
Luke literally kicked a hornet’s nest yesterday. Also, Andrew’s reading another book he doesn’t like. And they use the internet to learn what their names would be if they were blues musicians.
Loading summary
Luke Burbank
You like karaoke?
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
It'S good.
Andrew Walsh
You know, something to do at night.
Luke Burbank
There's nothing to do at night. What can you do at night?
Andrew Walsh
Bowling. Movies.
Luke Burbank
It's like a third thing to do after bowling in the movies. I don't know if you bowl or not. I don't go that often. But it's fun. It's fun. You can't find a ball. That's the problem. I don't know. I don't.
Andrew Walsh
Maybe you own a bowling ball.
Luke Burbank
I don't own a bowling ball. My whole life, every time I had.
Andrew Walsh
A bowling alley, sticking my fingers in.
Luke Burbank
All these holes, picking up the balls. You gotta get your own ball.
Andrew Walsh
TBTL It's a cosmic mix.
Luke Burbank
The action of the 90s combined with the exploitation films of the 70s. It's kind of a cosmic gumbo. It almost moves to the beat of jazz.
Andrew Walsh
Just remember, every time you look up at the moon, I too will be looking at a moon. The same moon, obviously. That's impossible. Don't you know your directions?
Luke Burbank
It's real easy.
Andrew Walsh
West, right backwards yonder. You didn't even see east. That's cause the earth face east, dumbass. Let the filibustering begin.
Luke Burbank
All right. Hello, good morning. Welcome everyone, to a Thursday edition of TBT all, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Life says potty wiped your body. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host because I sit with it. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mitee and today, fairly placid Columbia River. Oh, Ma Pa. It's just beautiful. Where I spent many hours yesterday trying to tame the environment, trying to get various outdoor projects kind of handled. And it wanted to add a few comments regarding your mole situation. Kind of worked. I don't know. I was complaining to Andrew during soundcheck that it's feeling like the more stuff I'm doing, the more stuff there is to do. I don't know. You know, maybe we just turn the whole thing back over to nature. Try to make that a feature, not a bug.
Andrew Walsh
Right.
Luke Burbank
Just like it'll be a wild overgrown nature space or something. I don't know. Listen, let's focus on the real task at hand today, which is bringing you episode 4502 in a collector series, collectors fun begin series, that is. Sorry if I sound distracted. It's because along with all the other stuff that's going on, was being strafed by a private jet. There are a lot of airplanes and helicopters and military helicopters that go up and down the Columbia river, the mighty Columbia. They use it as a kind of, I think, maybe a visual bit of guidance. And so I see a lot of things going north and south as I'm putting this show together for you all every day. What I rarely see is somebody going east and west. There's a plane just heading right for the Madrona Hill studio. Eventually banked at about the last possible second. So anyway, all right, I think we've gotten most of the sort of. We've gotten all the bad luck out of the way early here and now we're ready to actually do a good show going forward. Starting right now in 3, 2, and 1. I saw something else AI related on TikTok last night that gonna be a sit down comedian on Tiki Talkie that might rival the weirdness that we talked about on yesterday's show of the AI generated injured toddler who's singing Bless the Lord O my soul while Jesus stands in the background. There's something maybe weirder that I saw that I would like to play for all of you because I don't like to keep these kinds of things to myself. I also don't like to keep it to myself when it's somebody's birthday, AKA their blursday. So my birthday today. We'll celebrate those today as we always do on Thursdays. And we'll celebrate this guy as we do, well, five days a week. He's the longest running cobra of the show, maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. Hello.
Andrew Walsh
Ow are. Ooh.
Luke Burbank
He's Andrew Walsh and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.
Andrew Walsh
Good morning, Luke. Are we gonna celebrate me today? Did you say something about celebrating me?
Luke Burbank
I said we always celebrate you.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. Okay. So. Yes.
Luke Burbank
Yeah. If it's. If it's a day ending in y. Andrew.
Andrew Walsh
All right, we're celebrating you. I like it. Let's punch that up a bit. I like that kind of attention. I thrive, I crave it, and I don't get enough of it. I feel like, you know, that really was.
Luke Burbank
By the way, I don't know how much you were listening to me, struggling to start the show, but it was very strange. An airplane was flying, you know, kind of. You've been in the Madrona Hill studio. I'm on the top of this hill. I'm probably, I don't know, I want to say 500ft above the, like, water level, the river level. And so sometimes when aircraft is flying along the river, they're actually at about the height of like, The Madrona Hill studio. But what has rarely happened that I can remember is one of those aircraft is literally flying directly at me at about the height of this. Of this building. And then like, seriously banked kind of late in the process. And I was trying to both remember what episode number we were on and decide if I needed to actually bail out of the studio all at the same time. So anyway, apologies for that Rough start.
Andrew Walsh
Shades of the Blue Angels. Now, let me ask you this kinda. This is such a dumb question, but, you know, we're knocking on the door of July 4th, Luke. I don't know if you realize that. Does that make it seat when Seafare weekend? Are we getting close to the time when all the Blue Angels start practicing?
Luke Burbank
I believe that's early August.
Andrew Walsh
Early August. It's not tied to the holiday. I don't know why I thought it was, but we are in that season. I have Blue Angels on the mind lately.
Luke Burbank
I do love seafare. I love those torchlight parades. I love all of it. I. I'm. I'm a sucker for that. It's very nostalgic. Down in Portland, they have the Rose Festival, but they have it too early for my liking. Like, it's in June, and the Rose.
Andrew Walsh
Festival is probably fewer ties to the military industrial complex.
Luke Burbank
Well, you'd be surprised. Even for it being Portland. Even for it being lawless Portland, Andrew. There are a bunch of, like, huge naval ships that come down and dock in the river there right in downtown Portland. And here is actually the cool part for me being up here perched high above the mighty Columbia. Most of those ships have to go right past my house. Oh, you come in off the Pacific Ocean? Yeah, they come.
Andrew Walsh
They, they.
Luke Burbank
I saw one, the Coast Guard had, like, a frigate, which is kind of interesting branding for the Coast Guard. It's like, join the Coast Guard and we'll. We promise you'll be safe. On the absolute cutting edge of 1800 sailing technology. Like, you know, it's got all these sails and rigging and everything. It's obviously just like a promotional tour because it's cool looking. But I was doing the show with you one day in June, and I look out and there's just a Coast Guard, a giant Coast Guard frigate just sailing down the Columbia River. And I didn't put it together that it was going to Portland for the Rose Festival. But then when I was down there later with Becca, I walked right by it and I thought, oh, yeah, did you see that? Incredibly beautiful. I think it. It belonged to the nation of Mexico. It Might even been part of the Mexican navy ship in New York City that basically started drifting backwards, then crashed into the. Into the underside of the bridge. And it. Unfortunately, a couple of people lost their lives on it. And it was just like. It's kind of a crazy scene because it's all sort of happening in slow motion, but there's nothing anyone can do about it. And apparently, you know, that feeling.
Andrew Walsh
Were there a bunch of G's around?
Luke Burbank
Yeah, well, I mean, that's the thing. Luckily, you know, if people don't know.
