#4485 Rashomon, Not Rochambeau

Summary

Episode Summary: TBTL #4485 – "Rashomon, Not Rochambeau"

Release Date: June 10, 2025

In episode #4485 of TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live, hosts Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh dive into a myriad of engaging topics, blending personal anecdotes with insightful discussions. This episode, titled "Rashomon, Not Rochambeau," offers listeners a rich tapestry of humor, real-life challenges, and thoughtful reflections.

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1. Gardening Mishaps and Feral Cats

The episode kicks off with Luke sharing a humorous yet frustrating tale about his unintended creation of a massive litter box for feral cats in his Southern Washington backyard. Luke recounts his failed attempt at vegetable gardening, exacerbated by a hefty over-tipping incident at a vape shop that left his bank indifferent.

Luke Burbank [02:44]: "I have accidentally created maybe the world's largest litter box in my yard... with about 10 or 20 feral cats."

His solution involves layering gravel over raised beds to deter rodents while inadvertently making the space inviting for cats. The duo discusses the unexpected consequences of gardening decisions and the challenges of managing wildlife interactions.

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2. Alaska Airlines’ Upgrade System Woes

Transitioning from gardening to travel woes, Luke vents about recurring issues with Alaska Airlines' upgrade system. He explains how, despite being first on the upgrade list, he consistently misses out on coveted first-class seats due to last-minute purchases by others.

Luke Burbank [13:00]: "Alaska Airlines has probably started... making it more available to sell seats that you used to be waiting for."

Andrew corroborates Luke's frustrations by sharing listener experiences and theorizing that Alaska Airlines might be manipulating upgrade availability to maximize profits, thereby devaluing the frequent flyer points system.

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3. Chaotic Flight Experiences

Luke recounts a particularly tumultuous journey from Portland to Davenport, Iowa, highlighting multiple flight delays and gate changes. This section underscores the unpredictability of air travel and the stress it can impose on travelers.

Luke Burbank [19:31]: "Then the flight attendant just goes... the flight to Kalamazoo has been canceled."

The hosts empathize with listeners who frequently navigate such chaotic travel scenarios, adding a relatable layer to their discussion.

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4. Airport Bar Meltdown: A Personal Intervention

One of the standout moments of the episode is Luke's encounter with an irate patron at an airport bar. The man becomes visibly upset over a missed golf tournament on TV, leading to a verbal confrontation that Luke helps defuse.

Andrew Walsh [22:48]: "He was an absolute terror to the woman!"

This story not only provides comic relief but also touches on the broader issue of alcohol-induced behavior in public spaces, prompting reflections on conflict resolution and personal responsibility.

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5. Movie Reviews: The Librarian Franchise

The conversation briefly shifts to cinema as the hosts discuss "The Librarian" franchise starring Noah Wyle. They dissect the series' Indiana Jones-esque adventures, offering light-hearted critiques and nostalgic references.

Andrew Walsh [32:16]: "The Librarian is a franchise that includes a series of original fantasy adventures made for television."

Their analysis serves as a nostalgic nod to early 2000s adventure films, blending critique with affectionate reminiscing.

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6. Thanking Donors and Promoting Japan

As the show progresses, Luke and Andrew take time to acknowledge their dazzling donors, emphasizing the importance of listener support in keeping the podcast thriving. Additionally, they enthusiastically promote Japan as Luke's current country of residence, highlighting its safety, technological advancements, and cultural richness.

Luke Burbank [44:01]: "Japan is an amazing place with something for everyone. Food, nature, technology, anime, sports."

This segment underscores the podcast's community-driven ethos and provides listeners with travel inspiration.

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7. Shoutouts to Listeners’ Children

The hosts extend heartfelt shoutouts to listeners' children, celebrating their achievements and endearing qualities. Andrew shares a story about his son, a versatile athlete and dedicated student, highlighting the joys and challenges of parenthood.

Andrew Walsh [48:56]: "Nicole's nine-year-old is stealing from the male talent population, and that affects you, but you don't care what's going on with the female talent population?"

These personal anecdotes foster a sense of community and relatability among the audience.

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8. Engaging Banter and Humor

Throughout the episode, Luke and Andrew maintain a dynamic and humorous rapport, often engaging in playful banter and spontaneous games. Their chemistry brings a lively and entertaining atmosphere, making complex or mundane topics enjoyable for listeners.

Andrew Walsh [57:08]: "How did AI summarize the content of the dazzling donor message that you sent to me?"

Their lighthearted interactions add depth and personality to the podcast, ensuring that every segment resonates with both humor and sincerity.

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Conclusion

Episode #4485 of TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live masterfully balances comedic storytelling with genuine discussions on everyday challenges. From gardening mishaps and airline frustrations to personal interventions and community acknowledgments, Luke and Andrew deliver an episode that is both entertaining and relatable. Their ability to weave humor into personal experiences offers listeners a delightful escape and a sense of camaraderie.

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For more episodes and updates, be sure to subscribe to TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live and join Luke and Andrew on their daily journey through the beautiful chaos of life.

Transcript

[Luke Burbank]

This month on cable. From a lawless pagan land he led his people. Driven by a belief in one God, Abraham. The world premiere of a new TNT two part movie. And cable swings into sports action with major league baseball coverage on espn. And it was the film that had everyone talking. Now cable gives you a chance to see it for yourself. Indecent Proposal only on hbo. Coming through for you on Cablevision of Orange.

[Andrew Walsh]

TBTL.

[Luke Burbank]

Hi and welcome to TJO Pootertoots.

[Andrew Walsh]

Where you're sure to have the rootinus.

[Luke Burbank]

Tootinist putinous good meal. I don't know who that is and I don't care to find out.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, a lot of people may.

[Luke Burbank]

Not know this, but I happen to be quite famous. I have never heard someone say so.

[Andrew Walsh]

Many wrong things, one after the other.

[Luke Burbank]

Consecutively in a row.

[Andrew Walsh]

Shh. I get it. I know. I know who you are. It's been explained to me. I've been following your career forever. Be quiet. I'm into it. Let's talk.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, all right. Hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Tuesday edition of tbtl, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

[Andrew Walsh]

Heck yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

[Luke Burbank]

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Meet the next generation of podcast stars. And coming to you once again from beautiful Davenport, Iowa, Iowa's front porch. Oh, yeah. Perched high above the mighty Mississippi river, we are ready folks, for episode 4485 in a collector series, Let the fun begin. Now, I don't know if you're sitting down as you're listening to this, but you might want to because I have some news about major corporations, including major banks in America. Turns out they may not care that much about their customers. And when he said that, that shocked me. For instance, if you accidentally over tipped at a vape shop by about $5,000, you'd think your bank might try to help you remedy that situation. But that is not what's happening for one woman in Northern California. So we'll talk about that. So you got my money? Oh, and we're also gonna talk to this guy. He's the longest running cobra of the show. Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships.

[Andrew Walsh]

In short, things are going extremely well for him.

[Luke Burbank]

He is Andrew Welsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[Andrew Walsh]

Good morning. Luke. I owe you an apology. You had asked me during yesterday's show to remind you of something that you wanted to talk about. The show went forward. I never reminded you. And we never got to the topic. Do you know what the topic is that I'm thinking of?

[Luke Burbank]

I do. It was the fact that I have accidentally created the, I don't know, maybe the world's largest litter box in my yard back home where I live in Southern Washington, for the many, many, many feral cats that live in my neighborhood. I'm talking, I don't know, 10 or 20, just cats that live outside. I don't really know who, if anyone takes care of them. I will say I don't have any problems with, it would appear, rats or rodents around my house, which is kind of crazy because I live at the top of like an acre of just tall grass on a hill. So I guess I got to give it. Give it up to them for that at least. But yeah, what happened is I. It's kind of complicated, but basically I have this thing that was in my yard when I bought the house, which was. You know what railroad ties are, right?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes, of course.

[Luke Burbank]

Big kind of long, creosote soaked things somebody had kind of built into the hillside like a kind of a raised garden bed out of these railroad ties. And so I then got the bright idea to actually put some new soil in there and try to grow some vegetables. Last year, I bought this kooky vegetable mat on Instagram, which was a total waste of. Pretty big waste of time and money. So I would not recommend that. I'd just say, you know, do it the old fashioned way. But I planted these vegetables last year and then the deer ate most of the vegetables. And also I wasn't even around to harvest the ones. I probably got like two salads out of it, which, you know, somebody pointed out. I think that, you know, if you decide to grow your own garden like that, you can't. You too can spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in order to have about one salad per season, if you're me. So this year I decided what I want to do is instead of growing the vegetables in the actual dirt that's in that raised bed thing, I'm going to cover that with landscaping fabric, put down a layer of gravel, and then build additional raised beds that are going to sit in this larger thing and those now, because I've decided the problem is not that I have a brown thumb, which I kind of do, or that I'm not really good at tending to vegetables. The problem was the vegetables I was growing were not in raised beds.

