Muse

First, tell me what's going on in this bucket that's inside of my house. Frogs. Do those belong inside the house? Yes, and they'll leave inside the house and sleep inside the house. So, let me get some out. No, they will absolutely not be doing that. You get those out of here. And also, where's your other shoe? Oh, can they ask? You're just running around with one shoe? Yes, I am. And a bucket of frogs? Yeah, like this. Hold on.

Hold on. TBTA.

well well here we are i want to congratulate you for being on time it's the story of a man

with a brothel of a home and a pool filled with human excrement tuck in your blues we're not in

siskitoon anymore mom people in toronto don't tuck in their blouses they want to dress well

here and i want to fit in you know um it's uh people who identify as nerdy rapping about the things they love video games science fiction having a hard time meeting romantic partners

losers in other words well i mean the chutzpah these guys with their fakakta shtick it's it's a real shand on what it's supposed to be simca yeah yeah it's supposed to be a simca me fail

english that's impossible well all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live are you sure that's what they said on ask jeeps my name is luke burbank i am your host you're still doing a podcast coming to you from valley city ohio that's right here we are folks tbtl-a-thon 17 jumping for joy Taking part in the Valley City Frog Jump Festival This coming weekend And reminding all of you That this is listener-supported podcasting we're doing This is the TBTL fundraiser The TBTL-a-thon, as we call it

I gotta figure out how to make money on this thing It's simply too good

Where, yeah, where we raise the money To keep doing this for our job for the next year And we've also got some great shows in store for you By the way, it's episode 4,769 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. One of the fun things we like to do as we do these THON weeks is to take your phone calls. So the phone lines are open right now at 206-414-TBTL. Because another special component of the THON is that we are streaming these shows live right now. This is going out all over the world. Welcome to the internet. via YouTube, so we've got a bunch of folks watching us and chopping it up in the comments section, and again, hopefully giving us a ring, 206-414-TBTL 206-414-8285 so, so much show to get to, but of course I think the person that we need to check in with early and often this week is going to be the longest running Cobra of the program maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships, we are currently, right now broadcasting to all of you from his actual childhood elementary school, and I think it's blowing his mind.

Is this real life?

He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend. Heya, Luke. Welcome to my past, I guess.

I've noticed. I am sitting at a desk right now that I swear is literally a desk that I sat at 40 years ago in this very building, and you see that somebody like can they use their pencil or pen to dig out a hole right there i'm not saying that i wasn't part of the team of people who might have worked on that during some down time or boring classes

what do you think the statute of limitations is on that property crime is there a chance i've

already admitted to a lot of stuff to you as we've been mentioning on the show this uh i feel like

we're sort of a guest of the daves here this week every single person helping us out here and there there have been many already, are named Dave for some reason.

Dave! Dave! Dave! Dave! You can't. That's just a few of them. You can't play that. They're all coming. Yeah, that summons them. They're all at the door right now.

The two fellers from the Valley City Frog Jump Festival that we initially contacted were both named Dave. And then we've had some other folks helping us out with climate control here in this classroom, in this converted classroom, because it's warm here. in the Midwest.

I feel warm and I'm levitating.

And this room is not, this classroom that we're in, or former classroom, doesn't really have any kind of air conditioning. So Brian, who's also one of the folks here, who's not named Dave, is the one person that we've met so far in Medina County who's not named Dave. He's kind of rigged up this AC unit that he brought from home.

Yeah, very sweet. They've really gone out of their way to make us welcome. Brian also...

Showed me where the Ethernet is that we need to broadcast to YouTube today. We are on YouTube if you happen to be listening to this. How could you be listening to this live and not know we're on YouTube?

Why would you not want to see these pretty faces?

Yeah, right, exactly. You could see the desks, though. But anyway, I could tell. I was like, wait, that drywall hole is new. Like, you ran this cable for us. Like, today is like, absolutely I did. So, yeah, thanks to the Daves and one Brian.

And the thing about this AC unit, it's been very helpful as we were getting ready for the show, but it's kind of loud. And so we've had to turn it off whilst doing the show. So whereas sometimes TBTL can kind of go on forever and ever and ever, there's a real thermodynamic limit to today's and really all of the broadcast this week. And it is how long can we operate in this room sans air conditioning before we start melting? I guess we're going to all find out together. Oh, by the way, there's somebody else here helping us. It's TBTL employee Numero Uno, our friend, John Sklarov.

I love pickles. You know, it's my heritage.

I love a pickle. John, welcome to the program. How are you doing? Sweating already. Yeah, I know.

The air has been off for about 2.5 minutes, and I'm already like, we got to just turn it back. Listen, just be honest with the people, Luke. I'm the one who said, like, we can't have the white noise in the background of the air conditioner. You wanted to leave it on. I was all precious about it. But what are we going to make it, 10 minutes before we just turn that baby back on? I can just keep unbuttoning my shirt.

We can do – I think we definitely would choose the air conditioner before that. Andrew, the thing is, it's very good for TBTL that you take the audio quality of the program seriously. So I don't see that as you being a buzzkill. Also, because this is not my first time being overly warm on camera, I wore navy blue. This was very intentional because this thing could be completely soaked through with sweat and you would not know it.

I wore green for the frogs.

Also, that's thematically good, but extremely visible if you start just like dripping sweat. Do you want to let's well, here we are.

Let's talk. Let's go full Oprah and talk about our pit stains right now. Wasn't that something that you talked about?

No, you don't, Oprah.

But I was just I had to use the restroom right before we started. And I went there, I looked in the mirror and, yep, I'm already sweating through my shirt in certain places. So I'm holding my arms very carefully at my sides to not reveal anything.

I think we could also turn it over to the listeners and we could. So everyone who's sort of streaming this right now, you can hear what it sounds like in this room when we do not have the air conditioner on. Then we could turn it on at some point and see if it's actually noticeable to the people like on the YouTube feed. They could chime in as if they can hear it or not. Yeah.

Do you want to do it now?

Before or after we take our first phone call of the THON.

Oh, I see. And then people start calling in.

Well, that's my question to you is, do you want to do the audio test before or after?

Let's just see how long we can do this. Here's something that... I told you, I'm fine. I'm in navy blue. Yeah, you're great. I mean, I don't think that you guys would be down with this, but one of the great pleasures in life is withholding from yourself for a while so that when you finally do kind of give yourself what you want, it's extra special, right? I used to do this in the car. I've told you this. On hot summer days here in Ohio, when I did not have air conditioning in my minivan, I would keep those windows rolled up for as long as I possibly could, and I would start sweating and sweating, and it was really awful. It was terrible. But then what did I do? I rolled down the windows, and it was like the best feeling. It was better than having air conditioning.

I have a less gross example of that, which is sometimes when I really have to go number two oh and the toilet paper has not been replaced and needs replacing i will wait until i have fully gotten the toilet paper out put it on the roll okay got it started okay pulled out that little weird springy thing that always wants to like shoot off and get lost somewhere on the bathroom floor like instead of just putting the toilet paper roll just on the sink or something i need to actually have it set up and ready to go meanwhile i'm like doing a jig and almost losing control of things but again it's that whole having everything just so or or delaying the relief of a situation so that when you finally find that relief it's sort of extra yeah um it's extra relieving let's andrew i don't want to breeze right past this we are you've already given me this tour we are in what is now um i guess it's the liverpool township community center named for the town in england because of the salt oh i didn't know that of the salt works Everybody knows this. I mean, it was in the painting in the cafeteria under Cure's Eye. You didn't see that? Andrew's childhood cafeteria is untouched. It is incredible. I was getting nostalgia, and that was my first time in it, and I was having nostalgia for a childhood I didn't even have in there.

You know that I'm a nostalgia freak. As Genevieve says, it's my favorite drug, which is kind of questionable. I got a list of like five. I'll share them with you later.

With the blue laws here in Ohio, it might be the only drug you have actually.

access to. But I haven't been in this building since I went to grade school here. I never even came back as like a high school or anything like that. And so, and I think about it a lot. I'm like, oh man, it'd be really nice to see my old schoolhouse. But I knew it had become a community center and I'd driven by it on visits to my parents' house or whatever. But I thought I'll just never go in there again. And even if I did, it would be so different. I'm sure it's just so changed over almost half a decade and yesterday when the Daves were letting us in for the very first time I mean from go I walk in and I'm like the radiators haven't changed the radiators have not changed now keep in mind they were kind of old radiators when I was here like probably from the 60s or something so even a radiator kind of had a cool design to it and I was just like oh my gosh I mean immediately and then I start and then we walk in this room and an old school desk and again I'm not I'm not being hyperbolic literally I sat at this desk I'm sure at some point during my schooling and boy did the nostalgia bomb go off and I was already freaking out but then we walked into the cafeteria and the cafeteria isn't a room that I kind of think about there are parts of the school that I would imagine you know like in you know or even literally would sometimes have dreams they pop up in my dreams like certain stairwells or parts of the school but I just hadn't really thought about the cafeteria much but john you were here with me when they were giving me the tour and they opened up the cafeteria door i i think i kind of worried

everybody i had a weird reaction i will i will say uh we've named this thon jumping for joy because of the frog jump and everything but the the joy and excitement andrew had as we walked around this building was palpable and i mean it was so it made me excited for a place i've never

been it was it was awesome you got to see the stage where i performed with three other people

as the california raisins i went into the we went into the gymnasium uh andrew and i did and it has a you know like a lot of elementary schools you've got the gym and then you've got this kind of stage area that's adjacent to it and when you said well that's where i did the california raisins i became starstruck i was like from the photo that's why you asked me to sign that piece of paper well Well, actually, that was a summons for some other legal stuff that John and I haven't told you about yet. No, I was like... What does disinvest mean? The fact that you... We'll see how the thong goes. By the way, we are here trying to raise money for the program. So I literally like knowing that that was the stage where a, what would you say, maybe seven-year-old? Yeah, a little bit old.

I think it was maybe that was sixth grade, maybe, or fourth grade. So whatever.

That was this... Because I've seen the photo of you as a California raisin. But the fact that that little stage adjacent to the gym is where you were standing all those years ago as a California region, it felt, again, almost like emotionally important to me in a way because I've looked at the photo. There are going to be a lot of memories this week, which is why we've actually created a kind of a sonic ID for when we're getting into Andrew's memories.

Memories are made in your mouth. You must remember this.