Andrew Walsh
This show, they probably think I'm talking, like, World War II slang for Germans. That's not what I meant.
Luke Burbank
My listeners know that I served in World War II.
Andrew Walsh
I met a bunch of men named Jerry. Like all the guys who used to be at the marina that used to dock the boat in.
Luke Burbank
Exactly. And of course, famously, on the show where I once suffered a very humiliating series of marine disasters trying to get out of the marina, only to be towed back in minutes later. And that's when all of the Jerrys, who I thought kind of hated me.
Andrew Walsh
Stood up slow, clapped. They did.
Luke Burbank
They surrounded me with love. They sang bless the Lord, oh, my soul. There was an AI Toddler there.
Andrew Walsh
Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm sorry I cut you off.
Luke Burbank
No, but anyway, just this. If you hadn't. If you haven't seen it, then it's not worth.
Andrew Walsh
No, I do. Now that you say that. I did remember seeing that headline whiz past me at one point. This is a couple of weeks ago now, right?
Luke Burbank
Yeah, even longer.
Andrew Walsh
Maybe a month.
Luke Burbank
But the video is just like. It's crazy because it's like this unbelievably beautiful ship. It's all lit up, and it's. Again, I don't know if it was on the Hudson or on the east river, but it's there in New York, and it's basically taking off, and there's all these people on the shore celebrating. And then they. It just gets out a little bit away from the. The dock, I guess, and then it just starts going the wrong direction. And it's too tall to get under this. Under the bridge. And so it starts snapping the. You know, the masts. And unfortunately, there were people who were part of the ship, like sailors who were up in the top part of the rigging, because this was supposed to be a big ceremonial, like, you know, cool, celebratory. Check out our cool ship thing. And those were, I think, some of the people who. Who were injured or lost their lives. But I see stuff like that, and then again, not to relate, not to center myself in a story where people actually passed away. But I think, what was I trying to do? Ever getting out on the water with minimal training and no boating license. What was my. I mean, it's a life comes at you fast out there.
Andrew Walsh
Can we define minimal?
Luke Burbank
None.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, I was going to say minimal training implies that there was some training.
Luke Burbank
Well, I had operated a boat before.
Andrew Walsh
You know what my training was not really training, though. I mean, the moment you got behind your wheel without training, you started operating a boat, but it doesn't mean you were trained in it.
Luke Burbank
So there's a Burger King down in town that I think I need to help them with their messaging.
Andrew Walsh
Okay, I'd love to help with this, if you don't mind.
Luke Burbank
All they've had on their menu board for months is just how to train your dragon.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank
And I'm like, are you just. And then there's a different Burger King. I. Andrew, I don't live in a place where there's like a Whole Foods or even a Trader Joe's or anything like that, but we've got at least two Burger Kings, if not three.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, that's what, you know, that's a town.
Luke Burbank
That's where, you know, you're really in the absolute height of culture. The other Burger King says how to train your dragon meals. And it makes so much more sense.
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
Luke Burbank
Such a. It is so much more of a complete thought. And I want to go to the other Burger King and go slap meals on there. It's good. I think, that they don't have those letters.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
I literally think the other Burger King.
Andrew Walsh
Is borrowing them, unfortunately.
Luke Burbank
Exactly. There's one. They have one set of letters between the two of them. But I. Yeah, just like, what are you trying to say with how to train your dragon? Just. I guess maybe if you're a customer of that place, you understand that that's a whole promotion they're doing.
Andrew Walsh
So this tradition. And by the way, I don't know if I need to apologize for this or not, to be honest with you. I. I think you personally, off air, receive even more blabbering from me than the poor listeners do about my VHS digitizing projects. I know that Genevieve is definitely sort of reaching her limit of my little stories of commercials that I found on old VHS tapes. I've just been really doing a lot of it lately, and I'm really in. I'm just in digitizing mode. So I'm just seeing all kinds of stuff and just really really loving it.
Luke Burbank
And you're posting this to YouTube, right?
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, you can see all kinds of vintage commercials that I find and post up on. Where is your YouTub after these messages? Podcast on YouTube. Make sure you type in podcast, though, otherwise you're just going to get a bunch of that SEO. But okay, yeah. How many? I think we have like 500 subscribers or something over there. After these messages. We're at an even number of subscribers for TBTL. YouTube, by the way. I think we're like exactly 1400 or something. It was.
Luke Burbank
That's it.
Andrew Walsh
It's a nice.
Luke Burbank
Shut it down.
Andrew Walsh
Nice, nice number. I know that.
Luke Burbank
No new subscribers. And, and, and I swear to God, nobody got to stay exactly at 1400.
Andrew Walsh
That's right. But all of that is to say I don't know if I owe you an apology for bringing up yet another commercial and I don't even know if it's worth playing this one. I just want to tell you about it because as I starting to say, this tradition of, of a fast food chain teaming up with a major blockbuster release, you know, that's a very. That's a. That's a long time. Yeah. Long standing marketing tradition. Right. And it's fun. You get yourself your Happy Meal and it comes with a how to train your dragon toy or what have you. I know in this case it's Burger King. I saw one the other day. Now, this is late at night. I'm a couple of Coors lights in, I'm sure. And so maybe my teas. Yeah. I've come back from a tell the.
Luke Burbank
Truth and shame the devil.
Andrew Walsh
I've come back from a walk, which is me just sitting now on my garbage can and drinking twisted teas and looking at the neighbor and scowling at the neighbors. No. At first I thought something was wrong with my brain. I didn't know what I was watching. And then it kind of all eventually, I guess, sort of made sense. But it was a commercial, I want to say, from 91. It might have been 94. I don't have it in front of me. But it was for the Little Rascals movie, which I reboot, though.
Luke Burbank
Like a 1980s reboot.
Andrew Walsh
1991 or 94. And I forgot that that was a thing. Which is weird anyway, because the Little Rascals, the original, I mean, it was like rac as hell. Right. It's like one of those things that comes from an era where part of my brain, when I see it, I'm.
Luke Burbank
Like, you think the Buckwheat character might have Been, I don't know, a little flattened out.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, I was talking about the Alfalfa character. I just thought it was a bad representation.
Luke Burbank
White and just had a cowlick.
Andrew Walsh
I know, but it was a bad representation of people with cowlicks is what I was going to say, as a.
Luke Burbank
Catholic American, as a cowlick survivor myself.
Andrew Walsh
Right, exactly. No, but, yeah. So first of all, I'm sitting there, I'm like, oh, wait, oh. And then I'm like, oh, they rebooted this in the 90s. And then I'm like, but why are they. What are these kids doing? It's not a clip from the movie. And then I realize what it is, is it's Al Falfa and one of the other our gang kids or whatever, and they're eating fish and chips, and it's a Long John Silver's crossover. Whoa. And I'm like, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Like, the Burger Kings gets the, like, how to train your dragons, and maybe McDonald's gets back to the futures and Long John Silver's gets the Alfalfa treatment. It was so. It was such a weird. It was just like two bad tastes that taste bad together.
Luke Burbank
That's a good show.