[Andrew Walsh]

Right?

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, that's the issue.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, it was raised, but not. Not raised in a tiered system.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes, exactly. Not raised Beds sitting atop a larger raised bed.

[Andrew Walsh]

I will say it sounds satisfying. Like, I'll give you credit there. Like, I can picture what you're talking about. And having an area that is already sort of raised and then you're going to like create little segments within is kind of cool.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes. And I can walk between. Well, my brother in law, Josh, who is, I mean, look out, look out, Ed Hume. Look out, Cisco. I think he's a recognized certified master gardener at this point. He has all these raised beds at his house and he's growing all this cool stuff. So then. And he said, yeah, you might want to do that one. There's less bending over. They're just literally a little bit higher. Also, you know, you can really control what's going on in the soil. Like, there's just a lot of benefit to doing this raised bed thing well. So what ended up happening was I ordered 3 yards of gravel, which doesn't sound like very much. I don't understand this unit of measurement, by the way. If you three yards seems like, oh, that's an amount of distance that you should give the ball to Marshawn lynch instead of throwing it to Ricardo Lockett. That's what I think of as 3 yards. But it's not. It's a lot of material. If you're ordering yards of like gravel, like I was pea gravel, they come with a big truck. Truck and they dump a huge pile in your driveway.

[Andrew Walsh]

Cubic yards. Is that why?

[Luke Burbank]

Maybe. What I know is that when I went to the gravel place, I was fully ready to order 30 yards for this thing. And I, I had measured the square footage of this area and thankfully I gave it to the very helpful woman who worked there. And I said, this is the square footage. How many yards do you think I need? And she said, that's three. I was like. So I was only off by a factor of 10.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, right. Boy, imagine if you had gotten all that gravel.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, it. Well, first of all, yeah, it would have been really expensive. And also the 3 yards almost killed me, Andrew, to like shovel it and put it into the wheelbarrow and then take it down. I mean, it was, I don't know how many trips it was. It was so many trips. And one of the things I noticed was as I was getting down into the sort of bot and this pile again was a really large sort of pile of rock. But as I took about, I don't know, I took it down about 30% at a time. So I, you know, I did about 30% of the pile. And then I got tired. And the next day I went back, and by the end, what I realized is, like, man, it really kind of smells funky out here. And as I was digging through this gravel and throwing it into the wheelbarrow, I kept encountering so much cat poop in there. Sure. They love it. It's pretty.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's so. It's pretty fine gravel, huh?

[Luke Burbank]

It's not. No, that's cat. It's not, like, fresh step.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I guess cats don't care. You. I mean, it's. It's. I would have thought that this would be kind of annoying on their little paws that, like, they wouldn't. This would not be very, I don't know, inviting for them. They apparently love it because. And the problem is, I am actually creating. What I'm doing now is I'm spreading this gravel out in a much thinner layer along in this raised bed thing so that it's. You know, mostly it keeps the landscaping fabric down. It looks nice, whatever. But I'm. I'm really making it hospitable for them now. Like, they were willing to go into, like, a giant pile of this stuff, dig their way in, and go to the bathroom. And now I'm basically creating what almost looks like and is in, for all intents and purposes, the best litter box these cats have ever encountered.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. Because before they had to sort of mountain goat it. Right. They had to get up there on the. Yeah, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, again, if I'm a cat and I've got to drop a deuce, this doesn't seem that inviting to me, the way the gravel was piled up now. It's like. I mean, it's. It. And the other thing is, there's no keeping them out of this area. Like, I am also working on the project of trying to build up some kind of fencing so the deer won't come in, but the cats. Forget about it. Like, they. They are going to absolutely have a time in this place, and I don't really know what I'm going to do about it, other than, I guess, have to shovel a lot of cat poop out there.

[Andrew Walsh]

So you were telling a story about gardening, and in the story about gardening, you said, it's a waste of time. And I literally can't hear the phrase it's a waste of time without hearing Cisco Morris in the audio drop that you often play saying, and let me do a little performance here. Okay. I don't know if you're looking for it. I don't know if you have access to it. But I would like to give you my impression of it. Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

I might need. I need. Like when we play darts, sometimes Genevieve gets some warm up rounds. I might need some warm ups. But here's how I think that drop sounds in my head. It's a waste of time to do that. No, it's a waste of time to do that. How about that?

[Luke Burbank]

Pretty good. Do you want to hear the.

[Andrew Walsh]

I want to hear the real one. Let's hear this.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay. One more. And then I'm going to go right into Cisco.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. There's something that's happening near the end. It's right in my head. But it's like when you. When you have a song in your head and then you realize you can't sing as soon as you open your mouth. It's a waste of time to do that. There's a waste of time to do that.

[Luke Burbank]

That's pretty good.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a waste of time to do that. Yeah, it's a waste. I love it. I hear that in my head all the time.

[Luke Burbank]

Now I have a longer one. Let's see what this one is.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's not gonna do any good at all. Not a bit.

[Luke Burbank]

There's a waste of time to do that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Was that almost a super cut or do you think that was him actually just taking a pause in conversation?

[Luke Burbank]

I think that was just. I'm trying to remember what the origin of this was. I mean, I don't see him doing a bunch of wild tracks for them to put in somewhere. I think this is him responding to something that somebody was asking.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's not going to do any good at all. Not a bit. There's a waste of time to do that. I thought maybe you had collected that and put a. I think there's something about that recording where it's like the. The ambient sound kind of drops away, but I think it is.

[Luke Burbank]

So maybe it is. Maybe it is.

[Andrew Walsh]

Well, it could just be all one. It was just recorded in that kind of somewhat funky way. But that is like Cisco Morris going hard, by the way. You know what I mean? Like, he's a very open guy, but like he. He. Whatever. Whatever was just brought to his attention. Like he's like, no, we're not even considering that. We're not considered. We're drawing a line in the gravel.

[Luke Burbank]

Absolutely. Yeah. Beautiful purple ball.

[Andrew Walsh]

I knew that one was going to be coming up pretty soon.

[Luke Burbank]

The other thing that I didn't tell you about get to on yesterday's show was actually my long day's journey into night. Trying to get to Davenport, Iowa from Portland, Oregon, and which involved me flying very early on Sunday morning. And I'm gonna leave out the whole something is amiss with the upgrade system at Alaska Airlines. By the way, Andrew, I know that's not like not the most relatable content for the listeners generally, other than our friend broadcast Barry and me complaining about not getting to fly first class is not, it's not the, you know, best look, let's just say. But there is something up right now because. And I'm about to go on a forum about to do something I rarely do, which is go find some Fly Talk forum and ask people, is this happening to you? Because probably the last four flights I've been the first on the list for an upgrade and there have been available seats in first class as of like an hour or two before the flight. And then mysteriously when the flight takes off, all of first class is full. So either I've just had tremendously weird luck that I've been on four flights where someone has decided to buy two first class tickets like an hour before a flight, a 7am flight out of Portland on a Sunday, or I don't know what's going on. There must be some. There's something going on with the way these upgrades work.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was very, very difficult for me not to interrupt you during that because you don't have to go to a forum. A forum has been copied and pasted and sent to us. Listener Lee sent us an email late last week saying, and I'm looking for it here. These were more towards, directed towards you, so I might have deleted them now. But the first one was Lee saying I had something very similar happen. Like Lee said, I don't travel as much you, but I'm, you know, pretty regular flyer. I know the rhythm of these.

[Luke Burbank]

I've got this in front of me now.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you have the second one? Do you have the follow up? He's like, the same thing happened to me and he developed a theory about it and then he followed up and said, yep, my theory is right. People are talking about this in the chat rooms and in the clubs that apparently it looks like Alaska might be doing something different where they're making it more available to sell seats that you used to be waiting for.

[Luke Burbank]

Aha. This was. I'm. I'm kind of speed reading Lee's second email and it also, it confirms a suspicion that I've had, which is Alaska Airlines has probably started if it's an hour before the two hours before the flight and they have seats in first class that no one has purchased. They and someone is buying a coach seat, they will offer them an upgrade to first class for a shockingly small amount of money, which any normal person would probably take. Like why not, you know. And so this is a bummer because what it means is us hardworking road warriors with our Tumi luggage who are obsessively refreshing the screen to see how we're doing with our upgrade are actually being punished for the fact that our ticket has been purchased well in advance.