Memories.

And that's how we're winning.

We're still working on a name for the segment. We could call it The Memory Palace. We could call it Andrew's Memory Corner. We could call it Start Remembering That.

Which is really like a

it's like a joke on a joke. It's a hat on a hat.

We might have to end the week with Stop Remembering That. Also because you might be really sick of this by the end of the week. Not yet. I can say that. I showed you the place in the gymnasium Also, before I was even a student here, I was too young to be a student here. But my mom was a room mother or was it PTA or I think room mother. Is that the same thing? I think she was a room mother either way for my sister who was in like kindergarten or something. Right. And so I was here in the school. My mom was busy with whatever my sister's class was doing. And they gave me a basketball and put me in the gymnasium, the same gymnasium where I would later star as Santa Claus. One of three Santa Clauses, but let's face it, the best Santa Claus. The reviews were pretty clear about which Santa Claus rose above the others. Exactly. We're all waiting for Guffman the whole time. He never showed up. Why is that Santa Claus painted like a California raisin? Is that appropriate? But I was like, so what would I have been? It was probably the year before I was in kindergarten. So let's say I'm four years old. They're like, well, let's put him in this giant room.

there's padding on at least two of the gym walls the way that they do so if kids are running headlong you know to try to make a basket and then they can't stop because you know the footprint of the gym is fairly small so you don't brain yourself you run into some padding but that's

the baselines of the gym but not on the sidewall on the side because we would do that still just brick and i'm a and they're just like well he's a tiny little guy in this giant room what could go wrong they give me a basketball

Thank you.

And I have this vague memory of just like kind of playing with a basketball by myself, just like chasing it around. And I chase it directly into the brick wall and cut my face open. And I immediately had to get stitches down the street. Dr. Grabenstetter, who I hear is still practicing, gave me stitches in that one was my eyebrow. So that was that that necessitated stitches. That was a they had that I was bleeding. Somebody some adult came rushing in. I'm bawling and bleeding on the gymnasium floor. I was looking for little bits of blood. I guess they cleaned that up, unfortunately. But yeah, that was before I even went to school here. I was making memories and leaving my mark.

Well, that's also, I'm glad that you seem to be also enjoying even that memory. But that's the thing about this week for you is going to be, you have good memories here and you have not so good memories here. And you have the ones that like you kind of maybe, again, you sort of reflect on them and you don't maybe love how you how do you feel about throwing the necklace into the HVAC in your sixth grade class this is a complicated story I mean it was this

was a story that actually did make me give me the bad feeling for a long time but I feel so far you know pretty removed from it at this point but I had a crush on a girl named Christy Green I think that's maybe been established as canon on the show I'm not exactly sure I'm assuming that she's not a listener um and uh i've invited her to the frog jump on sunday this is your life yeah um and uh she she went to the same school that i did for a while but then at one point i don't moved or something and went to another sister school that was still part of the same sort of general elementary school system and so i i despite her absence makes the uh heart grow fonder i believe and so even though we were no longer going to liverpool together she was going to york i believe uh i would still see her when our buses would pass in this parking lot here very romantic yeah that's actually kind of cinematic yes and uh and so i you know i needed my feelings to be known of course because that always works for me and so at around christmas time they would turn the really really old tiny little one room schoolhouse behind here into the santa shop where we could all go and you know spend a dollar on gifts for our family and friends and stuff and so i spent a uh minimal amount of money on a little necklace that i got for christy green and i was pretty excited about this um i was not a bold fella and so i remain not a bold fella and so i gave the necklace not to christy but to some a classmate of mine so that she could give it to christy when they transferred buses or something like that and i was waiting to hear the news how did christy respond to my overture not well is how it turned out the the necklace was returned with uh apparently the quote was ew i don't know if that's a accurate quote or not but the quote i believe at the time was ew and i was returned the necklace by the um the the go-between yeah exactly interlocutor exactly and so at that point i now had this necklace and i felt a lot of

shame and and so i believe other kids were there other kids that had learned about the

reaction well certainly the person who gave it back who gave it back to me and also i'm sure whoever was on that bus at that time and again it wasn't exactly the best move you know what i mean like here give this to somebody to give somebody that was a perfectly fine move at that age um and so anyway so i did i remember breaking and i probably the kids were around or something so it's probably some show of whatever and so i do remember breaking up the necklace by the way not maybe that's not strong material broke up pretty quickly santa yeah elves let's look into some craftsmanship and the necklace easily was torn apart and then i slipped it i slipped the pieces into the very small grading of like an air well it's not air conditioning obviously a heating unit um but to my dismay it didn't go all the way down it draped over some sort of component down in it so because i remember as long as i went to school here i could go to that i think It was like the music room or something. I could look into it, and I would still see the necklace hanging off of something in there. I mean, talk about the telltale heart, right? Yes. Doom, doom. And so that didn't make me feel good. I've got a theory, though.

I think that this, that your go-between had a crush on you. And so she did not want you, and was it Christy Green?

It was, yeah.

She did not want you and Christy Green to have the storybook romance. Sure. So I think she doesn't, I don't think she even presented the necklace to Christy Green. And I think she came back to you and said, she's a pass, hoping that you would say, well, who else is nearby and could use a necklace? Yeah. I think I actually I put it on that person.

The go between was Mrs. Linder, my third grade teacher.

Well, I mean, I would say for everybody, it's it's best that it didn't work out between the two of you. But I still think I just I have a hard time believing that this young woman, young person who was being presented with a necklace from somebody who liked them said, ooh.

Oh, I believe I.

No, that scans a lot of my interactions with my classmates at the time. I was not a popular person, but I also don't feel that, you know, I think that I'm not saying that as a from a perspective of victimhood. When I think back about maybe some of my behavior and who I was at the time, I'm not the most proud of that person either.

So do you think that this is probably the first podcast that is being co-hosted by somebody who went to Liverpool Elementary in the world or from the school from the actual school?

I feel comfortable with that. Yes, yes. But actually, it is a good question, though. Am I the only podcaster who graduated from Liverpool Elementary? That is still a pretty good possibility.

I have a feeling you might be because, yeah, this has just been, as seems to always happen with the TBTL-a-thon. And we are going to get to your calls and we are going to get to the talking about some of the thank you gifts and all that stuff in a moment. But it seems like every year when we're having some TBTB meeting about what should we do for the next thon, it's kind of a big question mark. And then somehow all this stuff weirdly falls into place and we end up doing something that's like way more fun and kind of, I don't know, just like kismet than we expected. And this kind of feels like that, too, because the idea was, well, maybe we could do it from Valley City. Well, they have this frog jump or whatever. And then we reached out and the Daves, I won't play the sound effect. Everyone can imagine it in their mind. And they just settled down again. Exactly. We don't need to rile them up. They they were like, oh, yeah, well, you could do it from the community center, a.k.a. your old school. And then you found all these, for people watching on YouTube, we've got some great set pieces. I think this might be my favorite set that we've ever had for any of the thons that have been streamed. We've got a giant frog that I think, do we have to return that? Yeah, that might not last the whole week. Is that part of the festival?

It's part of the festival, but I asked if we could borrow it at least for a few days. A giant plywood frog behind us, a great banner.

You and John carried in this incredibly heavy, vintage 1950s. I think they'd call this maybe a tank desk because of these things. These are actually very sought after. You know what I mean?

It is in great shape.

Yeah. Yeah. So you guys have got this all set up so nice in here. And, you know, other than our possible premature expiration due to heat stroke, I don't think this could be started off much better. Should we take our first call of the thon? Yeah, I think we can do that. Ahoy, ahoy. As in years past, do we have our traditional first caller by any chance?

I think we do. Also, we probably should have tested the phone lines today. I realized when you started giving out the phone number that we didn't do that. So this will be fun. Find out together.

Hi, you're on TBTL. Who's this?

Yeah, this is your old friend, Richard Dreyfuss.

Phones work. We have a direct line to Richard Dreyfuss, which tells you that it's working. Is it our friend, Max?

Yes, it is indeed.

Hey, buddy. How are you?

I'm doing all right. I'm excited for the start-a-thon week.

Uh, this would be the, what the, I don't know, third, fourth, how many TBTLathons in a row have you been the first caller and how are you pulling this off? Yeah.

All right. I think it's number six. Oh my goodness. And how I'm pulling it off is during the pandemic. Um, I was a regular listener of the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC in New York.

Love it.

And I had lots of time, and I got very good at calling radio stations. And so I just start dialing before you guys open the line.

Smart.

Well, pretend we're Brian Lair. Lay it on us. What do you want to talk about today?

Were you doing your Richard Dreyfuss impression for Brian as well?

No, that was well before I had the Dreyfuss impression. oh man what are the uh i mean there's new york city top topics about new york city and the like

i'm a huge brian lair fan he's great and he's kind of a you know on a on a ever shorter list of kind of local public radio hosts who do great like you know public affairs shows that are just kind of legendary in the community um if people haven't tuned i'm glad to hear you weren't doing your drive it reminds me oh we got more calls coming in oh that's what it is are you still with us max um i'm right here okay good i thought i thought you dropped off i was gonna say if you were just cycling through the different that's all right um it just means we're popular yeah people are trying to call i think i solved it oh when um camaro kevin i used to go out and do karaoke uh in the sort of northern sections of seattle there was a guy um he's probably still out there who had a circuit that he would do he he would go and um he would start out i think at the mandarin gate and his big song was turn your love around i think that might be is that james ingram he would come do turn your love around at the mandarin gate then he would go over to the baron off and he'd put it in and he would do it and then he'd come up to the rickshaw and he would just do this triangle of karaoke until i guess they closed or something i wanted to make sure you that wasn't how you were treating us and the brian lair show and

who knows what else, Curtis Lee was, show on WOR or something, just calling in, doing your Richard Dreyfuss. But that's not what's been happening, thankfully.

No, the Dreyfuss is just a TVTL special.

TVTL exclusive. I remember in past years, you were calling in from other parts of the country because you were doing some kind of a production. What's your current status with acting and the like? Are you doing anything of late that we can hear about?