Andrew Walsh
Although, put that on the Burger King marquee.
Luke Burbank
I don't know if that will draw people to this episode, but it is a funny show title. I'm now on people.com and I'm looking up. The Little Rascals cast are all grown up. They're talking about the one that you're referring to. Where are they now? And what's interesting is, I thought, I wonder if a couple of these will be, like, if Ryan Gosling will be one of these, you know, or something. Like, there'll be somebody. If Chadwick Boseman or something was recast as, hopefully, a slightly more nuanced Buckwheat character. I can't tell that any of these people have really sort of had a huge impact in Hollywood in adulthood, which has me wondering if it's actually sort of like. You'd think there'd be at least one Lipnicki in here.
Andrew Walsh
What does that mean?
Luke Burbank
Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid from Jerry Maguire, the kid with the glasses, kind of became iconic.
Andrew Walsh
Like, I have.
Luke Burbank
No, I couldn't pick any of these people out in a crowd. Any of these actors who portrayed the various Little Rascals. And is our gang and Little Rascals the same thing?
Andrew Walsh
I was saying that I believe. So are they of the same origins or something? I don't want to get into another like how did the Phillies move and still maintain being the Phil.
Luke Burbank
By the way, shout out to our pal Larry Asher who emailed me and I believe said it is both or something.
Andrew Walsh
That is a fun Email me. He put together his own, his own team. He fielded his own team as food related players. So maybe we'll read that later on in the show. I was thinking about sharing that. In fact, did you get my clip yesterday from the I did, but I.
Luke Burbank
Was driving and you know what, I'm sorry. I was driving so I didn't watch it and then by the time I got home I had forgotten to circle back. I will listen to it. It's from your favorite podcast.
Andrew Walsh
All you need to know is and again, if you heard conversation earlier in this week, I was talking about the Tim Kirkchen podcast, is this a great game or what? And how what Kirkshin will do is he'll just take some sort of a goofy theme and then field a fantasy baseball team with real, you know, current and past MLB players where their last names are all on a theme. And the theme that he was doing on a podcast I was listening to yesterday was romance. Because I can't remember who his guest was, but it was a really good tie in and it was sort of an honor of him. And so my boy, the I would say most celebrated Seattle Mariner of all time, Ryan Court, got a shout out because Court is the courting process. Right? Oh, his guest was Ron Darling, by the way, which is why he did that.
Luke Burbank
New York Met great and so he.
Andrew Walsh
Puts Ryan Court at first base then. And I'm just like Ryan Court. I didn't. I thought I was literally the only person in the world who knew who Ryan Court was. And that's because they have this foul ball from one of.
Luke Burbank
Yes, for people that don't know, there's.
Andrew Walsh
Very few at bats as a Mariner. He was, he played almost his entire career in the, in the minor leagues and then came up one of the.
Luke Burbank
Few times he made contact at the major league.
Andrew Walsh
That's right. I mean, honestly, he didn't have many opportunities. I think he came up here for two games and I think I saw him in the second one and he was there to replace somebody else who was replacing somebody else, but then the replacement got injured. It was just like one of those weird stories. I happen to have this foul ball. People are clamoring after it. I'm not selling. I'm sorry. But anyway, to hear a Ryan Court reference on my favorite baseball podcast was correct. Quite thrilling. Followed by Ryan Bliss, unfortunately, injured young Ryan Bliss at second base. And then he mentions Brian Wu. All of these again, last names, pitching some woo. Yeah, exactly. Evoke sort of romance. And I was like, wow, it's just like a bunch of. It's a celebration. It's not just a celebration of me today, Luke, but also of Ryan Court and the other great Mariners of our day.
Luke Burbank
Now, I don't know if you can see what I've been doing here, Andrew, as you were taking us down Lovers Lane, but I just dumped the better part of a LaCroix right onto my computer, right onto my laptop, and had to take evasive action, which included using my T shirt to try to sop up the water and then blowing on the keyboard, but then also muting my computer so that when I was trying to dry the keyboard, I wasn't playing a bunch of drops.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, sure, yeah. I saw chaos going on. I saw the top of your head, but I couldn't tell exactly what was going on.
Luke Burbank
I think it's going to be okay. What are you supposed to do for that? What should I do?
Andrew Walsh
Well, you're supposed to put soda on things, so maybe it's better than it was before.
Luke Burbank
Oh, I see. You mean that's what they recommend at the Apple Store. No, I'm being serious. Like, should I, like, get a. I don't know what?
Andrew Walsh
Like.
Luke Burbank
Because the only thing that. That will invalidate the warranty on these things is if there's water.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, I don't know what to do. I mean, we could stop down if you really want to. I would probably turn that thing upside down and see if any moisture could just come. Just kind of just use gravity a little bit for starters.
Luke Burbank
Okay. Okay.
Andrew Walsh
There we go. You're turning it upside down. Let's start with that. You definitely should get something better than the shirt that you're wearing to dry it off with. And maybe if it's gonna get sticky you don't want to put this down in.
Luke Burbank
It's just water.
Andrew Walsh
It's lacroix. There's no flavoring in there that makes it sticky. I've never poured LaCroix on anything before.
Luke Burbank
Listen, my friend, have you not read the can? Innocent exclamation.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, I did. Forget. I have some. While you deal with that, I have some terrible news regarding our YouTube page. We're.
Luke Burbank
We're at 1401.
Andrew Walsh
1410.
Luke Burbank
I didn't realize it's still a round number.
Andrew Walsh
It is still a round number, but.
Luke Burbank
We got to get a paper towel.
Andrew Walsh
Okay, you do that.
Luke Burbank
Take a Quick break. I'm going to get a paper towel.
Andrew Walsh
Well, I can just Talk about the YouTube page while you're gone if you want. So here's the plan. We have 1410 subscribers to our YouTube page, which means we could lose 10 people, but that seems like we're moving in the wrong direction if we do that. So what I would recommend is we get 990 more people to sign up. That's it. I was telling the listeners we either go down by 10 or up by 990. Luke, what do you think? Or wait, just maybe just 90. No, let's go with 990. I'm getting a little bit lost in my math.
Luke Burbank
I like that. You know what? That's a very positive outlook as opposed to, you know, let's get bigger rather than smaller. Let's get more people. So we've got to go one direction or the other. We have to get back to a round number. And I'd say let's go to a higher, a larger number.
Andrew Walsh
You know, can I actually use this? I'm going to check in on your computer here in a second, but I think we're good. I ask you, can I use this as an opportunity to promote what I think it's okay to do this. And if not. Yeah. Why did I say 990? That puts. Well, that puts us up to an even 2400.
Luke Burbank
By the way, Andrew, I want to just say you're going to hear an annoying sound here. There's no way around. Okay, it's going to be a little buzz when I plug my thing back in.
Andrew Walsh
There you go. Let's promote. Let's promote. I mean, I think we can say this. Our plan is to do the TB telephone from Friendship, Wisconsin. We're talking a lot about that last week. We haven't talked about it this week. I don't know if we've said this publicly yet, but in the past, the past, like four drives or more, we have streamed them live on YouTube. And barring any technical difficulties, that will be the plan. So starting on July 21, that week of shows, Monday through Friday, we will be live streaming the show again from.