[Andrew Walsh]

It does seem to devalue the whole point system, doesn't it? Like you were taking you and I know broadcast Barry, but you did it at least once, took a specific flight just to rack up a bunch of miles. So you dedicated a lot of time on, you know, a long flight and the cost of that flight. And I know we got in this whole thing.

[Luke Burbank]

Germany.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. And that was last time. And this time you almost did it, but then you thought you bought some points, but it turns out the points you bought aren't, aren't as valid as the points you earn. And like people are going through like some pretty great lengths, yourself included, obviously. And now suddenly they've totally devalued that. Why would you even do that anymore? I guess they can just make more money by reducing the price of these ticket, these first class tickets at the last minute and just like, you know, get the money right there. Cash on a barrel.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, like they're getting $400. Let's just go with at least example. He says on the red eye from Maui to san Diego tonight, 100k. First on the upgrade list. I get upgraded on this flight probably 90% of the time. A few days before the flight. It, it cost you $1800 to basically upgrade to first class. Three hours before the flight, the price drops to 200. Yeah, I talked to the agent at bag check about it. An hour before boarding, both seats still available. She's confident I'll get the upgrade 20 minutes before boarding. Upgrades are sold. Not sure if they lowered the price again. So. So basically, yeah, I mean the upside for Alaska Airlines is they made an extra, let's say $400 on that flight. They wouldn't have the, the downside is that you're right, it's going to over time make Lee and myself and other people like we're not going to crawl through over broken glass the way we have been in order to get these upgrades. If you're not going to get them, I'll just start flying whomever and I'LL just, I'll just basically make peace with the fact that my days of ever getting to be in first class are over.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. And again, I guess somebody must be looking at the numbers and just saying, well, because if a whole bunch of people stop like opting into this, you know, system then, and they're just going to make the money right there at the gate by lowering eighteen hundred dollar tickets to $200. They must have just made a decision, huh?

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. And. But they, they should. Who knows, Maybe it's somewhere. By the way, I think what I was reading was Lee posting from an Alaska Reddit page. I don't think that was our friend Lee talking about flying from Maui and getting upgraded 90% of the time just so people know who the editorial voice was there.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, some of it was his story. And then I think he switched to copying and pasting some stuff he found online.

[Luke Burbank]

But yeah, I'm sure maybe somewhere deep in the legalese of the Alaska website, maybe they've, you know, mentioned that there's a, you know, that they're doing this now or that, you know, who knows? Or maybe they don't, I mean, they don't have to tell you this. Like, I don't think they, they're legally obligated probably to report this out to people, but if it keeps happening again, something has definitely shifted. And it's been very confusing for me because, and I'm, I'm very sensitive. I'm a canary in this coal mine. Like even that time when that baby was up there and I was like, then the flight or the person at the gate was kind of saying, well, we don't just, we don't just give these seats away. Which she was right. They don't just give them away, but what they do is they sell them now apparently for dirt cheap. And like, that would also explain why somebody went from not even having a seat on the plane, not even having an assigned seat, to suddenly being in first class. It's because basically you, you know, you were looking at the list, you were maybe on the flight, but you hadn't actually gotten assigned seat. And then you found out that for make 100 more dollars, you could actually just go right to first class. I mean, that's a sweet deal if you, but if you get that. But my point is, I am probably, again, this is not the best look for me, but I am probably more aware of a disturbance in this force than, well, even the people that work at Alaska Airlines because they are not like living and dying by the question of if we're going to get upgraded on our way to Chicago O' Hare at 7. And that's the other thing. I was flying at 7 in the morning on a Sunday, and the flight was practically empty. There was. It was. All of the middle seats were open, except guess which one, Andrew. The row that I was in, it fell. Three people in my row, which also was a major bummer. That's actually not even what I want to talk about, though. When I got to o' Hare, the flight just. My flight kept from o' Hare to Moline, Illinois to the Quad Cities Airport was delayed, I don't know, six or seven times. And there was. It was just chaos at o' Hare, absolute chaos. And at one point, so I literally. The gate changed probably five times for.

[Andrew Walsh]

Me, and by the same kind of area. Or were these pretty drastic changes?

[Luke Burbank]

No, we. I ended up creating this unlikely cohort of people that I had met at the restaurant because we were all just sitting there having some, like, lunch. And then the woman next to me was like, ugh. She kept getting annoyed at her phone. And I said, are you on the flight to Moline? And she's like, yeah. And it just keeps getting changed and. And they keep changing the gate. And so then it was going to be at this. I went literally to a totally different terminal where the gate had supposedly been moved. And then when I got there, we're sitting there for 20 minutes. I get an alert on my phone that it's actually moved back to where I just was, but, like, one gate over, back to the K gates or whatever. Then the flight, the plane lands and, like, this is going to be our flight to Moline. We're very excited. Other people are having their flights canceled completely. Kalamazoo was shit out of luck. I was sitting there and they're like, the flight to Kalamazoo, which doesn't even sound like a real thing. Peace and love to our listeners in Kalamazoo, Michigan. But, like, the flight attendant just going. The flight to Kalamazoo, I was expecting it to be Ben Stein. We have an announcement. The flight to Kalamazoo has been canceled. And then John Candy just gets up, very frustrated.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, it sounds like something that somebody says in a writer's room.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. So we, like, we at least allegedly had this plane. And then the. Our pilot and the co pilot are standing there about to board our plane, and then they get some alert on their phone and they go, oh, I guess we're going on another flight. And then they just leave.

[Andrew Walsh]

Hmm.

[Luke Burbank]

They take about 20 steps. And then they get another update on their phone and they're like, oh, I guess actually we are flying this plane. And then they just come back to our plane. So it was.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's very strange. I don't ever have seen my flight crew just get up and leave the plane. I don't know if I want to see that exactly.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, they were waiting to board. Then they thought they were supposed to go fly a different flight, which would have been really bad for us because then we would have not had a crew. They started going to their next destination and were told to come back to fly us to Moline. The actual most dramatic part of the day, though, unfolded when I was having some lunch at this, like, sushi place. And they have like TVs and stuff, right? And I hear this guy just going off on the, like, server.

[Andrew Walsh]

The.

[Luke Burbank]

The lady, the woman behind the counter because she can't get some golf tournament on the TV for him.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, my God. And he was so bar my dude.

[Luke Burbank]

And not even a sports bar. Right. It isn't. You know, there's like a Chicago Cubs bar in the airport that's probably very tuned in. And this, this. You know what they were playing? They were playing some movie with Noah Wiley where he's like, it's kind of an off brand Indiana Jones. Is it like King Solomon's Mines or something or whatever? I don't know. I didn't know this, but Noah Wylie was in some kind of a Indiana Joan Jones ish movie at some point that I watched about half of while I was sitting there eating. But this poor woman, she's got like the, you know, she's trying to use the on demand whatever you call it, the DirecTV thing and stuff. And it's like, those are notoriously hard to operate even at sports bars. Like, you and I have both been in a million sports bars where you're like, do you have this game? And like, half of the job if you work at a sports bar is getting the game on. And even there, that's always. It's always a situation, right? So now how about this woman who doesn't work at a sports bar in an airport.

[Andrew Walsh]

In an airport, you don't get to choose what you're gonna watch at an airport bar. Like, you can ask, but you have to accept the answer.

[Luke Burbank]

And you don't get to yell at them.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, you. This guy was never get to yell at anybody.

[Luke Burbank]

No. And especially not in this situation. He's just like. And he's fully having a meltdown. Like, he's like, just forget it. Just give me my, you know, just. Fine then. I don't. And, like, he had ordered a beer that he didn't want to pay for now because, like, you know, since he wasn't going to get to watch his. His golf tournament that he wanted to watch, and he was. And he was being so rude to this woman, and literally everybody kind of stopped. And I was just like, am I gonna get involved here or not? Also, it helps. I was not drinking, so I felt like. I felt like, somehow more liberated by that because I was like, I'm kind of in my right mind right now. So I just, like, took out my AirPods and I just said, hey, it's an airport. And he goes, what? And I go, it's an airport, dude. And I go, and yes, I'm talking to you. And it was really interesting because. Because this guy went from being an absolute turd to this woman who is. To an absolutely terrified that, like, being called out.

[Andrew Walsh]

Look at you.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I'm not trying to tell this story of, like, I'm being a hero at all, because also, I was talking past a person who I could tell this guy who was next to me was like, I don't know if I want to be in the middle.