So I actually, I was supposed to be in Houston. I was just in Houston. I was supposed to be in Houston for the Thon doing a show down there. Unfortunately, the show got canceled. Oh, no. What was the show? It was a complicated story. It was a show called Falsettos by William Finn, a musical.

um and then just with one of those things i mean it's tough out there for the arts uh you know i can testify from the perspective of the other show that i do live wire but it just ended up not happening so then uh you're back in where you're in new york right now

yeah i'm back in brooklyn but i do it i i have a houston story for you if you'll indulge me Absolutely. That is both a hot dog story and a baseball story for you. So while I was down there, I got a free ticket to an Astros game.

You know, the computer glitched out a little bit, Max, and it made it sound like you called them the Houston Ass, which is kind of my name for them. So I think that was fortuitous. You had a ticket to an Astros game.

Yeah. And I am a sort of born-and-bred Mets fan, but I am not an avid baseball watcher these days. So I went to the game, but because of you all, I have deep resentment toward the Astros. Good, we've put our evil outside you. Absolutely. But because the baseball was not the most interesting thing, I was like, what is the food situation going to be here? And I found they had a new item on the menu, which was a kimchi dog. And I was very excited about this idea. And I get there. I get the people I'm with excited about this idea of the kimchi dog. And then I go up to where it's supposed to be. And they have changed it to a banh mi dog, which is just not the same thing. I still got it. It was still tasty. But it was not what I was hoping for. And so we left after the fifth inning.

Wow, you were so put off. What's courageous about eating a hot dog? So the kimchi dog, obviously you were excited about the kimchi. Was it going to be kimchi atop the hot dog where maybe sauerkraut would typically go?

Exactly. So kimchi and like crumbled bacon and some like gochujang sauce.

But then the banh mi dog is just more like they're putting it on a banh mi bun. Maybe they're putting some of the stuff that typically goes on a banh mi on the hot dog.

Yeah. So like pickled radish and carrots and like a kind of aioli thing and sriracha.

Yeah, it was tasty, but it was not what I was craving. It does sound good, I got to say. But yeah, if you're expecting one, they swap it out on you. Andrew, do you think we can get kimchi dogs in downtown Valley City for lunch? I don't think so.

I can see what they have on the menu at Gandalf's. I was surprised at how much that animated you, Andrew. The fact that there's a local watering hole here called Gandalf's, which if you're picturing it, you might be picturing a wizard as their mascot. But no, in fact, it's their dog, I think.

Which is, I mean, no offense to dogs or to them, but like we had heard. I've never. Gandalf was not here when I was growing up. I think you guys had even mentioned it. Maybe you guys were scouting via Google Maps or something. You said, oh, it looks like there's a place called Gandalf's. And so I was picturing a, not wizard-themed, but at least the signage. And the thing, here's what I think bothered me. Do you think anybody from Gandalf's is listening? It's very possible. I don't want to insult Gandalf's.

Be careful because this is a real thing. Remember how last year we were in Friendship, Wisconsin, and we were surprised at how kind of far and wide within the community word spread? Yeah, yeah. We've already been written up in the Valley City Community Group's Facebook page. So I would say let's just assume that everybody in the area has got ears on this, including Gandalf the dog.

Well, this is gentle criticism, and it's honest. It's what I said to you guys in the car or wherever we were talking about this. The font seems to match what you would think of for a Gandalf's, right? Sort of an old English-y sort of – it seemed wizard-y. And so therefore it sort of seemed like, okay, we're doing the Gandalf thing. But then in the middle of it to have, you know, the depiction of a very cute dog head is sweet. Again, no offense. I'm sure John.

I keep saying, well, I'm sure the dog's name is Gandalf, which is – that's fine. But, like, I just think that we're going – we went in half measures here.

We got to embrace the wizardness or not? A pick a lane. I'm trying to make a you shall not pass joke in my mind about things that happen in the restaurant. Have you ever been, Max, in any kind of Lord of the Rings-related theatrical productions or, I don't know, anything wizardly?

i i haven't been but i can quote you from the movie and say they come in pints

so you're uh are you a loader you're a loader guy too you're a loader head

i was definitely i i have read the books my dad was a huge huge reader of the books read them every year for decades um and then i was just the right age john and i i think are are about the same age uh for the movies and got obsessed with the um the extended dvd box sets which had all these documentaries about the filmmaking of it which were at some point became more important

to me than the movies themselves i think that's kind of what really hooked my brother david in as well was all of that yeah because i mean my family loved the movies and everything but there was yeah there was so much other content my dad is often citing weird interviews with peter jackson that are part of the extended stuff. You know what I mean? It's like not even obviously in the movie.

I found out recently Genevieve has a Genevieve quotes the TV show, Mr. Show a lot, right? And I realized recently that one of the things I can't remember it off the top of my head, but one of the things she's been quoting for all these years is from the commentary, the DVD commentary. It's not even from the show itself. Some of her favorite lines.

I always, you know, when DVDs first came around, I remember watching like Caddyshack, the DVD commentary.

Yeah, right. Who do they get for that?

Which is kind of fascinating. Like Bill Murray's character, Carl Spackler, was only supposed to be a brief character, but they brought him on set. And of course, he was just being so funny. They just kept kind of like expanding it and stuff. And like, I really feel like there was that beautiful period of time where like the DVD extras or the director's commentary was like almost the most fun thing about something that you were kind of into.

It seriously seems to me to be one of the biggest losses of the of the physical media age because they just haven't figured out a way to like. And I'm sure they could. But like, again, I can watch Mr. Show on HBO Max, but I can't watch the DVD commentary that Genevieve once had memorized.

Yeah, it was like you had this DVD. You'd already watched the thing maybe multiple times. You were like looking for other stuff physically burned into that DVD that was like more entertainment. Yeah. Speaking of entertainment, Max, I follow you on Instagram. And I think you must go to, I would say, roughly four to five live performances a week. What's the best thing you've seen lately? What are you really excited about? Oh, my goodness. Best thing I've seen recently. Or just something notable of late. Something that really excited you that you went to.

yeah um i i saw um it's it's no longer running because plays run short but i saw a really fascinating play last fall called practice practice that it is about um sort of how how artists can sort of become help leaders and sort of in these weird pockets of of sort of outsider experimental work it was really compelling really amazing performances and I think I think that play is maybe on its way to being in the talks for

the Pulitzer whoa so it's called practice so if somehow that's going up near someone who's listening to this they should definitely go check that play out absolutely well max listen congratulations on um i think honestly we give you a ring every year when you're the first caller and now you've got a you've you've got two hands right because you filled up the right hand with the rings including one for the thumb and now you're moving on to the second hand so some credit congratulations on being our tom brady exactly the sixth time the goat of being the first caller or tom brady how dare you Max thanks again man for being part of the show and for being our first caller for kicking things off this week is there anything that you're looking forward to this week or that we can do to make this a particularly effective TBTL-a-thon week what's your advice as a listener and always first time caller

I'm super excited I saw the newsletter last week I'm excited about the baseball cards as well you should be

And thank you, Max, for teaming that up.

Absolutely. Everybody donate, join me, and I'll talk to you next year, if not sooner. Okay. Thanks, Max. Appreciate you. Thanks, Max. Thanks for everything.

thing you know i'm i'm uh i'm so glad that max brought up those baseball cards would this be a time for us to maybe talk a little bit about kind of what we're all here thank you for being a 10 absolutely uh this is uh tbtl-a-thon 17 jumping for joy and we are um we're we're excited we're we are excited and we're excited about that sound meant well that's the jumping for joy Okay, okay, gotcha. This is the frog sound. Okay. This is the sound for when Andrew's had too much nostalgia. He's about at his limit. We've got sound effects for everything this week. I know a guy. But, yeah, we're here reminding everyone that this is listener-supported. I mean, let's be honest. If you're watching us on YouTube, you probably know this, and if you're one of our longtime listeners, this isn't news to you, but it's always worth reminding folks that we are only doing this because of your generosity and because of the tens community but we do like to uh offer some some thank you gifts at different levels um of donating and yeah max mentioned the uh the trading cards the inside baseball cards i we've got i've got like a kind of early edition of them we had back at the airbnb and i was just going through them and i was like so excited yeah to see them in their actual finished form where do you want to start on this john as far as uh talking to folks about the donation levels and what people can be getting and things like that.

Yeah, I guess the simplest and easiest thing is go to tbtl.net slash donate or if you just go to tbtl.net, you'll find your way there. If you're already, I will say this up front, if you're already a monthly donor and you're happy with the level you're at, you don't have to do a thing. And thank you very much for your continued support.

By the way, can I just... Thank you for being a 10. Thank you to the listeners who already are donating. And if you want to let that ride, that is awesome. And this is just a I just want to give you a quick shout out, John. Back in the day when we worked for a network that had, I would say, a thousand times more resources than we have. It was impossible for listeners just to let it ride and accept the gifts. They still had to like jump through hoops to like somehow get the gifts. And I think there was a formal formally disavow TBTL. Exactly. And and now you've made it very, very smooth. So if you're already giving at whatever level and you like the gifts, they're coming your way, baby. And I'm sorry I called you baby.

You were calling the listeners baby. I know.

That's who I'm apologizing to. Some of them probably like that. Stop calling me baby.

I heard you were called eye candy in the comment section on YouTube earlier today.

Christy?

But, yeah, Andrew, that's a really good point, too, which is, you know, so many people are donating such a generous amount of money to the show. So if you're already doing that, and again, that's the amount that you would like to stay at, this will take care of itself. And by that, I mean John will work very hard to make sure you get all of the stuff that you're entitled to. Some of the people that are donating at an extremely high level, like, thank you so much. We are so appreciative. We're not trying to upsell you into yet another category because they don't actually exist. So we want to start from the position of just being so appreciative that this is even a thing. yeah um but also yeah you know there are we we are very excited about the thank you stuff this

year yeah there's a lot of cool ones and so if you're happy if you go to the website and you know hey i'm giving 10 bucks a month that gets me a pack of trading cards which is 10 cards in one pack and also we're doing a magnet which is a replica of the delica magnet that was allegedly not stolen i won't go more into that but the you get a replica of the magnet i'm not saying you're a replica of the magnet and you get a pack of cards at 10 bucks a month if you're giving 10 bucks a month right now and that's all you're you're content and happy awesome it's coming your

way can we talk a little bit more about these cards though because i don't know that we've actually talked about them on the air so yeah we and the the idea here is because we have so many inside jokes on tbtl you might refer to it as inside baseball so we've created these inside baseball cards and we've created a whole set of 30 cards and you can get a pack of 10 of them at that level you're talking about and they will be randomized right you can confirm that like this is the exciting thing so if you get a pack of these trading cards it's like getting a pack of anybody else's trading cards you don't know exactly what you're going to get you could i mean could

potentially you get an all john pack yes no because i don't think there's only two there won't be any repeats felt like more felt like too many at the time like 28 no um but and they're

really great and um and we we teamed up with a fellow named mike who who makes these caricatures of real baseball players and he's you saw him on instagram right yeah on uh blue sky yeah but he's on instagram he's he goes by gummy arts i believe if you want to look him up there are links on our website i believe as well but like he's really earned a reputation for himself he's made these cards for the the baseball hall of fame in cooperston as you like to say luke and so um you know he made these cards of me and luke and john sometimes together sometimes doing our own things some you know very

unique to our experiences, what you know about us. And we're not showing you all of the cards right now so that you can have that sense of discovery when you open up the pack of cards.