Luke Burbank
The Historical Society of Friendship, Wisconsin.
Andrew Walsh
Adams County Historical Society, but in the heart of downtown friendship.
Luke Burbank
There you go. That's the part I wanted to emphasize, is we are going to be in the absolute heart of downtown friendship. We're going to be on Main street broadcasting. It is. This will come up a lot during that week, Andrew, but I feel like we're getting ever closer to my fantasy of Being the radio host guy from the TV show Northern Exposure, that was very, very sort of indelible for me as a kid. This idea that you could have a radio show that was like coming to you from, I think, a cafe maybe with a big plate glass window looking out on downtown. And what a genius expositional device for that show.
Andrew Walsh
By the way, here are the other two storefront radio stations in pop culture that I can think of. Or at least like Main street window. I mentioned this one all the time. Grosse Pointe Blank is a big one.
Luke Burbank
Oh, right.
Andrew Walsh
Is it Mini Driver? There's a. I think it's Mini Driver maybe. Who's in the radio host. And then also is it do the right thing. Samuel L. Jackson plays a DJ in a movie where he is looking out a window onto Main Street, I believe. And I think it might be do the right thing.
Luke Burbank
I think you might be right about that.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
So I cannot tell you how excited I am for this TBTL a thon in Friendship, Wisconsin. And also, can we mention just once again that there will be a get together? We are going to have a picnic on that Friday. I don't have the date right in front of me, but I think we're putting out an RSVP form at some point just so we know how much food to get and stuff. Like how many paper plates to buy, so. And how many paper straws. You have to eat all your food through a paper straw.
Andrew Walsh
Absolutely.
Luke Burbank
One rule.
Andrew Walsh
It's Friday the 25th. It's going to be in the late afternoon, early evening. I don't know if we've announced a time yet, so I'm just being a little bit careful there. In a park. In a nearby park in Friendship. And we're going to get together. So if anybody wants to, which we have reserved that trip.
Luke Burbank
We have reserved the pavilion.
Andrew Walsh
Exactly. In fact, I'm going to send out a newsletter. No newsletter tomorrow. Because it's a. It's a national holiday tomorrow. But the following week I'll send out a newsletter with more details on this get together. And a little RSVP thing. The tickets, like I said earlier, only $120 a person, I believe. Right. Or did we have a family plan for that if like two people wanted to buy.
Luke Burbank
I'm not dignifying that joke.
Andrew Walsh
You're not even dignifying the joke. Okay.
Luke Burbank
I want people to come to there. I know it's 100% free, but now.
Andrew Walsh
See how much better that sounds when the assumption was it was free and then it was still free. You have a feature in sales and now. And also come to the park because.
Luke Burbank
No. How about this?
Andrew Walsh
How to train your dragon.
Luke Burbank
How about this? Like, it's $120, but I think I could probably. My manager's out of town. I think I could probably get you for 30. Do you know, Andrew, how sad. You know what is extremely sad? That kind of thing works on me. Not so much in the. Like I'm at the car lot and the guy is saying that. But when I'm looking, I mean, I just bought something this week online. I can't even remember what it was, but it was one of those things where there was one number and then that number was crossed. Oh, you know what it was? It was a little kind of a sort of a table. It's actually very cool. I already have one of them. And it's like a thing that could be a little coffee table that sits on its end. So imagine something that's kind of a rectangle. An open rectangle, right?
Andrew Walsh
Yep.
Luke Burbank
Sort of a bench shape. It's all made out of one piece of metal and it's got. So you can tip it up on its side and it's perfect for putting your coffee on. And I have these two bench seats in my house that need. You need a little table so you can put your coffee down. So that's what they are. And I bought one and I really liked it. So now I just bought another one. But it literally said like, whatever the original price was. And then that was like there was a line through it and then there was a new price. And I thought, I can't believe how I'm getting over on these people. They used to have it at one price and now there's a line through that price and now it's a different price. Do they even realize, I mean, they are getting hustled by me. So, yeah, Friday the 25th, we'll see you in friendship. At least those of you in the Midwest. And then also, I hope I'm not just spilling too many beans here, but we are going to do also one of our famous tbtl, a thon week of virtual get togethers. So if you are not able to get to Friendship, Wisconsin, which I'm going to assume is most people that will hear the show, we're going to have some fun online stuff as well so that we can interact with all of you because that's become a tradition now as well.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, the, the, the, the details on what we're doing and when we're doing it on zoom Are TBD right now, but we'll do something. It's going to be a fun week. So, yeah. It starts on July 21st.
Luke Burbank
We're gonna do it. We just haven't.
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
Luke Burbank
Determined what the doing of it is.
Andrew Walsh
But it's exactly. The T's are tbd. I don't know exactly.
Luke Burbank
Wait, the D's are tbd. The details are to be determined.
Andrew Walsh
Too beautiful to biz.
Luke Burbank
Exactly.
Andrew Walsh
We got there.
Luke Burbank
Do you know that I literally kicked a hornet's nets yesterday, Andrew. And I didn't even realize until I was doing it that I was doing the exact thing you're not supposed to do.
Andrew Walsh
You mean online with your fire tweets?
Luke Burbank
No, I'm pleased. Are you kidding me? I haven't had a fire tweet and God knows how long. I tried to have a fire blue sky the other night because I was getting zero traction on the criminals, and so I was like, fine. I think the only person I get traction with on the criminals, I have them blocked. So I never. Sometimes I'm like, am I the only person watching this game that I'm like, no, I bet you Ders is.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
But I was so upset about this is not the hornet's nest kicking, but I was so upset about the Mariners not advancing the runners by just doing a bunt that I went on to the criminals, and I said, why? Why not just bunt there? I don't understand why you don't have Cole Young, who's not a great hitter yet. He's young. It's fine. I mean, it's literally and figuratively young. Just have the kid bunt. That would be so useful. We had runners at first and second, nobody out. We're down by two runs. Instead, he hits into a double play, and the innings effectively over. I got no traction on the criminals page. So then I had to. I pulled an Andrew, and I had to go over to Blueski and then just write in all caps, why no bunt Cole? And then hashtag, Mariners. I don't even know. Do they use hashtags on Blueski?
Andrew Walsh
I think so, yes.
Luke Burbank
And so I did, actually. I found basically a bunch of. I searched Mariners, and I was like, most recent. And it was so unbelievably. Gratifying is the wrong word.
Andrew Walsh
It was cathartic.
Luke Burbank
Cathartic and comforting. Yeah, it was comforting a bunch of other people who were equally mad about the Mariners not advancing the runners. I was like, oh, this is what this is good for, dude.
Andrew Walsh
I have so many, like, I would call them, like, Friends, kind of on blue sky. Who I have never met and I have no intention of ever meeting. But we all just follow each other, and we don't have to ever explain what we're talking about. You can just write damn, dog, and everybody knows what you're talking about. You know what I mean? It's real nice over there, Lucas. Come on over. Look at who I'm following. Follow the same thing. Yeah.
