering that. Yeah, frog-get-about-it. Frog-get-about-it. I'm hopping here. So Patrick, my bad. Actually, by coincidence, Corey, who sent it here, I'm jumping here, also sent in that same exact name.

Interesting. Also, we got a voicemail that I'm going to try to play here from the actual voicemail box. Let me see if I can play this.

Guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys, guys. Long-Legged Larry is a song by Aesop Rock. First name A-E-S-O-P, last name Rock. And I'm pretty sure it's a frog in the video. So it doesn't actually have to do with lawn chair Larry, though that is a nice synchronicity. Wanted to give you that heads up. Check out the song by Aesop Rock. And also check out Kirby by Aesop Rock.

I think it's A$AP Rocky, right?

Is it A$AP Rocky, or is it different?

Is there an A$AP Rock and an A$AP Rocky?

Dude, it must suck to be A$AP Rock. A$AP Rock is the older one, though. I thought A$AP Rock was around first. Oh, I believe that. I might be wrong.

Man, wouldn't it be a bummer to be A$AP Rock, and you're like, no one will ever have almost the exact same name, plus one letter, and be married to Rihanna, and be way more famous than me? is that Aesop Rocky's dad or just like some other guy in the movement in the Aesop that whole crew had a number of dudes that were Aesop they were Aesop this Aesop that right

so I'm looking this up to confirm and yeah so Aesop Rock who is 50 years old so the elder rock that's old is pronounced Aesop like I believe like this is the Aesop fables A-E-S-O-P rock and Aesop Rocky the younger person who's more probably well known today i think it's it's a a s the s is a dollar sign sure ap so i think that's like a s a p right asap as opposed to asop okay that makes no that is a big difference that is a distinction or not

a big difference i'm sorry i take the word big out of that statement but it is a difference right

all right well thanks there's nothing better than a clarification coming in from a listener and me trying to clarify their clarification and being wrong this is the circle of life though this is how we generate content is uh now that listener will have to call back it and clarify my i was

probably wrong my incorrect clarification you guys keep talking i mean i need to remove a slinky from

my dog's mouth on the other side of this table andrew over there on the little riverside this is the little tail or a little toy go by or something you know adorable well it's sort of

adorable but this is the nightmare scenario that i was worried about like i lucy is usually good I think for the morning session of a TBTL but as we record this at a slightly different time on Friday Yes, Friday She is in a different part of her day and she is I think she has too much energy to be in this room with me and so literally everything is a toy except everything isn't a toy everything, well I know Slinkies are technically toys but they're not dog toys and I need to get this out of her mouth so you guys go ahead for a second

My question then, well I guess maybe John we can just take a vote Is there anything, I was going to say, maybe we just sort of wrap things up here since Andrew's dealing with a feisty dog, and I'm dealing with brushing to the airport.

Wrap things up like Aesop Rocky. Sorry, go ahead. Pow. Sorry, I heard it through the headphones. I had to join

and go. I'm wondering, should we go ahead and just kind of like wind things down here on this Friday show? What a powerful way to go into the weekend and then the

TV telethon. Well, I mean, I landed that joke pretty well, right? Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't even tell what you said. I said, wrap things up like Aesop Rocky. Oh, No, I think you're thinking of Aesop Rock. Wait, what's the difference? Unclear at this point. All right, yeah, let's get out of here. I know you have a flight to catch to get out to your wine country. You know, there's no whining in football.

But every June, wait, it's July now, but every July, Luke goes to wine country. That's right. I'm afraid at how much I like wine. God, that line just goes through my head sometimes. Well, listen, we shall see on Sunday. You talk about getting out and there being one flight. I am trying to fly from Sonoma to Cleveland on Sunday.

Oh, my goodness.

And it is, I would say, theoretically possible. I have the tickets purchased for it, but it is going to take Cracker Jack timing. I'm leaving San Francisco at 6 a.m., which means the lift is picking me up in Sonoma at 3.15 a.m., landing in Seattle, changing flights, and heading to Cleveland.

You're flying up to Seattle.

There are no direct flights from the Bay Area to Cleveland on a Sunday. Turns out that's not a big route.

Can I ask you a question? Why did we not do the Sonoma frog jump? That would have made more sense for everybody. Well, because we were worried you were going to get too nostalgic.

Too many memories for you in Sonoma, Andrew We've got to stick to somewhere like Valley City Where there's almost no nostalgia for you I will hopefully see you guys both on Sunday in Ohio

Quick reminder before we sign off Sign up for the newsletter and sign up for the Zoom Both free, both are high quality

You can do it at tbtail.net Absolutely Well listen, safe travels my guys Again, I hope to see you both on Sunday out there in Ohio, and then we will see all of you listeners Monday morning. And when I say see you, actually legitimately see you, because we're going to be live streaming the program. What time on Monday are we going to be in the air?

It'll be 1 p.m. Eastern time where we are. That's 10 a.m. Pacific time, and if you want to watch us and join the fun, there will be a YouTube video embedded at tbtl.net. You can just click on that, and it'll take you right through to YouTube, or you can just watch it right on the website at tbtl.net.

Or, if you go to that link, and it's not working it means the box didn't arrive i needed to find your local tin can that you can pick up and listen to the show through exactly just put a cup to your ear yep we'll find out on monday morning together all right we'll see y'all then in the meantime have a great weekend everybody thank you so much for listening and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

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