There's also, you know, friends of the pod. Friends, yes. And again, this artist has this great way of sort of taking, like you said, with the MLB stuff, of taking, you know, these players that I'm well familiar with, but then caricaturizing them in a way that's just like fun and adds this kind of cool spin to it. And it seemed like the perfect kind of vibe for our little inside base. We've done, I think we did playing cards a long, long time ago, back in the day. Oh, yeah, before my time, yeah. And all that was was just a deck of playing cards where I think some part of it was us on there. Although, if we were on the backs, that would be a bad idea because then you would just know you'd get a Sean DeTorey and you know that's an ace. That's a pretty big tell on what's in there. We had some kind of a card.

You have a tell. What is it? The back of your card.

Yeah, there's not that much variety on the cards. But this was a real project for John particularly and you, Andrew, to, like, we came up with a list of things that we wanted, you know, scenarios and things we wanted kind of memorialized on the cards. And then we, you know, were sending this information to the artist, and then he would do a, you know, he'd sort of do a first pass it, and then we'd come back, and we'd give some notes and things. And, like, this was a major undertaking to get these 30 cards done, but I'm so happy with how they've turned out. They're really cool.

Yeah, it's very exciting. And so you can get a pack of those things at whatever level you said, John. I'm sorry. Yeah, no, don't apologize.

I appreciate you really getting into it. And if you go to the website and the donation page, you can see a sample of a few of the cards around there just so you get an idea for the style and the art. But like you guys are saying, the sense of discovery. And I think when we first conceptualized this, there was this idea of like, hey, maybe the Ten's will go on the Slack page or the Ten's Facebook page and trade cards or something. but really the idea of the full experience of baseball trading cards.

I am identifying something that I don't know if we thought about fully, which is there will eventually be a market for these cards, and there will be the cards that are more valuable and the cards that are less valuable. I thought about it. And that's going to actually, that's what I'm worried about. I'm worried that we're going to flood the market with Burbanks, and no one's going to care about those.

Why do you think there's only two Sklarov cards?

There's going to be card breaks going on on the Internet. Oh, my God.

somebody's got to do that somebody's got to record off one of one it's gonna have a little it's gonna

have a little piece of fabric from the shirt that you wore during the thon a little swatch in there

like they do now just covered in sweat i love it and then all but but that's not all right off in a skeins uh-huh so that's that's the ten dollar month um if you bump up if you were to go to fifteen dollars a month you get the pack of cards and the magnet as well uh for the for the The magnet that I mentioned, everyone who donates gets that. Any level. Any level. You get five bucks. That's all that's in your budget. All you can do, you're getting a magnet. $10 a month is the card, pack of cards. $15, that's when we get the daily donor recognition where you'll be thanked on air by the guys throughout the year. Then if you bump up to $25 a month, that's when you get the complete SEV cards. So you get all 30 cards.

guarantee no need to wander the highways and byways of america trying to fulfill your collection trying to fill it out you will have the entire collection right there i don't know do we have

any completists in our audience it's not their style how many people have listened all the way

through to the catalog of shows not me yeah not me um so that's a 25 you get the complete set plus all this stuff and this is all compounding so it's like once you get the one you get the previous stuff too also something we forgot to mention this is new and we're excited to do this year is again this is for everyone who donates any level you get the magnet but you also get a weekly once a week video version of tbtl yes where the show will be recorded clothing optional clothing wait for the viewer or let's just say clothing mandatory for everyone oh okay

say optional for everyone but you must be dressed you must put on layers to watch yeah please um

and so so yeah this is going to be and you know i'm going to be honest with you uh until i saw it on the rundown i may have spaced that part of the tbtb planning meeting which which is now coming back to me so we're going to be doing all next year one show per week is going to be completely

filmed right yeah i mean so we'll do our regular podcast as we always do one of those episodes a monday through friday podcast will also be releasing as a video product as well that anybody who donates will get a special link to so it's not an extra show i want to be clear about that it's one of the shows that we've done a monday through friday episode but you'll have the video version of it and we're doing them all from this setup here in valley city ohio i don't know sans

air conditioning yes um so it will be clothing optional by the end i promise you yeah so like if you are somebody who because this is where podcasts are going right they're mostly video products now if if you're somebody who thinks hey this would be fun to actually kind of watch watch what it looks like when they're doing the show as a as more of a kind of visual experience uh that's something that you'll be able to avail yourself of

Thank you.

If you think that we should be heard and not seen, that will also be an option for you.

Although I think in the chat you guys were referred to as zaddies today. Jeez Louise, what is happening?

What's in the water today? Okay, then what else do we have, John?

Yeah, so back to $25 a month, all the cards plus all the other things. If you bump up to $35 a month, again, I should also mention if you're the kind of person that gives a one-time donation a year, like a lump sum it's the same the equivalent of a 12 month donation in one lump will get you the same yes benefit so if you give 120 bucks a year that gets you the pack of cards etc etc you can do yes right thank you so 35 bucks a month you get all the whole set of cards the magnet etc etc and you get the tbtl frog jump champion t-shirt yes which is let me tell you andrew found like we're just googling around inspiration for the shirt and it by coincidence i live in the twin states you found a minnesota twins championship shirt yes that was like this is the style i want

it and we think it would be good with some and then yeah with more of a more of a a color way of maybe a celtics jersey or something like that so it's got the greens and yellows i say sonics or or son and yellow yeah sonics absolutely rest in power it feels disrespectful what i just did my apologies okay you're not basketball guys yeah this is like an oakland a's yeah sacramento a's

colors it's a handsome shirt it really is and my friend spring who's an artist and a designer helped us out with the kind of uh the tweaking of of the you know the the design and layout for it and it came out it's so great now some and and by some i mean the people who are judging the frog jump on sunday have called it premature for us to have produced and offered a shirt that says we are the frog jump champions yes because the frog jump has not yet occurred but that's just how confident we are going into Sunday.

Well, we're not saying... Are we saying TBTL is the champion or just... Yes.

Are we definitively?

It says TBTL frog jump champion. Well, it could be two things.

It could be a TBTL shirt that acknowledges that there was legally a frog jump champion.

That's, I think, our legal workaround.

I think you're right, John. Good thinking. Good thinking. Yeah, that's our official story. We're sticking to it.

So that's at the $35.

It's a great looking t-shirt. I think you said, Andrew, that you're not one to wear our merch typically because it feels a little bit show-off-y, but this is such a cool-looking shirt that actually you might consider wearing it.

Like, does Eddie Vedder wear a Vedder Cup shirt? Of course not, but I could see myself.

You're so lucky I don't have my Vedder Cup music on this computer. I was listening to that on WMMS this morning in the shower. I'm trying to fully connect with the Cuyahoga Valley, and I put on your favorite radio station as a youngster. The buzzard? The Morning Buzzard, or the Buzzard WMMS, and what do you think they were playing? But Jeremy. Oh, really? Jeremy. It felt very full circle for the show that's been obsessed with that. And then anything else, Andrew, that's worth mentioning? Well, that's John over there. Yeah, I wasn't going to correct him. No, I'm kind of just keeping you guys on your toes. Sure, sure, sure. It's a no-look pass, Andrew. I don't have to be looking at you to ask you a question.

Well, Andrew, I'll field this for you. Okay, oh, thanks. Yeah, John, would you like to take this one? So that's – and then, of course, if you're at $50 a month, that's the dazzling donor that gets you all the thank you gifts plus you get your personalized message on air that Luke and Andrew will read.

You get a chance to tell us how much you like the show as a homework assignment.

Yeah, as a homework assignment.

No, no, no, no. It doesn't have to be about us. Your message can be about you or celebrating something in your life or somebody in your life or anything or shouting out your business or a nonprofit or something that's on your mind. Your personal business. You could send in poetry if you're a poet.

Someone else's personal business that they don't want aired.

Yeah, that.

It's your dime. It's your dime. Danny's don't, yeah. All right, and then I'll breeze past that. And then the most generous, I mean, these are obviously very generous. If somebody bequeathed you a lot of money, then you can give them $100 a month, say.

If your life was literally like a Monopoly game. Right, right. And you won a baby beauty contest or whatever. Have they updated those cards? Wasn't one of them like, wasn't one of them like, it's like I feel like one of those community chess cards where you could win was something involving a baby. He's juicing. He's goosing.

He's goosing. I knew I got that.

Yeah, if you were a little Bart Harley Jarvis, if you somehow came into a little bit of money and you wanted to help out your old friends here at TBTL to the tune of $100 a month, incredibly generous, obviously.