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't want to be in between these two guys. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And I had no intention of, like, getting out of my chair or, like, physically threatening this guy. You know, again, C. Not having vitamin A in my system probably helped.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, can you imagine getting into a bar fight in an airport bar, Luke? That would be a new low for anybody, I think.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you think. Have I done that already?

[Andrew Walsh]

Have you?

[Luke Burbank]

I thought maybe that was a reference to some story from my.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no.

[Luke Burbank]

My besotted youth.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, I know some people who are, like, recovering alcoholics, and everybody's sort of got their rock bottom moment. You know, they vary. I don't think this was somebody's rock bottom moment, but I remember somebody in my life talking about, like, they really realized one of the things that happened near the end of their. Of their drinking before they went into the program was like, they were traveling kind of a lot anyway, I think for work, but they were in an airport bar and they just missed their first. I think they just missed their flight accidentally and then just camped out at the bar for, like, the rest of the day. I don't remember the details of it, but it just was something about, like, you know, you get a beer, you get a drink at an airport bar. But then at one point, you just, like, start missing your flights, and then you don't even start trying to.

[Luke Burbank]

I've had that happen, by the way.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

I missed a connection in Las Vegas, and I was sitting in the waiting area playing a slot machine and drinking and literally was so out of my mind that I did. I did not realize it was time to go walk over and get onto the airplane and just fully missed the flight. You know, what I would say is I kind of can imagine getting into a fight at an airport bar because there is a lot of alcohol flowing and emotions run high for people.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. I'm sorry.

[Luke Burbank]

People are cranky, Andy.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

But it was. Again, I realized as I'm telling the story that it is kind of me being like, you know, Luke crusader for justice or something. I don't mean it to sound this way, but, like, I just said to the guy, I go, it's an airport. I go, if you. And this is. I said, also, have you heard of Fubo? He goes, what? I go, do you need to borrow $20 so you can watch it on your iPad, dude, because I'll loan you $20. And I could just see that he was, like, so mad still and sputtering, but definitely did not want. He was not, you know, probably a guy who wanted to get in. And again, I was just sitting on my stool. I wasn't, like, coming at him or anything.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And I could just see he was just so. He was so mad and confused because he was still mad at the person working at the bar, but also now he focus was on me, and he was just, like, sputtering, and I was just like. And. And he goes, well, they don't. They don't even have the golf tournament on here. And I go, yeah, well, that doesn't mean you can ruin her day.

[Andrew Walsh]

They don't have. He didn't mean on Fubo. I thought for a second, like, he's actually.

[Luke Burbank]

Now we didn't get into programming.

[Andrew Walsh]

It would be amazing. You're kind of like. Then it ends up, you guys talking about who's starting for the Mariners, right? No, I.

[Luke Burbank]

Then we're best friends.

[Andrew Walsh]

He just sort of restated his thesis. By the way, is the server clocking any of this? Is the server in earshot? Is she getting a little bit nervous seeing you get a little aggro?

[Luke Burbank]

I didn't know. I was not aware of the servers at this time. But what basically happened was the guy angrily signed his little thing or whatever, and he kind of gathered up his stuff, and that. That was where I Was like, all right, I have now. I have now started this. This snowball rolling down this hill. Now he has to. This guy's leaving. Is he going to come over to me? Am I going to have to get off the stool? Is this going to be a whole thing? And in fact, he did not. He just kind of left meekly with his stuff. And then the waitress, the server came over and said, hey, thank you so much.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, nice.

[Luke Burbank]

And I was like, hey, no problem. Again, I realize as I'm telling the story that it sounds like I'm some kind of a hero, but.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, that tells a lot. That tells a lot of the story. Because you could just. This is one of those stories where you could tell it from everybody's perspective. We just heard it from your perspective. This guy probably told this to somebody in his life. That would be an interesting perspective. I'm just trying to watch the game. They're being unhelpful, and the guy's yelling at me. Then there's this bro at the end of the bar who's. You know, the server's perspective is interesting. The person in between the two of you. I would totally. What do you call that type of filmmaking where you see it from every different angle?

[Luke Burbank]

Well, Rao Shamon is the famous example. There's. What's that?

[Andrew Walsh]

I almost said Rochambeau, which is different. Anyway, I would love this from everybody's perspective, but honestly, I think that the server thanked you tells a lot to me how it was interpreted, like, the level to which he was being just, say, verbally abusive to this person or whatever word you want to use. And then. And then it says a lot about, like, what your tone was and how the whole thing was handled. Because I could also see a server just being like, listen, I don't need this on my hands either, but if she thanked you, then it sounds like you did the right thing.

[Luke Burbank]

And again, not to keep going back to this, but probably because I wasn't drunk. I did not get. I didn't make any physical threats at all. I just basically said, you're being rude and it's not necessary. I did offer to loan him money for Fubo. I did do that part, but probably. Yeah, the reason that it ended up working out okay and did not add more stress to this server's life was because I wasn't getting up off of the chair and, like, going chest to chest with the guy or saying, you bleed for me or doing any of my normal antics. So it didn't ever get to where. Yeah, like. Like, oh, my God. Are these two grown men gonna, like, punch each other in my. In my restaurant? Which would be majorly stressful for them.

[Andrew Walsh]

It seems like such a bad place to get into a bar fight. I just got to reiterate that you got like, is this a federal crime now because you're at a port. I don't know. Airport. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

I see a lot on TikTok. I see so much body cam footage of people being arrested at airports for being drunk and disorderly. It's. There's basically like. It all stems from drunkenness, and there's kind of like. Basically, there's sort of two main. Well, there's three main camps. Okay? There's three main. There's three legs in the stool of disorderly airport conduct. Okay? And again, it all starts from the point of being drunk, but one of them is, you missed your flight. They just closed the door to your flight, and you're screaming at the gate agent and are threatening them, and the airport police have been called on you. That's. That's one. The other is you're actually on the plane. You somehow got on the plane, but you've now been deemed too drunk to stay on the plane. They have not taken off yet, but you refused to leave the plane, and now the police are standing in the aisle trying to get you to leave the flight.

[Andrew Walsh]

I saw one of the.

[Luke Burbank]

And the third is you have decided, for some reason, drunkenly, to not pay your tab at one of the airport bars or restaurants and are now sitting waiting for your flight.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's happened. That's crazy.

[Luke Burbank]

Multiple ones like this. Not. In fact. I just watched one the other day during my many, many hours. Excuse me. At o' Hare Airport. I watched one. I mean, you want to talk about irony? I watched this guy who had a $35 tab at the, like, whatever, you know, fill in the blank, like, bar in the airport, and he wouldn't pay the tab. And so the server, who's still, like, fully in her uniform and everything is like, yeah, that's him. And the airport police are like, sir, you have a $35 tab. You need to pay it. And that's all the guy has to do is just pay a $35 tab. But he was so drunk. He was a kind of older guy, maybe 60s, and he just kept saying, like, oh, the cop had, like, touched him, like. Like, I think put his hand on his shoulder or something. He was like, don't you ever touch me again in your life. Capiche? Just kept saying, don't you ever touch me again in your life. Capiche? He was really into the word capiche.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's so funny, Beeves. And I say capiche. There's an old Mr. Show sketch where some guy says. Or no, maybe it's Tim and Eric. And we say to each other all the time, I'm worried that it'll slip out in public at some point.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, don't get very drunk and then refuse to pay your bill at the airport restaurant because it may come out at the wrong time. Because this guy's saying capiche? Over and over again. And him telling the cop, don't you ever touch me again in your life. I was thinking it's unlikely your paths will cross again. I think that's a pretty easy thing for this guy to commit to. But also, what's so weird about watching these things unfold is you just have to think about what is this person going to be thinking tomorrow when they wake up in airport jail over a thing that was so avoidable.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, generally speaking, in these. It's just, could you just pay your tab, please? And it's like, instead of paying the $35, he's now, you know, trespassed from the airport. He's. I don't know what the. You know, it's probably a misdemeanor, whatever it is, but it's like, it was probably a resisting charge if he gets into it, you know, with these. If he's pushing around with the cops, it's like, oh, man, dude, you are good. It's weird to watch someone kind of in real time go. And you're like, oh, man, you are going to hate yourself tomorrow so much for this, dude. Capiche? This is so not worth it, man.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, obviously alcohol is a powerful drug and it makes people act like this anyway. But then I do think it's combined with this idea that people think there's some. Especially if you're not a seasoned traveler. Or maybe either way, you just see yourself as a different person. I think in an airport, it really does feel like a no man's land. It feels like nobody knows international waters. It's international waters. Yeah. By the way, the thing I was thinking of is from. Oh, actually, I got a couple of things. First of all, I want to blow your mind here for a second. Okay.