Luke Burbank
Can you. Can you make a starter pack for me?
Andrew Walsh
What if I introduced you to everybody? I'm like, everybody, this is my friend Luke. He's the cd, actually. I might do that for you. That'd be fun.
Luke Burbank
Hey, seriously, because I kind of want to get back on there. And, like, I'm not kidding. I was like, you know, it was what I needed. I needed to be. Because, again, everybody on the criminals is annoyed with me or tired of my. Tired of my fire.
Andrew Walsh
I think that was just, like, two. You just never know where people are. It's just Tuesday, and I think that's when Veeves and I were recording and stuff, you know? So I'm like, just, like, watching the score bug. But not much beyond that.
Luke Burbank
No, I don't take it personally at all. But it's funny because there just are those games where it's. It's. There's a lot of activity, and then those ones where you can just tell only one person is watching the game in real time, and then they're processing their feelings. The hornet's nest I have. You know, speaking of boats, Andrew, I still somehow do own one boat. The boat you and I went out in during the eclipse with Rudy that we. I managed to taco a planter with as well when I was trying to pull it out of our backyard in Bellingham. I still have that boat, and it's here, and it's had this cover on it for years. And that cover has gotten so tattered. It's just like, you know, it's. It. It, you know, is full of holes, and it's, you know, not really even doing an effective job of covering the boat anymore. And so one of the beautification processes around here, I thought I should just get a nicer cover for it and just so it'll look a little bit less, I don't know, derelict or something. And was it collecting water? No, because it has a. So if. I mean, if rain were to get into it, what happens is there's a drain, so it kind of, like, makes its way out. It's. It's set up to do that, but but you know, it just. I mostly felt bad for my neighbors because I have these neighbors behind me who I don't. They're the ones, I don't know. Like, I wave at them occasionally, but I couldn't tell you their names or whatever, but they were. They've. From their house. They've been looking out on this tattered ass boat for years now. And so I got a new cover for it and I went to take the old one off and what I realized was, oh, you know what this has been really good for? It's not been good for covering up the boat or keeping the boat preserved, but it's been a great place for so many hornets to make their nests and hang out. And I'm pulling this thing off and I'm like, oh, there's a hornet's nest over there. I'll avoid that area. And then I'm like, oh, there's a hornet's nest right here. Oh, there's like six hornet nests. They're not huge ones, but there's like six clusters at least where there's active hornets. Now this was the interesting part. They weren't. I was thinking they were going to start swarming me like I was in an episode of the Little Rascals, but they seem, I don't know, I don't know if they were. If they're in some sort of a, I don't know, nest building mode, hibernation mode. They didn't seem. I was expecting them to be really active once I realized the gravity of the situation. But really what happened was as I'm pulling this thing off, there was a big hornet's nest, a bigger one, and it had a bunch of hornets on it. And I. It was too close to me and I thought, I want to get this away from me. And then I kicked it and I thought, I'm doing the exact thing they tell you not to do. I am in the act of kicking a hornet's nest.
Andrew Walsh
Yet here you are. Not swollen up. And I see.
Luke Burbank
I mean, a little bit.
Andrew Walsh
I've been doing swole, not swollen.
Luke Burbank
Swole is different than swollen up. Yeah. No, none of them came after me.
Andrew Walsh
So the lesson is hornets nests, Right?
Luke Burbank
I guess what I'm trying to say today is give it a try. You might like it. Yeah, I think we've been lied to by big hornet nests. They don't want to get kicked. They've been trying to tell us, don't kick them. I kicked one yesterday and I'm fine.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. How nature says do not touch as Gary Large always goes back to the far side. Absolutely.
Luke Burbank
I'm also, I think, becoming a fix it guy finally kind of late in life, because my lawnmower died yesterday. My riding one, I mean, it didn't die, but it started doing something really weird. So I spent the whole night watching YouTube videos about how to repair the drive belt on a riding lawnmower.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, yeah, okay.
Luke Burbank
Which is, I feel like if you ever talk to somebody who's mechanically inclined, somebody, they can fix cars and stuff and they've just got that kind of mind. I feel like the story is always, oh, yeah, I rebuilt a lawnmower when I was 10. I feel like lawnmower is the entry point for people who are mechanically inclined.
Andrew Walsh
I could see that. I could see like somewhat like, I mean. Yeah, because. Well, I don't really want to get into what I was going to say because it's boring and it's been said a million times. I don't know if that's still true. As things get more. As cars become more and more like computers, I wondered, have lawnmowers especially, I mean, you have an electric lawnmower, battery powered lawnmower, but is a lot of the functionality still kind of the equivalent to what we would have been looking at with a gas powered riding lawnmower 25 years ago, do you think?
Luke Burbank
I think the electric is different, but I think that the electric is still very, very, very small fraction of the overall market. And I think what a lawnmower is, is a very simple combustion engine. And you know what I mean? Like, it's got a spark, it's got fuel, and then it creates, you know, it makes this blade spin. And so I feel like there's, you know, as I've been working on this, so first thing that happened was I had to. I had to, basically I thought something was caught up in the blades. So I had to like tip the thing up and then I had to get out my wrenches and then I had to take the blades off.
Andrew Walsh
You keep it rolling, you keep it running during this time. Right? You're supposed to keep it running. If it seems like the blades are stuck, you keep it running. You tip it over on its side.
Luke Burbank
Definitely want to. Yeah, you want to. I usually will put like a brick or something on the gas pedal.
Andrew Walsh
Good, good.
Luke Burbank
So that it just tries to keep.
Andrew Walsh
That bungee cord it down.
Luke Burbank
Yeah, that's usually what I do. I override all of the safety, all of the safety protocols on it somehow. I did, actually. It's funny you say that. Because I did turn it off. I did take the key out. But then as I'm, like, in there, like, reaching around the blades, like, so, you know, you got these two big blades now that are exposed. And I'm reaching in there to, like, try to. Cause I thought maybe there was some. Like, some rope or string had gotten tied up in the mechanism. And I was like, I know there's no way this thing will spontaneously come to life, but if it does, right now my hands are done. I had both hands inside the blades.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
And I was like. And I was. Look. I kept looking at where the key was. I was like, I'm observing that the key is not in the lawnmower. But it's like when I used to swim in my grandmother's pool at her condo. And I would think, I know there is not a shark in this pool, but if there was, I'd be so dead. And then I would get out of the pool. It was almost made it impossible for me to work on the lawnmower because of this.
Andrew Walsh
But anyway, the irony is there was a shark in the lawnmower blades.
Luke Burbank
That was the problem.
Andrew Walsh
That's what got you. No, Luke, I'm with you. And what is that? Right? It's like, I don't believe in anything supernatural except for my sports jinxes. Like, if I leave one room and then the Mariners start doing well, I will stay out of the room where they were doing bad. And secondly, it is that if I stick my hand down a garbage disposal, like, it will turn on and it won't. And as you pointed out before, if it did, like, I've always had this idea that also, if your hand is down in a garbage disposal and it's turned on, you will die or you lose your. First of all, you'll lose your arm up to the shoulder or whatever.