You get all the dazzling donor level stuff, plus you get two tickets to the 5,000th episode next year and a vip access as well to the i met we haven't worked out the details yet but i imagine like a

pre-show event kind of absolutely guys don't even know what the event is probably a post-show event if you just go to goldies right if it ends up no longer goldies you know that right no we pass it's It's got some huge like banners. sign it's kind of like gambling haven or well that was what was wrong with the place was the

name yeah not the fact that the carpets hadn't been vacuumed yeah since the 1970s um so yeah those are the different levels and the thanks that that we're happy to um to sort of remunerate you with uh for supporting the show but as i said in the little email that went out to a lot of you uh today we know that um those of you who have supported the show or those of you might be supporting the show for the first time this go-around are probably not doing it exclusively to get the stuff you're doing it because you like this show and you kind of appreciate the mission that we're on to cure global loneliness and um and uh as i put in that email like i could have never ever ever known uh you know years ago when we got fired from being a radio show and then i'm doing it in my house and quite literally uh the shelf that the recording equipment was on was being held up by a stick and not a stick that was nailed down it was just using gravity to prop the thing up i could have never imagined that this would be something that's been going on for all these years and that has um generated so many real friendships out there for the tens and and for for the three of us and everything so uh you know thank you uh again if you've been supporting us all these years and if maybe you've been meaning to and this is the first time that you're in a position to do that i think uh that would be great because everyone's sort of situation is always changing and there are years where for some people it becomes uh a good a good time for them to kind of help support tbtl and for other people it might not be the best time and that's also fine like we i can't say this enough like you know if if you're somebody who's going through it and you've been supporting tbtl and this isn't the year for you that's totally fine someone always

seems to step up so yeah and i'll just wrap the button a little button on all this just again just by reiterating if you're happy at the giving level you're at nothing to do uh but if you have any questions about your support if you need to update your mailing address so you get your playing cards or anything else that comes up just shoot me an email john jon at tbtl.net and we'll make sure to take care of you and i think yeah that's it i just want to say one

thing that i think is also really really cool as sort of a testament to what we're doing here and luke wanting to kind of like put his money where his mouth is i see that he has a money clip out right now on the desk and that i assume is for uh the tbtl find did you want me to take that and I can just put that in my pocket right now. Absolutely. Wait, wait, wait. Why is that going to be in your pocket? I really want the money clip. I want the money clip.

I stole this money clip from a winery in St. Helena, California this weekend. And by stole, I think we were allowed to take them. This was what was holding the napkin. This is a winery called Faust in St. Helena.

Wait, you liked it so much? What would that money be in otherwise? My wallet. Oh, you just liked it, huh?

Yeah, I don't even use a money clip. I was just, it just, you know, I thought it was just... You wanted to show you had money. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to show that I have $15, U.S. American, not to brag. But yes, again, thank you so much for everybody who's gotten us here to this point and the people that will be helping us do another year of TBTL by the end of this week. We really couldn't do it without you, as we say. Hello and welcome to Top Story. As I've been interacting with the 10s on Facebook, where I have now reemerged, I'm like some kind of a cicada, except instead of every 17 years, I emerge from the ground and log into Facebook every once a year to do a little eagle soaring and to kind of hang out during the thon with the 10s that are over there on the Stens page. And one question seems to be coming up more than any other, which is, did the box of equipment make it to Ohio, the box of equipment that Andrew mailed in the Seattle area? And the answer, Andrew, is a resounding no.

Not even close. We don't know where it is, although I have a late breaking news update on this from an inside source, which I'll share in just a moment. But we got a TVTL breaking news before we get to the breaking news. know about that honestly no it literally just happened since we've been recording um and streaming live um what happened was i had i thought i was i thought i was being so smart i thought i was being so smart instead of having to like lug so much equipment from seattle in my suitcase along with my skivvies and everything else i thought i'm gonna ship this big box of stuff to my dad's house because my dad lives here right and i thought that'd be a great solution and so i packed up all kinds of stuff stuff that made sure we could connect to the internet a computer was in there we had all kinds of stuff that was critical to putting on this web cam a webcam was in there a microphone was in there a recording device for our day at uh at the frog jump festival was in there a whole bunch of stuff and i and i shipped it and i shipped it from the post office where i always go to uh where we have a po box where people send us stuff and that's just my my place And also, I should shout out a listener, Eric, who works there as well. And the thing is, I paid for a little extra to ship it. Now, it's a big. heavy box it was already pretty expensive and i paid the extra to make sure that it would get there several days in advance i figured i need this stuff by sunday now they don't deliver on sunday i don't believe but i had it so that it would arrive on wednesday even for a big buffer boy like me luke that's a lot of buffer that felt like a good buffer and i was like you know what could possibly go wrong and um turns out everything we don't know exactly what happened But I do have a vague memory of them when they printed out the receipt or the sticker that they put on the box. Something happened to the printing machine, and it split it in two. And the young woman who was clearly in training was like, oh, it did it again. This is a detail I didn't tell you. I thought about it later. Oh, man. And then her supervisor was there, and she said, well, just put them together on the box. And I looked at where the slit was. like so basically my my little the sticker that goes in the box a shipping sticker was sort of in two pieces but they just lined them up first the reflecting pool yeah right i will say packaging and so i was a little concerned about that i remember saying well that line is not going through the barcode right and they're like no it's just a little bit up here like it's totally fine so i don't think that ended up being the problem but i do remember and also i was smart i brought my own tape because i know that they won't tape things up for you and the supervisor said make sure you charge him for that tape and i said i brought this tape from home yeah what is this a cvs in longview exactly and so i was like with the supervisor said make sure to charge and i said this is my tape um so anyway that i was just remembering that that's what it was like at the post office when i sent this thing out and but i was still pretty confident again that i saw that the code was intact or whatever and it's going to get there by wednesday even if something happens and it's delayed by two days it still gets there on friday which is still a day before i

arrived that should be fine and uh let's see here i think on wednesday night i start like i'm looking at the tracking on my phone back in seattle and it says oh your package is going to arrive a little bit later than expected we'll still get there today and i was like well it's already 10 o'clock east coast time but okay uh well it didn't arrive wednesday night it didn't arrive thursday by friday i'm really sweating it and i start working all the levers i can think of i'm like calling the the main number you know which is a national number you just have to like work your way until you finally talked to a human being the human being I talked to was very nice set up a case number for me I explained the specific information or the situation that we're in and she went in and said okay well let me put some extra flags on this case for you like we're going to do everything we can and then I think it was pretty late on I wish I had thought of this earlier but it's pretty late on Friday where I thought wait a second our listener Eric he works literally out of that post office what can Eric what can Eric do for you which was the USPS slogan I think there for a while in the early 2000s and so I reached out to Eric and we were texting back and forth on Friday he was actually on his route at the time but he said when I get back I'll look around make sure it's still because oh I don't think I told you this part Luke Friday Thursday night I had a long very detailed very specific dream involving you you might have been drunk in the dream uh John me and this box and I I had a very specific dream about me going around like We were at some event, but my equipment hadn't shown up yet. You look like a dream catcher came to life. I woke up from this dream thinking, like, wow, I'm obsessed with this. This is Friday morning. I'm sure everything is fine. I wake up. My phone rings. It's a 440 area code here, West Side Suburbs. I pick it up. It's some guy named Brian, I think, maybe a Kevin at the postal service here in Westlake. And he's a postal worker in Westlake, Ohio. And he's like, yeah, I understand you're kind of missing this package. or whatever and i'm like yeah he's like well the tracking looks like it may have never left seattle and i said well it's gotta either leave seattle or i gotta get it in seattle like i'm shipping it for a specific event i'm doing this weekend i need this box and his response was uh-oh that's what you want to hear that's what you want to hear he was a nice guy hold on uh-oh i didn't love so

somebody out here in this part of ohio with called usps called me maybe because of the of the of the

ticket because they they assigned me a case number case number i know you've been assigned some case

numbers in your life as well this is different than that okay did they have you look at different

pictures of mail see what your package that's my box so anyway at a certain point as i'm getting out you know my flight was 9 a.m so i'm at the airport around uh 3 a.m on saturday and i just sort of realized as friday is it's getting later and later in the day and eric is looking all over for me he's calling his supervisor and other people i'm hearing from west lake ohio i haven't heard anything from the national folks yet at this point and uh and nobody knows where my boxes and people are saying well it's probably still in seattle and now i'm saying well stop it i don't want because now so i paid about 150 bucks to ship that thing out here i'm still in seattle

so we've already lost 150 bucks on this just on this please donate at whatever level

Earlier, I said whatever you're comfortable with. Go to something you're uncomfortable with. Make yourself a little bit uncomfortable. Start it comfortable and go one above.

So I started thinking, like, is there any way I can even just stop this box? I go to the post office. I'm like, maybe is there a slip in our PO box that says, hey, there was a complication with your package, but there was nothing there. I talked to the woman at the desk. She was very nice. I asked her if she knew Eric. She said no. I said you should meet him. He seems like a nice guy. But she said my supervisor will call you later. Never heard from the supervisor. and nobody knew where it was. And now I'm like, well, just keep it in Seattle. Don't charge me $150 because eventually this thing is going to end up in Ohio. Totally useless to me. I'm going to have to ship it all the way back again, back to Seattle.

You know, Bob Walsh cast. Yeah, exactly. Your dad finally starts his metal fabrication podcast.

His metal fabrication podcast. I would actually listen to that. We could go with five different kinds of parts washers. I'm telling you, the monorail is where it's at. But anyway, so it's just not. And then the weekend came and, you know, it's the weekend. It's the Postal Service. I didn't really expect to hear from anybody. And now here it is Monday and I have basically not heard anything. I was just sort of hoping that maybe it would get stuck in Seattle. So at least I don't have to like then ship it back. I went to Guitar Center and some other stores around here to try to like buy the stuff that we needed. Let's call it what it was. You had your parents drive you to Guitar Center. I had my parents drive me to Best Buy, then across the parking lots to Guitar Center. Then the Guitar Center didn't have something I thought I'd have back to Best Buy. Best Buy didn't have what I needed, a microphone stand. Turns out Brian here at Liverpool had a microphone stand for me, so that worked out okay. So here we are on the air.

Which is before or after dinner at Houlihan's.

It was after dinner at Houlihan's. Okay. And there was a reservation at 530. Uh-huh. You've got to beat the rush. You've got to beat the rush. So anyway, the box is lost in the wind, essentially.

I'm so shocked by that just because we live in, I hope, listen, Andrew, I'll just keep saying this. It sounds like a broken record, but it's very true. You and John have done so much work on the logistical side of this, making sure everything got here or at least trying to, and the cards and the thank you gifts. And also just you both being here yesterday on Sunday, setting this room up so kind of beautifully for the shot, carrying heavy stuff. There's no AC. I mean, you guys got back to the Airbnb at like almost 10 o'clock. You guys have worked so, so hard on this. So I want to be appreciative. But this is a big but. When you said the package is late or whatever, I was like, I kind of thought, yeah, but this is going to sort itself out. Like, everything's so scammed. I know, but that's the thing. I was like, how can something go missing in this environment of constant digital checking in of each link in the chain, each step on the journey? I thought, like, Andrew's anxious about this, but, you know, that's because he's put a lot of work into it. It's going to be fine. I was shocked that it's not fine.