[Luke Burbank]

Okay.

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm going to blow your mind here for a second.

[Luke Burbank]

Chris is watching.

[Andrew Walsh]

Chris is. He knows exactly where I'm going with this. I think what you saw on the television, which explains why they wouldn't want to change. It was part of the Librarian franchise.

[Luke Burbank]

Is that the Noah Wylie movie?

[Andrew Walsh]

Listen to this. The Librarian is a franchise. I wish I had said Librarian better there. I'm going to start over. The Librarian is a franchise that includes a series of original fantasy adventures made for television. Films from TNT starring Noah Wiley. Definitely TNT starring Noah Wiley as the Librarian who protects a secret collection of magical artifacts. It sort of sounds like that. What's that Nick Cage kind of kid?

[Luke Burbank]

Oh, National Treasure.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sounds like a national treasure thing, right? It looks like they're, they're based on books and novels. I don't know, maybe one of the books is short stories. I don't know why they break them apart like that. But then they end up making a television series called the Librarians and the Librarians the Next Chapter. And here are the films. The Librarian, Quest for the Spear, the Librarian Return to King Solomon's Minds, and the Librarian, really. Curse of the Judas Chalice. I love the way those names make me realize like all of these, like early 2000s Indiana Jones esque adventure movies, you could create like a name generator for them, right? Quest, Return, curse. You need some sort of like an action. But then the Judas Chalice, like you just need an adjective, a noun and a verb sort of. And just like kind of mix them all up and you can come up with a bunch of names like that.

[Luke Burbank]

It actually looked kind of entertaining, like the, the volume wasn't on, so I didn't really know what they were exactly doing. But it seemed like a kind of a fun movie to just sort of while away like a rainy Saturday afternoon with. You know what I mean? Like, I actually thought, oh, I could.

[Andrew Walsh]

Kind of see.

[Luke Burbank]

Wiley away. Noah Wiley away. But, but anyway, yeah, so that was my, that was my. Oh, and then the other thing that happened was when I landed, finally we get to Moline and I go to call the lift to go to the hotel and I had. It's a little confusing because I'm. We're filming in Iowa, but I'm staying in the Quads. I'm staying in, in Davenport, Iowa, but, but I flew into Illinois and these are these quad cities, these four cities that are kind of clustered on the Mississippi river. And I thought I had sort of checked it out on the map beforehand, but you know, I'm prone to like flying to the wrong island in Hawaii and things like that. I get my bags and I go to call the lift and the. It tells me that to get me to this hotel that I'm at, it's going to be $400. And I was like, oh, no. Am I literally, like, all the way across the state from where it is I'm supposed to be even going or nor. And it was just, like, a weird glitch with the system. I just, like, closed out of it. And then I got back in, and it was like, $16.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, but $16 even. That's amazing. Beej and I were gonna take a car from South Seattle back up to north Seattle after the fish sticks game. I was like, we'll take a bus all the way down. We'll take a car that was almost $80. So bus halfway there. So even just to get to one side of the city, to the other here in Seattle, that would have been, like, an $80. The fact that you knocked it down to from 400 to 16 must have been a very pleasant surprise.

[Luke Burbank]

I mean, I don't know if it thought the. The hotel that I'm staying at, I don't think this matters. It's called Blackhawk. It's. It's like a Bonvoy thing. But anyway, I think maybe it thought I was going to. There's this, like, town in Colorado that's kind of near Denver, actually, called Blackhawk that has, like, a million casinos in it. I don't know if it thought I was trying to go to color. That seems. Do you think it could get me to Colorado for $400, actually? Seems like that's too low.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's. Now that's too low. Yeah. I don't know.

[Luke Burbank]

So I don't know where it thought. I don't know what. I mean. I had put in the name of the hotel correctly, and Davenport, Iowa. And it just came up with this insane number. And I don't know if it was. Maybe. Maybe what happened was, like, at that very moment in time, all of the Lyft drivers had logged off, which had created this, like, basically artificial crazy surge price or something that, like, only existed in that moment of time. Let's just say. Yeah, that, like, maybe that's like. Let's say there's, like. There's 20 Lyft drivers that are usually in the Davenport, Iowa, area or the Moline, Illinois, area. But for whatever reason, all of them went into a Jimmy John's to get a sandwich at the same time. All of them logged off of the app for just that moment. And there was, like, one person left. And therefore, maybe that does something with the kind of surge pricing with the demand. Like, if you only have one driver, it just shoots. I don't know. It was the weirdest thing, but I really had this moment standing in the Moline airport going, are you kidding me right now? Am I in, like, literally in the wrong part of the state? Right, for this?

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you keep singing Moline to the tune of Jolene? Because every time you say that, I'm singing in my head. Moline.

[Luke Burbank]

I have not stopped since. Since arriving. Moline, Moline, Moline, Moline. Boy, talk about realizing you can't sing when you're mid song.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, no, you started. You started in a nice register.

[Luke Burbank]

I started in a bad place with that.

[Andrew Walsh]

And you have higher expectations for yourself than I do for myself. I believe that everybody there, at least anybody who knows that song, has this experience. Right. Like, don't you think you could do. I mean, you're not in Moline right now, I guess, but I feel like if you go to Moline, you could almost Pee Wee Herman it right when he says, the stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas, everybody finishes it for him.

[Luke Burbank]

I thought you were going to say, if I go to a biker bar in Moline, I could win everyone over by getting up on the bar and doing a dance to the song Jolene, but changing the lyrics.

[Andrew Walsh]

Tequila. Anyway, yeah, so I do think that's. That's definitely, definitely a hazard of going in there. But, yeah, no, it's been.

[Luke Burbank]

It has been. It's been jangling around my brain this whole time. Definitely. We was hoping for some razzle dazzle. Razzle dazzle. That's right, man. Razzle dazzle. On your mark. On your mark. Get set, get set now. Ready, ready, Go. Everybody rattle dazzle. All right, it's time to thank some dazzling donors. These folks are donating a dazzling amount of dough to TBTL voluntarily. They don't have to do this, but they choose to. And that's how this thing can exist. 100% listener supported podcasting right here. Getting. Getting excited. Andrew, about the Thawne.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yep.

[Luke Burbank]

We excited to. To tell everybody about it. I think the listeners are going to get a real kick out of it. So watch this space for that information. But in the meantime, we want to say thanks to our pal, David Crutz in Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan. Now, David does not give a pronouncer. He says good luck and does a little kind of emoji that's kind of like laughing or whatever. And what I'm realizing is off air. Andrew, you said we didn't get a pronouncer with David's name. And I said, oh, I think It's Crutz. I think it might be Kreutz. I think this might be a Ziggy. Now that last name is the same last name of a University of Washington husky named Olin Kreutz and longtime Chicago Bear. So that's my reference point for the name. But I have this distant back of my mind memory that this is a variation on that.

[Andrew Walsh]

Should we hear what the janky Internet says about this? How to pronounce this name? I typed that in. Let's see what they say here.

[Luke Burbank]

Yes.

[Andrew Walsh]

Pronouncenames.com. there we go.

[Luke Burbank]

Fruits.

[Andrew Walsh]

Crutes.

[Luke Burbank]

Crutes. Okay, if you're saying it differently, David, you're wrong. This is a weird place for you to get that message.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a 30 second video. I am not hitting go on this over and over. It just keeps saying, do we have.

[Luke Burbank]

The correct pronunciation of your name?

[Andrew Walsh]

Are you kidding me?

[Luke Burbank]

That's great.

[Andrew Walsh]

You tell me.

[Luke Burbank]

I really like that website.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I guess so. Croots it is.

[Luke Burbank]

All right. Thank you, David. David is in Japan and says first, let me start by renewing my plea to retire the Razzle Dazzle song. Oh, too late, David.

[Andrew Walsh]

I should have. Well, I could have at least not if I had pre read this. I could have at least not played it there.

[Luke Burbank]

But, oh well, this year I'll only offer one suggestion to replace it. Yubnub Celebration and Finale. That actually would be kind of fun. That is a very. Let's see, do we have it here? I don't have that audio with me on the road here.

[Andrew Walsh]

But how about. I mean, that is underneath you a few for the rest of the message just to honor David's wishes.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, let's hear it. First of all, let's hear it kind of in context so as if it were the Razzle Dazzle song. But I'm just going to do my little spiel about dazzling donors. Okay. So we can get this.