Luke Burbank
At a minimum, it might pull your entire body through.
Andrew Walsh
Most likely that. But at a minimum. And then at one point, you're kind of like, well, it would hurt. It would suck. But it, you know, wouldn't end your life, and it probably wouldn't even end your fingers. But that. And also that idea of the blades, Is it because of Stephen King? Is it because of that. That whatever HBO show was that had, like, the. The little zombie guy that would introduce things like, what is it? Like, what planted this idea in our head that machines, even if we know the key isn't in it, could spontaneously come to life and destroy us?
Luke Burbank
Well, it was looming large yesterday as I was working on this thing. But then I felt kind of like a. I don't know what that feeling is. A slight amount of machismo or something because it was like, like, well, I got to take these blades off now. So I got to go get my. You know, I have like a pretty legit socket set now. That was, you know, like 150 bucks. And it's got like, real. And it has all of the sockets with it. Right. Like, my whole thing in life is to like, carefully put the sockets back in after I use them, where they go. Which that's probably that. That would be how you would always do it. But that's a fairly recent development for me. Like, before we'd be like, throw them in a Folgers can and just dig, perpetually dig through a old U band can of various sockets trying to find the right one. But now I have my, like my nice socket set that I bought that. So I get that out, I get the blades off, I get in there and make sure there's nothing that's kind of entangled with them. I put them back on. But what it's doing. So the blades work, the blades turn. And that part of the thing, it works. It's that there's some kind of a. Like, it won't drive anymore. Like, it's. It's kind of stutters when you push. It's not the gas pedal. It'd be the power pedal or whatever. When you push the. The power pedal, it does not go forward. It kind of like it sort of shakes and stutters. And according to the Internet, that might be the drive belt. So now I've got to get in there. I got to take the deck. The mowing deck off, and I got to see about replacing this drive belt. But it's just funny that at age 49, I'm finally getting into fixing things the way that that many 8 year olds in America have already have already done.
Andrew Walsh
I am slightly distracted because I'm looking for my. One of my favorite moments in the Simpsons, and I don't know if I found it here or not. Do you know what I'm thinking of when I talk about lawnmower repair and fixing A fix? I don't know if I do. I think this is maybe the right scene. I could be wrong. I'm gonna play this. Let's see her. Homer's outside. He's mowing the lawn. It looks like he's about to roll over a roller skate. He's gonna like, kind of mow over. But it's like one of those old Fashioned kind of roller skates, you know, the, the kind that look like they attach to your shoes or something like that. And then Bart is gonna come downstairs here. I think, don't, stupid roller skate bard, get your butt down here. What's up, dad? You've got little hands. Could you reach under that mower and pull out that skate? I think what I have here is the reason I was watching the visuals of this, and this is somebody, somebody chopped and screwed this for YouTube. Because I believe what happens is Bart is just about to reach his hand under the lawnmower and then all of a sudden it just coughs up the skate and starts running again. He's like, oh, never mind, we're good. But I think about that all the time. You have small hands. Can you reach under this lawnmower? That was you, my friend.
Luke Burbank
It was. But again, it was something about, okay, the fact that I've already changed these blades. I know that this is, I mean, the changing of the blades on these lawnmower. On this lawnmower. It's a 10 minute job and it involves a wrench. It's so doable. But there would have been a time in my life if people remember, the lawnmower kind of stopped after. I don't know, I've probably had it for three years or something. I think it was this year when I like started to use it again. It wasn't really working. And that in the olden days for me would have been when I just got a new lawnmower.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, right.
Luke Burbank
I would have been like, well, this one's busted. But instead I was like, I wonder why it's not working? And it was because when I finally, when I turned it over and looked at the blades, they were like totally mangled. Yeah, they were like rusted. Mangled, Ineffective. And so then I went and bought the replacement blades and then I put those on and then it was like, worked like a charm. So now it's like, okay, I have that base of knowledge now. I know that I can replace those blades. It's an easy thing to do. So that's. So when I was being weird yesterday, I was like, well, let's start with checking the blades. And if we're to take them off, we have the right wrench for it. We know where that, that particular socket is. We've done this before. My neighbor Bob did walk by while I was doing it. I felt pretty cool about that. Looked real. I looked like a, like a real, real man. But you know, this is like baby steps. But it Is it's. It's. I'm totally intimidated by anything that I have not done before when it comes to any kind of fix it stuff. But then once I've done it once, and this is just a lesson for life, I guess that it's never too late to learn these life lessons. But then once I've done something even a little bit, then I'm just less intimidated by it. And now that's just the starting point. So we'll see if we can get.
Andrew Walsh
This drive belt replaced. Yeah, I feel like I know the experience you're describing. It's been so long for me, I just can't remember. Came upstairs the other day and Genevieve is like kind of, kind of like propped up on the bed, you know, back against the headboard, legs crossed on the bed. And I swore she was reading a comic book. Which is odd because she hates comic books. With the exception of the Watchmen, she hates comic books. But I swear she looked like a kid from. Because I think she was also wearing a slightly like, oversized flannel shirt too, which just sort of gave her a little bit of a Dennis the Menace vibe.
Luke Burbank
Did she have a slingshot in her back pocket?
Andrew Walsh
I don't know. She was sitting down, but I hope not because that could ruin the be. But I was like, you reading a comic book? She's like, I wish. And then she had real good old man energy. Now that I think about it, she was reading the instruction manual of how to install our storm door, our screen storm door on our front door, which we still haven't done. Genevieve's leaving on a trip here in a couple of days, and I'm wondering if we're gonna have a chance to get that thing up before she. Before she leaves. But yeah, she's really tackling. I saw her watching. Cause it's an involved. Well, you mentioned like hanging a door, even if it is the outer secondary door, you know, you gotta get. You gotta put the frame in that it hangs off of the hinges. All this. So she was watching doors.
Luke Burbank
The most under, like, sort of appreciated, complicated thing that you can do on a house. Like, it's a. It's a real skill. And like, I remember putting a screen door on the house in Mount Baker, and it was an all day affair and it was still never quite right. It involved me shimming that thing out so much. Like just. You think it's like you put a couple hinges up, you throw the thing up, you're fine. It's like, no. Why is it not shutting what's going on. Like, why is it out of. It's because. Oh, the house is from 1910, so nothing is actually square. So if the screen door is square, it doesn't work with the actual non square door frame it's in, etc. I just remember being out there. It's like now getting dark out and I still can't get this GD thing to just close the way it's supposed to.
Andrew Walsh
Door. It's your.
Luke Burbank
It's like it's screen door.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, this is the screen door situation.
Luke Burbank
I would never, I would literally never try to install a real door on my, my house. If I wanted the door to work, that is something I would hire either my father or someone or maybe Genevieve to do a screen door. Like, I put the screen door up here at the Madrona Hill studio, and guess what, Andrew, It's a little off.
Andrew Walsh
I was guessing that's where you're going.
Luke Burbank
But I'm looking at it right now. It's a little bit off.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. Yeah. Is it off enough that it drives you a little bit crazy, like when it closes?