It is still not here. It remains unfine. And you know who else is shocked? Everybody I talked to at the Postal Service. They're like, this doesn't happen. Like, what do you mean the tracking never leaves Seattle? I'm like, I don't know. I'm not in charge of your tracking system. But this is the breaking news. Since we've been sitting here, I got a text message from Eric. Okay. Our man on the inside. And by the way, I want to be very clear about this. I'm being honest about everything I've said along this journey. But also, I want to be gentle to Eric. who, first of all, has been going out of his way to look out for us and, you know, was worrying about this. This was not Eric's job. And Eric has said several times in text messages, I feel like we've let you down. I feel terrible about this. He says this doesn't happen with the U.S. Postal Service. Usually, please do not let this be. We're not here to dunk on the US. We are not the USPS. And I really want to thank Eric from the bottom of my heart for keeping an eye out. And I just got a text. Let's see here. About 15 minutes ago, it looks like it says it looks like your package is supposed to be delivered today. day, even though I know that's not. To your house in Seattle. No, I think to here in Westlake. I know it's not helpful for the fundraising anymore. Take care out there. Then also says, I look forward to the notes and treats you leave me in the P.O. box in the future. So that's kind of an interesting. Absolutely. I'll leave you something. I'll leave you a, I'll leave you like a, I don't know, like a Sklaroff card or something in there. How about a Fig Newton? I'll leave you a Fig. I heard you recently come into some Fig Newtons. Those are gone, my buddy. Those went fast. But anyway, so maybe the package will arrive which is good because i'll tell you what there is expensive stuff in there there's like a 300 microphone in there like the value of that box is pretty up there i don't yeah exactly so i'm glad to have it back it's a bummer i'm gonna have to spend another 150 bucks to ship it back do you think i should use the post office i think you should because i think i think that the post office should ship it back for free that's a good point but um this is where remember it's really getting hot in here isn't it how are you guys doing i'm good what's it like

Do you think a normal kind of heart rate for an adult male of 50? Would you say it between 200 and 300 BPMs?

Is it hopping like a frog? It is hot in here.

I'm having a little bit of a situation. But do you remember? I remember when we were in Denver for a TBTL-a-thon, and I rented the wrong car to drive from Seattle to Denver. I made it there, but in this tiny—I think it was a Matchbox car, right, or a Hot Wheels or something that I rented? And we got there, and you said, listen, this car is not good for you. We're getting you a better car for your trek back home. Through the Rockies. Through the Rockies. And it was also Memorial Day weekend. And you went with me to, like, the local airport at, like, whatever it was, Thrifty or wherever I rented it from. And you were my advocate. and the people there were like, you are not going to be able to rent or swap out this car. The car you have is the car you have and you simply would not take no for an answer. Second reference in about three shows,

but I went full Ben Kingsley from Sexy Bisa.

You were just like, it's smoking. It was smoking on him.

Yeah, I went in with a bit of a story about how the vehicle was unsafe for my friend Andrew and was told, well, too bad, many, many times until finally, I think just to get us out of there, they gave you a slightly better car. I need that. I'll do that.

You've got to be my bulldog at the post office to get our money back.

I'll happily kingsley the people at the office in Westlake or wherever we end up taking it. I mean, again, it is good if, in fact, the items have been located. It is good because they cost us money, and money is not growing on trees, even during TBTelathon week. But, yes, I think it would be reasonable for us to have it shipped back on the USPS's dime because of all of the hassle of getting it out here. And I'm, that actually, I look forward to that kind of stuff. That's like, no, seriously, like I like the, some negotiations I'm not really that into. That actually kind of sounds fun to me. Should we do another phone call here?

Yeah, I have somebody who's been holding for 31 minutes. Okay, let's see.

Ahoy, ahoy. Hello, you are on TV. Ahoy, ahoy. Oh, do we have somebody's computer on? Oh, I'm trying to figure out if that's me. Do we have somebody's computer? Can you hear me? We can hear, but hold on one second. We've got to kill our volume somewhere. Is somebody's volume on? Is that me?

The listener, do you have, are you playing the show loud somewhere? The listener, do you have, are you playing the show loud somewhere? It's muted.

Okay, it's muted. So you know, turn down your radio. Okay, hang on one second. Stay with us. Don't go anywhere. If you're in line, stay in line. We're going to get this figured out.

Yeah. Let me, well, I can just close out of that completely. Well, that helped. Hello, listener. Hi there. If you're in line, stay in line. Wait, we're still figured out.

Okay, don't, stay where you are. We're still getting ourselves down the line. We're ironing this out. Okay, here's what I'm going to do. This never happens to us.

I am going to. I have your number here. I'm hanging up on you, but I'm going to call you back. We're calling you back. Because I did a little test here. Now I turn up. Oh, the problem persists. Where is this coming from? Oh, is it this thing here? I think I found it. I'm going to call that listener back right now. You guys ready for this?

I didn't even know we could make outgoing calls.

Yeah, this is how we get guests on the line sometimes. Oh, impressive. Here we go. Okay, let's see. Oh, hoi, hoi. That was not your fault. It was my fault. I'm sorry for blaming you. Oh, hoi, hoi.

Hi, this is Veterans of Foreign Wars. We're going to be in your neighborhood in the next two weeks. We wondered if you had any donations you'd like to leave out for us. Hi, who's this?

Hi there.

Who are we talking to? Can you hear me? Yeah, who's on the line?

Hi there, this is Michelle. Hi, Michelle. I'm calling to beg you to turn the air conditioning on. The fans are going wild over here in the comments. I've been on hold for 30 minutes asking, Luke, you are beet red.

Who do you think is, well, some of that is some mail enhancement stuff that I've been taking that I haven't disclosed on the show yet because it's not working. Michelle, who do you think is sweating more, us in this room or the people that are watching it on YouTube and feeling bad for us sweating in this room?

i think certainly we are you know because we're sitting in our nice air-conditioned houses

but our heart rates are just going up you and i were messaging earlier today actually and you were saying stay cool down there because it's very warm in minnesota where you are it is very warm okay can we do an experiment john john can you okay wait where andrew is now leaving the broadcast desk here and he is walking over to the which i mentioned is an air conditioning unit that brian one of the folks here brought from his own home that's that public private partnership that we've been talking about so much uh michelle the ac unit is now running do you hear a difference both when i'm talking and now when i'm not i'm going to do the hardest thing ever for me and andrew which is leave three seconds of silence tell me if you can hear this

i cannot well now we're gonna ask listeners couldn't even hear frogs via the phone line i

don't think the phone line is the best test of this oh yeah yeah let the listeners okay well

we'll we'll check in with the um with the folks who are listening to this through i guess really the big test is once this is published through you know as an audio product if people notice a difference, but Michelle... Oh my God. the listeners are going, they say it sounds awful. It sounds like we're in a jet and just like, how could Andrew let this

happen? Michelle, I don't know why Andrew has chosen this particular bit of kayfabe because it already, maybe it's psychosomatic, it already feels cooler in here. It might just be knowing that the thing is on. It already feels better. Can you see, is the color, is the redness draining from my face, hopefully?

Not yet, because I have to give it a few more minutes. John looks better.

John looks better.

Thank you, Michelle. He's closest to the machine. I am. It's right. I can almost touch it.

We can't see Andrew under the hat that well.

Oh, yeah.

I have other things to tell you here. Just so you know, Bob and Harriet from Friendship are on the feed.

Oh, my gosh. Bob and Harriet.

With one R.

Yeah, absolutely. One T.

and i went and i found my tbtl playing cards oh okay how did that work what was the back of them

or we must have been on the front of them on the side that has the like you know nine of diamonds

or whatever right right there's the no mountain too tall and good good luck to all on the back and on the front was you know the the face of the card and there is a mummy card as well as a Roodog card. Mummy and Roodog. Andrew's on his scooter. Yeah, I've got them all. They're right here. And I also have a baseball. This goes with the trading cards. I have a TBTL baseball. Wait, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Did you say that there's a trading or a baseball? I'm sorry. There is a playing card of me on my scooter?

Indeed. I can take a picture of it and email it to John.

This blows my mind. I thought this was long before my day. Maybe I was an occasional guest or something. I thought this was during the radio days. Well, Andrew, it's 52 cards, so we're running out of people. Wow, that's fun to hear. Yeah. Things are going to start happening to me now.

That's right. Your name in lights. What else did you want to update us on, Michelle? And by the way, shout out to our friends from Friendship Wisconsin. I want to say this would have never happened in Friendship. The climate was controlled beautifully there at the Friendship Historical Society. I'm excited to be here, but from a temperature standpoint, I wish I could click my heels and be right back there on Main Street in Friendship. What were you going to say, Michelle?

The other thing I want to say is the hot dog talk led me to inform you that the new go-to food item at the Minnesota State Fair this year is going to be a mong sausage corn dog.

Oh, okay.

Uh, okay. And among sausages, a pork and lemongrass and garlic and fish sauce. And Yia Vang, who's a well-known local chef who has a PBS show here, makes them for his restaurant and they sell them at Cromarchek, which is a great sausage place. And this is going to be the go-to.

I see. So that's the big, cause every year they roll out a couple of different, like you know sort of specialty items that everybody gets very excited about what was like this is gonna be the thing that gets me back to the fair i'm very excited i've seen a lot of buzz and so you're saying michelle you're saying it's going to be this mong uh special hot dog that everybody's going to be lining up for this year it certainly is okay so and just just a complete hot dog talk love it okay um was there anything else that you wanted to share by the way michelle You have been such a friend of the show And you've helped us out in so many ways But I don't think anything you've done And you've done a lot Has been more helpful to the show Than commanding us to turn the air conditioning on That may have been your greatest contribution To the program Because I don't know how much longer We were going to make it

Unfortunately there's nobody left in the chat Everybody hung up They're just like I can't listen under these circumstances It's kind of a bummer But we still got you Michelle

Andrew I'm calling you out

because that's not true that's right yeah i could really use a win here um michelle i'm just

watching the color return to your faces now you're not all pink i didn't realize that my face was such

a leading indicator like on i didn't feel that warm but you're right there we do have a monitor i can kind of look over and i right when you said that i looked over and i was like i am actually

beet red you're like one of those thermometers actually that's the thing if we meet our goal luke will turn red my head will actually explode as the mercury fully engorges it doesn't help that you have a uh the lunch trays right there yeah that's right some of that was just a the

effect of having a red tray near my face well michelle uh for reals thank you for being such a friend of the show all these years And it was so fun getting to see you in the Twin Cities recently. And hopefully that will happen again soon.