[Andrew Walsh]

Okay. Yeah. So I can't tag it with the Razzle Dazzle drop at the beginning from the movie. I just gotta kind of start the music here. I could try that, but it would get real complicated. Let's just do this. It's intense.

[Luke Burbank]

All right. Let's thank some dazzling donors. These, of course, are the donors who are yub nubbing a dazzling amount of dough. And this is how we can keep TBTL going all these years later due to folks like David Cruz. See, this song has more like, has more not Yubnub part of it than I realized. We'd have to edit it down just to this part, don't you think?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I think so. I also don't know who's performing. This is that. I have a feeling this is not the version that appeared in the movie. I think I just clicked. I clicked on the very first link that popped up and I wondering if there's a bunch of Star wars enthusiasts.

[Luke Burbank]

You think this is the Mysterious Voices of Bulgaria?

[Andrew Walsh]

What is that?

[Luke Burbank]

You didn't have that music come into your early public radio days? I don't think there was this. There's this choir from Bulgaria called like the Mysterious Voices of Bulgaria. It was sort of like, I didn't know about the Cocteau Twins yet. It was kind of Cocteau Twins for people that hadn't heard about the Cocteau Twins, I guess, or whatever. And it was one of those things I just heard playing some crazy, you know, Saturday afternoon public radio thing or whatever. Maybe we're using it for the credits music on alternative radio or something. But I just got really into it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, really? No, I don't think. I don't think I've heard of that. You know, I made my little putamaya joke before that. You and I returned to quite a bit because those were hot in public radio circles in the late 90s and early 2000s. But no, that one I have not heard of. I'm getting really in my head about this, though. I think this is some cover song of this. I mean, it's not bad.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, it sounds a little more cuz.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, that sounds real.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, that sounds bad. I'm don't. God, it's like, really, I'm having like a, you know, an endorphin release. I'm thinking about a. Having a. Like a fight on a jet. What do they call those? Speeder bikes.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh, speeder bikes.

[Luke Burbank]

Speeder bike fight. In the Forest of Endor.

[Andrew Walsh]

I had that toy growing up. You could push a button and the thing explained exploded into four different or three or four different pieces.

[Luke Burbank]

I told you, this sounds like I'm trying to lean into the Dickensian nature of my childhood. But I remember I had like a. Like a wood. Like a long piece of wood you could sit on that was in our garage when we lived on 76th Street. And my dad, I think, attached a couple of little kind of handles to it. And I would just sit on there and close my eyes and pretend I was on a speeder bike. And it was pretty fun, actually.

[Andrew Walsh]

I love it.

[Luke Burbank]

Like, it was actually like.

[Andrew Walsh]

It was.

[Luke Burbank]

It was enjoyable anyway, David, we gave it a try, but we're going back to the razzle dazzle song. I'm sorry. David says second, I don't have a business or cause to promote, so instead I'll promote my current country of residence. Japan. Y' all should come visit Japan, especially Americans, given how strong the dollar is to the yen right now. I've never been to Japan.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yo, me neither.

[Luke Burbank]

And I should. I really should. I think I. In order to just understand more of the world, I need to check out Japan. Japan is an amazing place with something for everyone. Food, nature, technology, anime, sports. If you like it, Japan has it in some form or another. Plus, Japan is incredibly safe, easy to get around. The transit system is awesome. You'd like that, Andrew. And the people here are super welcoming and friendly. Don't speak Japanese. Don't worry, English signage is everywhere. So what are you waiting for, dummies? Come visit Japan. And feel free to reach out to me on slack if you do. I'm happy to help you plan your trip. Oh, David, that's really thoughtful.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

TBT SUGOI Edition. Andrew, do you think that they have.

[Andrew Walsh]

The equivalent of the E line in Japan and not. Not. I don't mean like a rapid ride, like bus. I mean the behavior that one sees on the E Line, man, it's.

[Luke Burbank]

That is a good question. I want to say no, but it's because I have this stereotypical idea of Japan that I want to be careful about. Even if it's. My mother has before. My mother has said things that I think we could interpret as not particularly evolved around groups of people. But she says. But it's a compliment. Like if she's complimenting the entire group of people on her perceptions about them being good at math or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

I know what you're talking about.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I know, but I know it's a compliment. But we still. We don't. We don't generalize that way. We shouldn't. So I don't want to generalize. But I do have this idea. I mean, as David says in his message of Japan being a very. Kind of rule following culture generally and like things being very clean and like I'm feeling like it would be less the case that you might get hassled the way you've been occasionally hassled on the E Line. But I am. That is such a wild guess by me about. About what goes on in a place I've never been yet. Japan. So I want to be. I want to be delicate.

[Andrew Walsh]

Do you know, Luke and I don't think you do that when you're at a white center fish sticks game. I guess technically wc, I think they call it Dub C Fish sticks. Like Dub C wc when you're at a dub C fish sticks game, it begins with a little like motorized cart coming out onto the field. Kind of like that little boat that would, would bring pitchers from the bullpen to the mound back in the very earliest days of the Mariners. It's a small little vehicle like that. It's a tribute to the rapid ride lines of the Metro. It is a little E line or G line. It doesn't specify which line it is.

[Luke Burbank]

Is it sponsored by, by King County Metro?

[Andrew Walsh]

I'm assuming it is because it would be an interesting thing just to gravitate towards if you were just like spitballing as a baseball team. And so I'm guessing that it's a promotional thing. But this little bus comes out and it's kind of got the hallmark of a rapid ride lines. It's kind of got the, the red banner on it. And I felt, I took some. It surprised me so much I didn't get a good photo of it, but I did get a photo of it. I'll try to put it on the show page today. I felt very seen. I had just taken, I was going.

[Luke Burbank]

To say I took pretty much to.

[Andrew Walsh]

The H to get there. And then what do I see on the field? Welcoming me.

[Luke Burbank]

By the way, I had a thought after yesterday's show, which was if they want to really lean into that fake baseball, breaking the glass of the car, get it sponsored by Safelight.

[Andrew Walsh]

Oh yeah, that's really, that's a great idea.

[Luke Burbank]

You know what I mean? Like, like you do the, the clang and then the, you know, the sound of the ball and the breaking glass and then Safelight repair, Safelight replace. I mean it's the comedy rights itself.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's a self fulfilling prophecy.

[Luke Burbank]

That's all I'm saying. This is, that's a freebie. Fish sticks. Go make some money.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, I'm just glad that, I mean, because that's the thing. Baseball has always had a problem with finding sponsorship deals and like wedging them into various aspects of the game. So I'm glad you're out there looking, looking for opportunities like that. So thank you for.

[Luke Burbank]

Well, I'm just saying for the fish sticks, not for the Mariners. You know, it's like I, you know, I'm all, I'm just trying to help these, these small baseball startups, the major league teams can, can, you know, take a long walk off a short pier. Generally Speaking as far as I'm concerned. Maestro, Maestro, I know that's not fair.

[Andrew Walsh]

I forgot what we were doing. But let me try this. This is gonna be a disaster.

[Luke Burbank]

Really forgot what we were doing. We've also got to thank Nicole Oswill in Temecula, California. Nicole says, last year in my dazzling message, I briefly mentioned my oldest son. And when my message was read, I promised my youngers they'd get a shout out this year. My 9 year old son is an amazing straight A student and three sport all star baseball, basketball and flag football. He's got my type A personality and he puts it to good use. Wow, that's a well rounded kid.

[Andrew Walsh]

It well two too well rounded like leave some for the rest of us, you know.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah. You were thinking about going out for the middle school basketball team, weren't you? And now you can't because Nicole's son is dominating at the power forward position.

[Andrew Walsh]

There were, I mean there were issues. There were other issues aside from that as well. About me getting on the team, apparently. Something about bylaws.

[Luke Burbank]

You had a very convincing birth certificate though that did prove that you were. It appeared to prove that you were actually 12 years old. But then, you know, photographic evidence really didn't support that I was really.

[Andrew Walsh]

I mean, not that I'm going out for these teams. When I say leave some for the rest of us, it's not like I don't begrudge this nine year old, this nine year old being good at a bunch of things. I just like those of us who lack a lot of talent in a lot of different arenas. When you hear that somebody's both a straight A student and a star in three different sports, you're like, come on. And then I'm over here, you know, just kicking at the dirt.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. It's a zero sum game.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

As far as talent, there's a finite amount of talent that's distributed through the human population. It sounds like Nicole's nine year old is hogging it.