Luke Burbank
Well, it wasn't until right now. There's just the tiniest gap. Like somehow I need to pull it up. So, like the top left corner, which is where it closes, is just. I can see the tiniest crack of daylight. And now it's gonna make me insane.
Andrew Walsh
Well, let me ask you this. When you open the door and then you let it close by itself, I'm sure it's got some sort of hydraulic system or something or a spring or something that keeps it from slamming behind you, but eventually it'll close on its own. Oh, it doesn't. It'll just kind of. I was wondering, will it slot right back in or do you have to sort of like lift it a little bit to make sure?
Luke Burbank
No, no, no.
Andrew Walsh
That would be.
Luke Burbank
I would.
Andrew Walsh
That would be maddening.
Luke Burbank
Yes. No. Does what it's supposed to do, which is I can have like right now I have the door open, so there's a little cross breeze and bugs are not coming in. So it's. It's basically fine. But now that I'm thinking about it and looking at it, it is not. And that's like the one thing I did out here without Walt, which is pretty funny.
Andrew Walsh
And also, and I, I remember you telling the story, which I, I, in your telling of it, even though you were saying that he was sort of like driving you a little bit mad, I associated more with your dad. But that was a door story, right? He was, he was Installing the door on your house. And you were getting a little frustrated that he was being so, so specific. I think it was the door here.
Luke Burbank
On the Madrona Hill studio.
Andrew Walsh
Okay. Yeah. Because you were like, it's fine, it's fine. But he just kept remeasuring and getting it, like really, really, really perfect. I'm guessing that now that you've moved on from that phase of the project, that's probably like a year ago. So you're probably pretty glad that he had all that attention to detail or.
Luke Burbank
No, I'm. I'm glad about that. With literally everything that that guy has done here.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
And the process each time is I. I look at a project and I go, so, hey, Pops, what is that? Like, that's probably like a day, right? And he's like, oh, that's. No, that's a week. That's definitely going to be a week of work. And I'm looking at it. I'm like, how could that be a week? It's one thing. It's this one little section of deck. Or it's putting, you know, it's putting whatever, this window in somewhere. And then it. First of all, it usually doesn't end up being a week. It's usually like three days. He just, like, his natural tendency is towards overestimating how wrong everything is going to go, and mine is towards underestimating how wrong everything is going to go. And then there's always a point in the process where he's incredibly frustrated and thinks this is. I don't know what we're going to do. I don't think this is even. Even doable. Whatever cockamamie thing I've come up with. And then, then there's always the part where he just figures it out somehow. And then when it's done and I'm admiring it and like, living with it, I'm looking, I'm going, oh, my God, that's. I'm so glad that he, you know, sweated the details of this. Because there's. Anything that I did around here, you can. You can tell that I did it in one day. Like the screen door. You can see why. Because it's not. Because when he put the real door in. Yeah. He was like, shimming it and mildly cussing and frustrated. And then, you know, like. And it wouldn't be perfect. And he'd shut it and I'd be like, hey, that's shutting. He goes, ah, no, it's still rubbing up here. I'm like, well, it's, it's closing. It's you know, it's, it's not like it's the door, you can't shut it or whatever and be like, no, it's not right. And then he'd get mad and then he'd be like looking at the garage and like, why is this, why is everything out of plum? And that's just, that's just our journey together on all of this stuff is I come up with something. He says, I don't know if that's doable. He figures out how to do it and then he smokes a cigar and I watch all in with Chris Hayes. It's a whole thing we do up here. Although I'll tell you this, I think my parents are low key moving in.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, no, it sounds like it. I mean we're all, we're all witnessing this.
Luke Burbank
No, I mean like, okay, so my dad, my dad's coming back on Friday, which is tomorrow. My dad's coming back tomorrow afternoon. Because there's still a few more things that I'm trying to do before this big siblings weekend. One thing is I'm trying to run a mini split up to the upstairs of the house because right now the upstairs, which is almost just kind of like a little poorly converted attic space, it doesn't have any kind of heat or cooling really, other than opening the windows. There's no climate control up there. And I want to put a mini split so that at the very least the little hallway area and the stairs and where you're going, if you're going to go to the bathroom, it's just the temperature could be a little bit regulated. What I'm worried about is the siblings weekend is going to be 100 degrees and everyone's just going to be miserable who has to sleep in the little upstairs area. So that's something my dad's coming out to help me with. He's coming out tomorrow and I just asked casually, oh, is mom coming? He's like, oh yeah, she's coming for the whole week. Now. I love my mom being here and also I love her being here with my dad so that when I have to go off and travel, he's not just here by himself, feeling lonely, like they're just hanging out. But it's like, like it is becoming the case increasingly that they are kind of, I think they're kind of in the process of moving in.
Andrew Walsh
And also, I mean, your mom is waiting for your demise, right? I mean, we clocked that earlier and like maybe a month ago you said that she was saying, oh, well, oh, maybe Luke's just gone forever and we have the house.
Luke Burbank
You thought that I killed myself and left the house to my dad, which was such a crazy place to go considering I had slept in until 10:00am.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, especially because obviously you would leave the house to me. I mean, for starters. And they're real.
Luke Burbank
That was, I think the most offensive part of it was that she thought I was going to leave it to my dad as opposed to my daughter or, I don't know, the Cowlitz County Land Trust. No, I love my. What's that?
Andrew Walsh
Bubbles.
Luke Burbank
Bubs. You know, but that was the. That was just so weird on so many levels. But one of them was that she assumed that I would have left the house to them effectively. But yeah, no, they're moving in. It's happening and I'm, you know, I'm kind of okay with it. It's fun when they're around. It's nice during baseball season because my mom is an obsessed Mariners fan and so we watch the games and talk about that and stuff. But yeah, we'll see if this trend continues. They may just fully sell their house up there in Silverdale and can move in full time.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. And so there's staying there the week that you're out of town, is that correct?
Luke Burbank
Well, I'm going to be in and out of town. So next week I'm going to be going ever so briefly to New York City to interview Bridget Everett and then ever so briefly to Manhattan, Kansas to continue interviewing Bridget Everett. So I'll be leaving on Monday night. I'm taking a red eye to New York and then I'll be back on late on Thursday night. So there'll be some days I'm here with them, some days I'm not. But yeah, they'll just be here living their best life. My mom just loves it. My mom sits on the deck, she does her new move, which is she reads a book, a physical book, but then she listens to the same book as a book on tape.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, that's interesting. I've kind of done that before. But does it mean that she's sort of like she's re listening to the part she's read or she's just sort of switching back and forth between the audiobook and the. And the written word.
Luke Burbank
She's doing them concurrently. She's reading the written word while listening to someone saying verbally the written word.
Andrew Walsh
Moment in the same moment at the same time.
Luke Burbank
Imagine a person interesting with like old fashioned corded headphones, like accorded apple headphones. But not apple. Like some weird color of pink, probably from. Found at a CVS or maybe found at a garage sale. Listening to her phone, listening to the audiobook format of a book that she's also reading at the exact same moment.