Yes, and have fun with the frogs.

Yes, we're excited for that, too. There's going to be much more on that. I think tomorrow night is going to be when we go out and humanely get our frog for the competition. So you'll be hearing a lot about that as the week continues.

So are you going to video it?

Well, here's the thing. We're going to be recording for TBTL, I think, a little bit of audio, right, of getting the frogs? Yeah, I don't know. We haven't talked about it, but we probably should. Yeah, so we may have some audio of that. We'll definitely be describing it in, I'm sure, great detail on Wednesday. But then I'm also doing a CBS TV story while we're here about the frog jump. And so I think on Friday night I'm going out with the TV crew to do some frog catching as well. So it will be documented either for radio or television.

That is good to know. I misunderstood this. i thought you were saying that the tv crew was going to be there out there with us tomorrow night and i was like ah i was just rolling with it but i didn't like it seemed complicated no the

tv crew uh i'm going out on friday night with the tv crew while you all right you guys are keeping

the home fires burning or something so we're gonna be we're gonna be spending time with our frog that night probably yes i mean that'll be the big that'll be the big training parents yes

Yeah, yeah, it's, what's that, Michelle?

Luke, I hope you have a TBTL frog jump t-shirt to wear when you go out with that CBS crew.

I am going to, the whole thing of me pitching it as a TV story was to try to worm TBTL onto CBS Sunday Morning. I feel like now I have some kind of a legit excuse to say like, oh, we're also there doing my podcast. So I'm trying to figure out the way that I can use CBS Sunday Morning to promote this podcast. That's definitely part of the plan.

Okay. Good luck. All right. Thanks so much. Bye, Michelle. Thanks for everything.

Appreciate you. Should we? I love that sound. I know that we've, you know, we're just getting settled in here. There's a lot of, you know, post-show stuff to do of literally posting the show. And, John, you're kind of managing questions around people's donations and things. We do have a sort of a busy day. It is also, though, maybe one of the only times any of us will have a chance to see Big Boy 4014, the largest steam locomotive certainly in America, maybe in the world. This is special. This is special. It just so happens that this gigantic, and I've seen video of it, it really is incredibly gigantic, steam locomotive, is coming through this area. Well, really, I think over, maybe a little closer to where you grew up.

You said it might have been Rocky River. You keep on saying River Rock, and that's not a place. Okay, I've got the schedule right in front of me. I should say, I don't think there's a place called River Rock, but I could be totally wrong. I'm not an expert of Northeast Ohio.

So I think, right, why would you be? I think that the story on this particular steam locomotive is I think that a number of them were built during World War II to get parts and things around the country on the rail lines, but things that were really heavy and the existing steam engines or whatever just weren't sufficient. Now, of those, however many they built, there's only a few left. There's only one of them that works, and it's this one, Big Boy. And let's see. It went through Altoona, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Yesterday it was in Conway, Pennsylvania. It's today going to be traveling. It's actually already maybe traveled through. How do I say this? Conneaut, C-O-N-N-E-A-U-T, Ohio? I'm not sure. However you say that part of Ohio. And there's no public access there, but you know where there is. Rocky River, Ohio. It is Rocky River.

Okay, yeah, this is the west side suburbs. This is sort of the area that I grew up in. You know, kind of your North Olmsteads, your West Lakes, your Avon Lakes. I kind of I don't have the best grasp of geography. But, yeah, this is kind of the west side suburbs of Cleveland.

I was watching a bunch of local news stories from different places in Pennsylvania and Ohio and other spots where this thing has been moving through. And people are freaking out about it. If we don't manage to catch it at Rocky River.

Oh, no, we might. I think we just missed it. Yeah. It says it was rolling through Rocky River from 1 to 1.30 p.m. That's what it was scheduled to. I'm on the Rocky River website right now. How soon can we be in Fostoria, Ohio? I have no idea. Can we outrun a steam engine?

I mean, it looked pretty slow in the videos. Okay, it's going to be tomorrow. It'll be in Fostoria on display from 9 to 3. And then, let's see, moving through the week, it'll be eventually stays in Fostoria. Then it goes to Fort Wayne, Indiana on Thursday. So we've really got between now and Wednesday about 9 a.m. to see this thing. Do you guys have any interest? Am I the only one who's interested in seeing Big Boy? I mean, I'm fine with it. I'd be up for it. That's the enthusiasm I've been looking for.

Yeah, I mean, it does. I mean, but I like your enthusiasm. I mean, you know. Yeah, guys, haven't you heard?

That doesn't stop a foamer. Oh, especially when it comes to heritage equipment. Guys, when it comes to heritage equipment.

No, absolutely. I mean, I'm vibing off of your vibes, but it's not something that would have, like, necessarily animated me.

You know, to be quite honest, not to reign a big boy, thick boy's parade.

Thick boy's coming through next week. He's going to be at the Larry Flint Club down in the flats that I jogged by this morning.

I was I'm really interested in like Andrew Stomps, like Samosky's Pizza or like going to like, you know, like the Andrew Walsh experience is what I'm here for more than anything.

Well, there is a train that I loved that is in Westlake called Andre 3000. Oh, I'm sorry. We're wrapping up the conversation. I didn't get my outcast joke in there. It was ill. It was formulated in my head and I just needed to get something out there. That's the best I got.

I just figured that out, Big Boy. Big Boy, Andre 3000. Yeah, I like that. Okay, well, thank you.

That's the good kind. You've got to explain them.

It sounds like that's my favorite style of humor. It sounds like we've actually already missed our best chance to see it, so I guess you guys are safe from being forced by me to go look at it. But if any of our listeners are out in some part of, I guess, this area or over in Pennsylvania where it's been through, hit us up and tell us what it was like because it does, no joke, It looked pretty sick. Like, the thing was enormous. I can't overstate that. Like, when you saw it next to even a regular train, it was like three times as large. I'm also into those, you know, there are those airplanes that are so big they can fly other airplanes inside them like a whale? Yes, yes. Did you hear that clip of a Southwest Airlines pilot crap talking the whale airplane? And I'm like, dude, get a clue. Those things are awesome. Tell me about this.

it was this the version i heard was they saw it on the runway and they're like some one person said you know what's that and they were explaining it and they're like well what does it carry and it's a nasa thing that carries like parts and pieces and then other planes that go in it with the wings fold up and the other guy goes the guy who was inquiring goes well can't they just fly those

other planes like that is a fair point that's a fair point but basically what you had was two southwest pilots they're in the plane so this is that like kind of talking to the to the control tower and that giant whale plane that the whole nose comes off and it can fly other airplanes inside it which i think makes it a mother so i mean first of all let's have some respect yeah some marsupial of sorts exactly uh i i was like they're going the one guy goes like those planes look ridiculous what are those and i'm like first of all how do i as a podcaster know what that plane is and you as a pilot don't know what that yeah that's a good point that's why i'm never flying southwest um and then also uh yeah then they it seemed kind of again the other pilot saying couldn't the planes that are flying inside the thing fly themselves that's that is a reasonable point but i was just surprised that these southwest pilots were not as i would feel you'd be psyched

to see one of those yeah right and they were kind of they were sneering i yes that might have been

insecurity on their part you know what i mean yeah that's what it felt like to me i want to say um

You probably have the wrong Andrew in your crew this week because are you seeing this? I'm looking at social media. It's only Monday. We have a listener. Andrew here was posting a photo of a giant train engine called the Ethan Allen Express. They bring the furniture. Caught a glimpse of the Ethan Allen Express today. This is special. This is special. So there is an Andrew who is a foamer in the TBTL community. It's just not the guy sitting next to you.

This is special. This is special. I'd also like to point out our good friend Harriet in Friendship. Yeah, shout out Harriet. Said in the comments that Big Boy was in Adams last year. No way. Which is when we were there. We should have seen Big Boy.

Is this train stalking us? That's the real question. train a tbtl p1 and is trying to be near us when we are doing the thon because that's a pretty crazy coincidence wow that it was in in a friendship or in adam's county big boy well not effectively enough because you guys didn't want to go i wanted to go see it this morning not enough um i want to say also that i've been very was pleasantly pleasantly surprised that our airbnb that we're staying at did not tear our friendship apart because i have decided now um having stayed in a lot of airbnbs including one this most recent weekend in um uh in california in the kind of sonoma area technically calistoga california that's where i was this weekend before i came out here i think that airbnbs are uniquely designed to destroy friendships families you name it because if you're going to an airbnb and there are let's say three rooms there is never like three rooms that are all kind of pretty similar there is always one room that's really good and then two rooms that are not nearly as good when we were staying in in calistoga there was an incredible room with an ensuite and all this stuff and then there was the room becca and i were in which was under a bunk bed oh and i'm not saying that i was resentful but i was like okay well we know our place in this thing and then we last night when you two were here setting this up I got to the Airbnb before you did because I didn't come all the way out here and I know John you were nervous that I was going to stake my claim on the good room at the Airbnb which let's be honest is within my

nature. This is a true story so we're talking John and I were here all day and we're setting stuff up you're out in Sonoma and then you like send us a text say I'm going to be rolling a little bit later than I thought you know from your wine country visit and there's no whining in football and i will say you're like i can get a car out to valley city but i was the one who said you don't really have to come out here like everything is set up and like i gotta say because of the time that john and i put in yesterday like i was relatively sanguine like other than some technical hiccups at the end which john found a great solution to i want to shout out john for that yes brought to today by a sklar off um like everything was working and i was like don't everything looks good like i love these desks i was like i don't think we need you to come all the way out here just to get go back to cleveland to go to the airbnb so you're like well i might just go back to the airbnb directly from the airport here and i said go ahead and john said to me not to you he said to me out loud in the room well you know luke just wants to go to the airbnb first so he

can take the best room and and andrew thank god you snitched the the text thread of this three of us sent it and i looked at andrew and i go that was a joke for here yeah no no i texted luke that

immediately i heard your phone bing john and you were like judas like bro but i would have i will

be honest with you because you all had been putting in so much work uh yesterday getting this set up and because i was kind of just sort of you know gliding in at the last moment i could not in good conscience even without that hurtful comment from you john i could not in good conscience had you all get back to the airbnb and kind of looking around and going like oh there's the the room with the balcony and the bathroom in it and luke has just conveniently declared that to be his room i could not do that in good conscience um uh so i and also last year andrew i think had the

kind of like a pretty okay room i had the nicest room last year this year i have the least nice room but they're all good like you think your room is worse than mine well you guys have tvs you have a bathroom next to yours like it's i'm fine don't worry i don't need much i didn't but

I didn't think I was picking the better of the – I really thought I was picking the smallest of the three.