[Andrew Walsh]

That's right.

[Luke Burbank]

Quit hogging it. When's the last time you said quit hogging that?

[Andrew Walsh]

That sounds like something somebody would say in a I think you should leave sketch. Well, he's hogging it.

[Luke Burbank]

I do. I think he might actually say that about the loaded nachos. She's hogging all the.

[Andrew Walsh]

Maybe he, maybe that's what I.

[Luke Burbank]

He's hogging all the good ones or something.

[Andrew Walsh]

What did I do? I did. I referred to myself.

[Luke Burbank]

You say that. Oh, sorry. Did you say that in Ohio when you were a kid? Did you guys say Hogan it all?

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. You're like, usually a sibling kind of thing or something like that. Yeah. I do think I referred to myself as an oinkster yesterday at one point, because I remember making, you know, I don't know what I was. Was I admitting to finishing something in the fridge or I just remember saying, oh, Genevieve, I'm sorry. I was a bit of an oinkster yesterday, and I think that that caught her off guard a little bit.

[Luke Burbank]

What? What had you done that?

[Andrew Walsh]

That's what I'm trying to figure out. I'm guessing that I might have. Did I finish? Maybe I finished something. Or maybe we're talking about my popsicle consumption. Oh, by the way, quick record correction here. I told you that Genevieve always busted my chops for getting sugar free popsicles, and I swear she did, but I don't. I don't think I realized she had not tried one. And I come home yesterday, you know, like late afternoon or something, and Genevieve's like, oh, because I just bought a box, another box of sugar free popsicles. And she's like, I hope it's okay. I'm sorry. I'm kind of going to town on your popsicles. I'm like, no, like, God bless. I mean, I love the plum popsicles.

[Luke Burbank]

That you left in the freezer. I've eaten them.

[Andrew Walsh]

No, but I was like, more people to the popsicle party. Absolutely. Like, you know, chomp all you want. I'll make more. But also, I said, but I thought you don't like the sugar free ones. And I don't even know. I'm trying to figure out if in that moment she realized they were sugar free or. She was also very pleasantly surprised. She even, like, acknowledged. She's like, I made fun of you for these, but they're great. I'm like, you know what I mean? They're not as good as full sugar. They kind of. They're. They don't break apart. They just kind of break apart a little bit differently or whatever. They have a different mouth feel, if you could believe me, actually saying that in earnestness about a popsicle. But honestly, once you get used to a sugar free popsicle, it ain't bad. And Genevieve is now on. On team Sugar Free Pop.

[Luke Burbank]

Love it. So now you don't have to, like, you know, have separate, like, popsicle collections in different, you know, parts of the freezer or whatever.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Would you eat my. My hotel room has, like, a little kitchenette in it. And I was looking in. Well, actually, what I was doing was unplugging the refrigerator because it sounds like a Mac truck idling. And you know, I take the audio quality of this show very seriously. But I also open the freezer and notice that there was ice, there's an ice maker. And I went ahead and put some of that ice into a cup and had some ice water which was delicious. Is that weird? Would you eat the ice out of the ice maker in a hotel room like that? Like not the public one that's down the hall but like the refrigerator one.

[Andrew Walsh]

It's.

[Luke Burbank]

Do you trust that ice?

[Andrew Walsh]

I don't think I've ever stayed. And that sounds like high cotton to me. I don't think I've ever had an ice maker in my own hotel room before.

[Luke Burbank]

It's part of full size refrigerator. A full size refrigerator. So it's just like imagine a typical ice maker in the freezer of a regular fridge from your house.

[Andrew Walsh]

Then yes, I think I do it. If it was like some sort of weird standalone appliance that they had there, whatever. I definitely want to check it out. I used to never have any, any hesitation about that stuff at all until about, I don't know. I remember I was working with you, a Cairo. Maybe this was on like 15 years ago or something when we were on the radio doing the show with Dave Ross. Maybe I was reading some stories about how gross coffee makers are in like the individual coffee makers in a hotel room. And like how first of all people use. Some people use them for weird things other than coffee. You don't want to think about that too much. But also just like think about a coffee maker. When you close that lid, all that condensation just stays in there. Yeah. And it started getting me thinking about like what could be growing in there. So I don't even use that. And I'm not, you know me like I'm not super precious about that kind of stuff. But I often use the ice makers that are the big industrial ones that are in a hotel, you know, area. Would that be any less gross? I mean you still have condensate.

[Luke Burbank]

It would be less gross to me because it's this big commercial machine. The ice is constantly cycling through.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

The nor the, the residents of the, the clients of the hotel have nothing to do with like running the water line into it or anything. It just, it just feels like it's between, it's between you and the ice maker. Whereas this is kind of. There's an intermediary. It's like who was the last person that stayed in this room? Did they? I don't know. I just, I just had this feel like.

[Andrew Walsh]

Totally. They're not loading it though. You, your argument about it still being like a dedicated line, like that refrigerator as you describe it is like nobody's making the ice. It's not like somebody's leaving ice trays for you. Right. That's still a solid dedicated line.

[Luke Burbank]

It's being made by the refrigerator, so it should be fine. Yeah, I just, I think I had a. I think I had a sense memory of the, of the coffee story that you're talking about. Like that's one that I, I definitely now would never go near as the. And I don't do that anyway because I'm, I'm such a little baby. I need to have my half and half and this whole scene going on. It's rarely. I can't usually get my coffee the way I want it from the in room thing anyway, so I always just go down to the, you know, Starbucks or whatever. You know who is riveted by this conversation is Nicole Oswill's seven year old daughter who we have yet to even mention.

[Andrew Walsh]

Is she a fantastic.

[Luke Burbank]

We have spent so much time. Yeah, she is. She is a fantastic student. But Andrew, that's not where it ends with this kid. Guess what else? Charm and her quick wit are what make her stand out. She loves to sing and dance and she's at the center of every social event. My kids keep me busy and of course can drive me crazy. You know, one of the things my mom used to say to us was when she would be trying to leave the house, which was all the time we were like, where are you going? She would go crazy, want to come. That was her. That was one of her lines. My kids keep me busy and of course can drive me crazy, but I love seeing them grow into wonderful humans. Thank you for keeping me entertained as I drive around town from one event to another. And lastly, let's all focus on our kindness, empathy and compassion, showing and teaching the younger generations how to make this world a better place. That's what is keeping me sane with the state that we're in now. Love to you all. That's from Nicole shouting out her two youngest kids now. Sounds like you have quite the family going out there, Nicole. Congratulations.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yes. And what a positive message to share on the show where Luke almost got into a bar fight at an airplane.

[Luke Burbank]

And you also, it sounds like you're not jealous of Nicole's daughter. Do you feel like talent is also assigned to the genders?

[Andrew Walsh]

No, I Just didn't want.

[Luke Burbank]

Son is stealing from the male talent population, and that affects you, but you don't care what's going on with the female talent population?

[Andrew Walsh]

First of all, gender is a construct. Secondly. No, I just didn't. I already felt like I'd already gone too negative with my little quip before I met. I. When I say stuff like that, I mean it as a compliment. When somebody is so talented and is talented in so many different aspects of their life, it's hard for me not to be a little bit jealous. But then I introduce that in the conversation, and I feel like it kind of came off as kind of negative, and I didn't feel like spreading that anymore.

[Luke Burbank]

That's actually. That's a good instinct. Now, would you like to play a quick little game here called how did AI summarize the content of the dazzling donor message that you sent to me?

[Andrew Walsh]

Sure. So I send you both of them at the same time. So this. Yeah, but. But the AI probably doesn't realize that. So it's sort of summarizing all of the concepts in both David's and Nicole's notes.

[Luke Burbank]

And it just says, it's from Andrew Walsh. This is Dazzling Tuesday. And then it says, promote Japan. Semicolon. Nicole's sons highlighted.

[Andrew Walsh]

Great. Thank you, AI. You're making everything better. You're making everything. I'm getting really tired of AI.

[Luke Burbank]

Why do we even read the whole message? We could have just said, we'd like to thank our dazzling donors. They'd like to promote Japan and highlight their sons.

[Andrew Walsh]

You know, who doesn't donate to tbtl, AI?

[Luke Burbank]

Sam Altman.

[Andrew Walsh]

Sam Altman, yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

If we could get him, though, I mean, it's probably, probably definitely a dazzling donor level.

[Andrew Walsh]

I would hope so. Certainly.

[Luke Burbank]

Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, our Top Story. Something that I say this sometimes on the show, Andrew, that you can really figure out where TBTL has kind of sort of what part of the culture it's staked out in the minds of the listeners when a news event happens, whether it was Juggalos in the olden days or bidets, you know, garbage anxiety, garbage bin cleaning.