Well, the thing is I wouldn't even turn on that TV anyway. Nor would I. Yeah, so it doesn't – good. I hope you don't think – I hope you don't think – No, no, no.

That I was trying to still in a small way – This is what Airbnb does to you. No, no, no. It turns brother against brother.

I feel like – no, no. And I said that because it's truthful, but also I think it's right. Like John deserves the good one. You do have a balcony. You can walk out on the balcony. I do have a balcony. But I think that's great. I'm very happy for that.

Now, let's make sure the thon goes well this year, guys.

And I had an en suite bathroom last year, and you guys didn't. So I think it's totally fair. I really do.

When we did the thon in Polsbo, Luke had the en suite. I believe I did. So you said, Luke, last night, it's my turn of the rotation. It is absolutely your turn, my friend. I appreciate that. And if you guys ever need to use my very nice bathroom, you can go to hell.

I did. I will tell you, though, I have realized that, and this is just recently, and it goes, I don't know what accounts for this, but it seems to go in cycles. It could be the mail enhancement stuff that I'm on. I have hit this thing, and this was happening this weekend.

I need some mail enhancement stuff, M-A-I-L. Somebody needs to enhance my postal service this week. Is that a show title, Mail Enhancement? I think Friday's show was beta mail, so maybe.

We're on a run. I noticed this this weekend because the room that we had did not have a bathroom. There was a bathroom in the hallway, and I now have this thing going where I will be I'm peeing three times every night really I sometimes that does seem excessive it's and this has just come on lately it's very weird I I you know I again there have been times when I pee more at night there's other times where I feel like it's not happening I'm in a mode right now where I wake up and I need to pee and it's not like oh I kind of feel like I should probably get up and use the bathroom it's like I'm dead asleep And then all of a sudden it's like, I'm about to have like an accident. Really? And so when we were in Calistoga, it's like I kept going out to that hallway bathroom. One time there was someone in it and I was like, oh my God, heck, am I going to be able to hold it? And even last night I was hoping that I didn't wake you guys up. I made three trips from my room to that upstairs bathroom manager that you and I are.

using and had you been in the bathroom one of those times had it been in use i don't know what i would have probably peed out of the window of my second story bedroom well i'm using the

downstairs bathroom i think it's all fine um i do think that this is appropriate and i also think

it wouldn't hurt you to talk to a therapist about your bathroom issues because there's clearly something going on there i mean i'm wondering i'm wondering this has just recently come on so we'll

see but uh yeah well yeah that that is an interesting situation i'll just stick to the the bathroom in the basement also i will just say that not the bathroom in the basement no not the oh that's save that for tomorrow okay yes we have some we have some because i need to check out that

space you do you need to get eyes on that there's a uh there's a an upstairs floor to this airbnb which has you know the places we're sleeping and john's incredibly fancy you know i said you'd

call it like the penthouse can i tell you one thing that's a negative about my room yes and you guys are both taller than me so this is actually good you're not in there is talking might go in the bathroom in the middle of the night you would hurt yourself because i've banged my head twice already because the not to get graphic or anything but there's there's the toilet is here in front of you and if you when you turn around there's like a slope because it's a very old house and and the slope is twice i've done this now where i've stood there and take care of my business i turned around and took a step without paying attention and banged my head

well that's where you have to follow my patented sit down for life method sure i always sit down

when i pee no matter what and i know you've always talked about on the show about not trying to wake yourself up so keeping it dark in there you would absolutely give yourself a concussion i think if you were using that bathroom at three in the morning so you're welcome well thank you

for thank you for your generosity of taking the best room but then we have the main floor which has the kitchen and stuff in it and then there's the basement which maybe we'll talk about tomorrow because it's um it's uh it's quite a scene down there that we will uh get into at some point uh Do we want to do, like, a call, an email, a V-mail? Oh, sure, absolutely. Let's go ahead and open up the phone lines again. Moving towards the end of today's program, Andrew. What would you like to do? Let's do it.

I just opened up the phone lines. Let's see if anybody wants to give us a call. 206-414-8285. That's 206-414-TBTL. Maybe Eric's on his mail route right now and wants to give us a call. I don't know. 206-414-8285.

Okay, in the meantime, why don't we do a –

Here I go once again. Do we have emails or V-mails that we like? Sure, I got a voicemail here, if you like. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

I got a voicemail the other day that I was not sure which way this was going to go, and it involves another snack I've been talking about on the show lately, which is goldfish. People are familiar with goldfish, but you were shocked, as a lot of people are, when I told you that the original goldfish flavor is not a cheese flavor at all. They are not the bright red goldfish. They come in a package with some kind of blue highlights, and they're just little goldfish crackers that are lightly salted.

And you thought that that was— I thought that the natural state of any goldfish cracker was cheddar by definition, that it is a cheddar-flavored snack. Do you know, since you sort of hipped me to this, now it's all I see in the store. You see them, yeah. I see the ones you're talking about, and you know what else they have? Have you tried them? I haven't, but what they also sell are something called flavor-blasted goldfish. They're literally called flavor-blasted. They use the term flavor-blasted, which is kind of our, I feel like Camaro Kev might have been the first person I heard use that. I think I, maybe me. Maybe you. That idea of like how everything now is, for me, almost too flavorful. It's got too much, like I don't need it to be as quote-unquote flavor-blasted. They're saying the quiet part loud. There is a flavor-blasted goldfish that says flavor-blasted on the-

What was the flavor? Was it even cheesier or was it a different – because I also – I don't eat cheese-flavored things. So as a kid, we ate the original, and then they made little pretzel goldfish. Are you familiar with those? They were shape of a goldfish, but they were pretzels with a little salt on the outside?

I don't – I'm not familiar, but I'm so unsurprised that you found those. I love pretzels. I mean, last night, you made a quick run when you got home to get some supplies, came back with a thing of oots, which I totally had one before bed. I got that with my dad, actually. He came to Valley City with that. I see. I thought you got that last night when you went on your run. No. Okay, so goldfish.

Okay, so anyway, I have been hearing from people who are like, I had no idea that was a thing. Some people are trying. I'm very, here's the deal. I hold the original flavor goldfish. Oh, there it is. Flavor blast. Extra cheddar, I guess. Extra cheddar. Get out of my face with that.

And they've got sunglasses on the goldfish, which is like, calm down, Mr. Cool Guy.

So anyway, people are responding. And I'm a little bit protective of original flavor goldfish. So I did not know how this voicemail was going to end. And I'll say I was a little on edge the first time I heard this.

Hey, dummies. My name is Amanda. Say your name.

Riley.

That's my husband, Riley. So we're on just a mini little road trip heading down actually towards Cascades Amphitheater to work somewhere near where Luke lives. But anyway. We were listening to the episode where you were talking about original goldfish, which is something that we did not know existed. We thought original goldfish were the cheesy ones. And bulldozers are really hungry, and so we stopped off at Fred Meyer and bought some original goldfish.

Hard to find.

Hard to find, first of all, but also very popular because there was only, like, one bag left, and it was, like, down on the bottom shelf way in the back.

If you know, you know.

These things are so good. They are, like, so much better than what we thought was the original goldfish. Um, so I think, um, I think we now, you, we have a new fan. No, we are new fans. We are converts to the original goldfish. Anyway, thanks guys. Bye.

I gotta say, I thought that the review might be, yeah, I found them and you know, they're fine or because they're a very subtle taste, a very subtle experience, the original goldfish. I was delighted to hear that Amanda and Riley not only enjoy them, but actually think that they surpass the cheese flavored goldfish experience uh well maybe when we go on our

grocery run today because we've got to get some supplies for the airbnb let's get a bag of uh original unflavored blasted um goldfish and uh i will uh give them a taste test uh one other thing uh when i uh was arriving here at hopkins international airport here in cleveland was standing at the um the baggage carousel and would you believe there was a 10 on my flight coming out here our friend max from seattle who also by coincidence last week uh was the person who made that 3d printed little magic trick box yeah that you put a quarter in first donation of the ton and then or i guess he sent it with a quarter and then you did the trick and then it was the quarter wasn't disappearing and um i guess uh max uh said that that he thought that might

have been user error he told you that too i will be honest with you i got an email from max claiming it was user error and i i wrote a response several times and i deleted each one and i even took a video like max with all due respect it came in pieces it was definitely not functional when it arrived well max also wanted me to apologize to you for the tone in his email really calling it user error really okay well accepted sorry i responded i see there was a little more energy

around this than i realized i thought max was being funny he was like yeah and also can you say sorry to andrew about my email to him saying it was user error because i actually took a video

i'm like max with all due respect like this but i didn't want to seem like ungrateful it was a beautiful thing and also i thought your spin on it was excellent the fact that when you donate to tbtl it doesn't disappear it goes towards it goes towards shipping costs yes speaking of nobody has called us eric maybe everybody's laying out to see if eric will call but we're just going to call it

i think uh i think probably this is a good place to wrap this we got to keep you know a certain out of our powder dry for the rest of the week. Because, of course, we will be here all week, folks. Taking your calls and reminding everyone, of course, that you are a critical component to this show happening because this is listener-supported podcasting. And we're done with you.

Sorry, that was supposed to be a little bit more subtle than what we did there. What does it mean, to play me out? I'll write it and we'll do it live. Sorry about that.

All right. Hey, thanks, everyone, for listening to this episode. Thanks to all the people that were on YouTube watching it and hanging out. We will be back here doing all of this tomorrow. Again, 10 a.m. West Coast, 1 p.m. East Coast is when we'll be going live with this at tbtl.net. It's also where you can jump on and donate to the show if you haven't donated before or maybe up your donation if that's something you feel comfortable with. And, yeah, we really do appreciate all of it. So thanks for everything, people. We appreciate it. We'll be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for all of you. In the meantime, have a great Monday. take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

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