[Andrew Walsh]

Bidets is a big one. Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

Like. And we clearly have. I think we've really owned this story of the Hamilton Corner billboard right off of Interstate 5 down there in. I think it's like Vader maybe is technically the area that it's in about, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes north of where I live and maybe an hour south of Olympia or something. Anyway, there has been this Billboard that has an Uncle Sam on it. And for my whole growing up years as a kid going up and down I5 it was always just had these crazy conservative messages on it because it was owned by some conservative guy who eventually passed away and then his sons were kind of maintaining it. But then they clearly got a little. They lost their, you know, their commitment to the bit because they've just had this. What is it? Something about Ukraine. Hasn't it been.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah. How many people, how many people will we leave behind in Ukraine or how many soldiers? And then the other side, I can't remember which one is northbound and which one is southbound. The other one is something about like soldiers didn't die in World War II so that you would be forced to show papers to eat a meal, which I think was left over from the COVID restaurant restrictions back in the day.

[Luke Burbank]

So it basically it. It made the news that this little triangle of land, which it would seem that its main value is just that it's right next to the freeway. It's in a very high, you know, high traffic area. So if you were going to, I don't know, do some sort of advertisement there or whatever or maybe just build something, you. You're in a very convenient location for folks. That this piece of land was going up for sale. The family was going to sell this off. I think that they had made their money in like farming and maybe even like an egg business or something. But anyway, it has now been announced there was. We had not a serious meeting, but we had a. We had a conversation with our colleague John Skloroff, but kind of going, is there any chance in hell that we could do Some sort of GoFundMe to buy this thing? And the answer was no, because it was in the. It sold for $2.5 million. And I'm very, I'm very proud of TBTL. And I'm constantly amazed that we financially, this thing kind of maths out, but we ain't raising no two and a half million dollars. Yeah. But anyway, it's been purchased by the Confederate tribes of the Chehalis Reservation. And the tribe has I guess said to the Seattle Times that they are going to take down. This is the direct quote from the Seattle Times. The tribe intends to take down the right wing messages that have lingered on the 40 by 13 foot sign for years. So that's actually kind of nuanced. I don't know if initially they're planning to take the sign down, but it sounds like they are going to take down the actual letters that are up there. Because let's be honest, if I'm the Chehalis tribe, I don't really care how many people. I don't feel like it's in our general interest to be posing the question how many people died in World War II. So you have to show paperwork to get food. It's not aligned with whatever the messaging of the Chehalis tribe is, it seems, besides their interests. So they are going to take the messaging off, which is great. Which is amazing. Like, I feel like this is kind of a really a W, because I could have also seen it being the case that some other nutty conservative buys the land to keep this thing going.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah.

[Luke Burbank]

And it just gets worse. So this actually really does feel sort of like a win that we don't have to stare at some like kind of crazy conservative message every time we try to go up and down.

[Andrew Walsh]

I5 you know, they said that they don't have any solid plans to at this point to put a message up there, but they're open to it. And I got to be careful here. I was mentioning this to you in the break. I'm flipping between two tabs here. The Seattle Times article and this other article that has been making the rounds that is like a parody article, but it's so unfunny and has so much stuff that's based on the real story that I don't think a lot of people realize is some it's from a. It's like from medium and it's attributed to Lewis County News, but news is spelled K N E W S. And it's basically the Seattle Times story that's not very funny. Except every now and then there's like these. They make up these fake quotes from fake conservatives who don't see the irony of like kind of the freedom of speech issue here. Anyway. So I'm just trying to be careful here. And I'm also just sort of saying that to other listeners. If you see this story, especially kind of our national listeners, people who don't live here, might accidentally end up with this other kind of like half funny or like the quarter funny article that has bad quotes in it. But this is a real quote from a representative of the tribe. I think this is the spokesperson or the director of government relations who has most of the quotes here. He says that some of the messages, the conservative messages that they've seen on the signs over the years, some of it's funny, some of it ain't. He said the tribe has, quote, a had a good Time thinking of crazy stuff we could put up there but it hasn't landed on anything concrete. It's being the tribe. One musing Warrenke said that's the spokesperson was a message informing people that the property is tribal land. So if you see an article that is purporting that the tribe is going to put a bunch of like slap back messages or they already have. Or they already have. That is a.

[Luke Burbank]

There's like a photoshopped version of the sign now that is I don't think reflecting what really is on the site.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, exactly. The Photoshop one says you took the land, we took the billboard or whatever. And they seem to, according to the Seattle Times, they have a much more casual relationship to the billboard. They just wanted to buy this land because technically it should have been their land anyway.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. And it sounds like they don't have any immediate plans even. They just thought it was a good opportunity and they obviously had the resources and so they're going to lock it down. But I have to say it will. Well this is what will be interesting. They obviously they should probably leave a billboard up there because again it's a very visible spot and if there was anything you wanted to promote related to the tribe or other things, that's a really good spot for. I wonder if they'll take Uncle Sam off of there because that's also sort of coded in a way like they'll take the like the letters down but then will they leave Uncle Sam up or you think that. Do you think Uncle Sam also comes down and then it's just the billboard is just there, you know, without anything on it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, it does seem like my guess is they leave it up because it's kind of landmarky. But you are right again I'm saying this just based on this article that only has, you know, some information and also I'm pretty far away from the story but they seem to have a pretty casual relationship. It doesn't sound like they were mad at the billboard. They're like some of them are funny, some of them weren't like I don't know, we've had some fun like thinking up stuff but we'll probably just maybe mention that this is a our land or native land or something like that. And like. And so if that's the tone from them right now, my guess is they just leave Uncle Sam up there. Although it is funny because it's not like Uncle Sam doesn't represent colonialism. Right. Right. Uncle Sam does very seem to represent that sort of like whatever the gross manifest destiny of the United States.

[Luke Burbank]

Right. But suffice it to say, like, you were clarifying. There doesn't seem to be any indication that this tribe bought this thing so that they could just totally clap back at the conservatives. Like, does not seem to be their energy on this at all. They just thought, well, this is a cool opportunity and yeah, maybe we'll put something up there. But it's not like, how would we feel about that if they did? It's weird. I almost think, even though I would agree with him, let's say that they bought the billboard in order to just kind of like put super progressive messages up or something. It's weird. I would almost, I would almost feel worse about that. Like, I like this outcome because, you know, I don't know if it's like Michelle Obama, when they, you know, when they go low, we go high or something. And I also, I don't know if that's worked for our side of things necessarily. But like, I like the idea that it's just going to be a non factor as opposed to, like, well, now we got control of it and now.

[Andrew Walsh]

We'Re going to put our messages right. Because I don't even think that the tribe necessarily, you know, like, nobody's a monolith, but like, I don't even know that a tribe necessarily would have super, like, progressive. Right. Slap. It would have to be another. It'd probably be some, you know, it would be some other group. I almost said, like, probably some annoying group or something. And again, an annoying group that I would probably, you know, that maybe support things that I support. But I'm, you know, I hadn't really thought of that until you said that, but I think I agree with you.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, I would rather it just not be a factor than have it be like, okay, now we got the football and now we're going down the field with it with our messages. I think that, that, Yeah, I think that ends up probably being about the best outcome and in a time where we rarely get even a decent outcome. Andrew, I'll take, I'll take it. I'll take the W wherever we could find it.

[Andrew Walsh]

Yeah, it'll be interesting, though. People's eyes will be peeled when. When even. Yeah, just.

[Luke Burbank]

Yeah, in the first message that they put up. It's gonna be intense.

[Andrew Walsh]

It'll probably be blank for a long time. I'm prepared for just general, not disappointment, but not a sense of like, I don't turn about, you know.

[Luke Burbank]

No, I think it'll. I think it's all gonna be very, very mellow and very chill, whatever happens. So. All right. That is going to do it for today's episode of tbtl. Tomorrow, Andrew, I will have tales for you of attending the world's largest truck stop, where I will be getting my hair cut. I will be getting my teeth cleaned. Just buy a trucker. Just buy a nice trucker that I meet out there on the lot. But, no, they have a dental office there. They have a hair salon. They have all kinds of stuff out there at the i80 truck stop. So I'll tell you how that went, and I'm sure lots of other things, too. So please, if you can join us for that. In the meantime, everybody, have a great Tuesday. Take care of yourselves, and please remember, no mountain too tall.

[Andrew Walsh]

And good luck to all. Power out.