Andrew Walsh
That's interesting and comforting in a certain way because it reminds me a little. So, wow, this is really fun.
Luke Burbank
It's sort of like having the closed captions on, I guess, while you're watching.
Andrew Walsh
The show or like being in class and having somebody sort of read a book to you while you. Or like when you were. When you were reading with your parents. Right. Because. Okay, so if an audiobook is the equivalent of somebody just reading to you, like, when we were children, we loved being read, too. I loved being read, too. But then you get to a stage where you're sort of like. You're reading the book yourself, but the parent, your parent, or whoever it is, the adult, is sort of like reading it along with you. Maybe you're starting to get into early rudimentary, like, chapter books or something, and you're kind of reading it together. They're reading it out loud, but you're looking at the words and that. I'm infantilizing your mom right here. And I don't. I'm honestly not trying to be insulting. I think that's really interesting because I've done something where I've, like, read a chapter or two and then I'm like, well, I gotta go mow the lawn. So I fast forward to the part of the audiobook and then I. Or maybe there's even been times where I mostly listen to a book, but I'll kind of jump in and read a chapter or something. And even that can get a little bit confusing because you have to kind of find your place. I love this idea of just sitting out on a. Like, looking out over the river and just sort of reading and also hearing the words at the same time. I'm very charmed by that.
Luke Burbank
I'll ask her more about it this weekend so she can explain. Maybe we can even have her on the show at some point. Because, yeah, it seems also to be. My mom is very, very prone to acquiring books and then maybe reading a page or two of them or a chapter of two of them and then kind of like getting interested in some other book. She gets lots and lots of books free or, you know, for, I don't know, 10 cents at a garage sale or something. And she often doesn't stick with them. And yet she's reading these. I forget who the Author is. I'm sure our listeners have read some of this guy's books. I think they're kind of like, they're all set down in like Cajun country or like Louisiana. And they're, and they're like, I think they're kind of detective y mysteries, but they're really big, these books.
Andrew Walsh
Is this genre kind of inspired by or drafting off of a little bit where the, the Crawfish Sing or whatever that book is that your mom likes?
Luke Burbank
No, but, but she, but my mom did lose the DVD of Where the Crawdads Sing Across Crawdads or Crawfish.
Andrew Walsh
I read that. I never.
Luke Burbank
She, she did lose that DVD and have to pay the library.
Andrew Walsh
That's right. That's why she left the DVD in.
Luke Burbank
The player at the Worldmark Condo Club. But it's, I think these are more like, again, I haven't read them, but I think they're sort of like who is somebody who is, you know, a modern day author but who writes the, these big long kind of novels. But they're kind of crime E. But they're not, you know, we're not talking about like Elmore Leonard or something. Like these are much more sort of you, you would buy them at a Hudson News and there's like 800 of them, you know, like in the series or whatever.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
So she's really into these books and I'll just, I'll watch her over the course of a weekend go through almost an entire book. So the. Something about her new process, I think it maybe it's calming her ADHD brain or something because she gets, she reads the entire book this way. Whereas if she's not, if she doesn't have the auditory assistance, she kind of gets bored and stops reading.
Andrew Walsh
I wish I were a faster reader for starters. So I'm very, very jealous of that. I also want to talk to you about this book that I'm reading now because I'm running into an issue with it. So it's called Saturday. It's by Ian McEwan. And actually our friend Anna who lives in the, in the Green Lake neighborhood had some free books. We were volunteering a pop up together a while back and she's like, I don't know, somebody dropped off these books. I guess I'll just take them to one of those little free libraries. And I'm like, well, actually I like Ian McEwen. I'll take this. This is the weird thing about me is I see a physical book and I'm like, oh, give me that and I'm like, I'm attracted.
Luke Burbank
I'm joking.
Andrew Walsh
I'm attracted to the idea of reading a physical book. But what I do is I take the physical book and I'm like, yeah, this looks interesting. And then I buy it and I download it onto my phone because, like most of my reading is like at night. I don't want to have the table light on and hold, like I just read on my phone all the time. Even though I still prefer the idea of reading an actual physical book, all of that is to say. So I bring home the book Saturday by Ian McEwan. I've only read one other book by him. I've talked about it a lot in the show. It's called Atonement. And it's just devastatingly sad and so well written and so gripping. It's so gripping. But also a big part of it is like watching a slow motion car crash that you know is coming and you just want to grab the steering wheel and steer the book in a different direction. It's just, it's just so good. And when writers can do that to you as the reader, it's amazing. But now I'm reading my second Ian McEwan book and it's called Saturday and it's moving very, very slowly. It's a very, I think it all takes place on one Saturday. And so it's very introspective. Like honestly, the first, like, I don't know, like 50 pages of the book all happen in probably five minutes as this guy is just looking out his bedroom window. But we're learning about him and he's a surgeon and there's some interesting parts in it. But as the book goes on and I'm probably about a, I don't know, quarter of the way through now, maybe I don't mind a slow paced book. And again, the man can write. But the thing is, I don't like the character. I don't like the main person who all of the stories about filtered through.
Luke Burbank
A middle aged, successful surgeon.
Andrew Walsh
I am starting to not like him. This is a weird thing. This is a very, very specific thing. I talked to Veeves about it because you'll be unsurprised to hear that she's further along in the book than me. I don't think there's ever been a time when Veeves and I have been kind of reading the same book for the first time at the same time. Yeah, usually she devours books and then she recommends them to me. So I'm always reading them after her, but she's ahead of me. But there's this thing where this guy kind of wakes up kind of in the early, early morning and can't get back to sleep for reasons that you can read the book to find out. And then he goes, look at me withholding. And then he goes downstairs and like his son is like a blue. But by the way this all takes place in like I think in, in London proper I believe and Fitzroy. His neighborhood.
Luke Burbank
The neighborhood. I'm just looking at the Wikipedia.
Andrew Walsh
It would be amazing if you're just like you're going to finish the book by the time I'm done complaining about one scene. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm such a slow reader. But his son is just getting back from some gig and he's like a blues. He's like a blues guitarist. And I believe all these characters are white for whatever that's worth. But his son is like. And this takes place kind of right after 9 11. So it's like probably 2001 or 2002 or something like that. And so there's, I don't know, conversation about the world being on edge or whatever. But he comes downstairs and his son is just getting back from some blues gig and it's so clear that, that Ian McEwan just loves the blues. And it's like it's just so.
Luke Burbank
Play dem white girl Sing them white girl blues. Jackie drum jump.
Andrew Walsh
Yes. They're just. And this character that. I don't know how much the author puts or sees himself in this character but this character of this middle aged accomplished surgeon is so obsessed with his young man son who's this really good blues player and he's obsessed with him and it just makes me feel that like Ian McEwan. And maybe I even get this way a little bit when I talk about jazz with you because I don't really know about jazz but I get excited when I get a new record or something and maybe that's irritating and it's very middle aged Manny of me too. But there's something about like em, like writing about these little things that he knows about the blues that sort of seems like he just learned them and is excited about them. And this obsession I'm kind of like. And then this. Eventually the scene ends, the son goes to bed and I'm just kind like of like I don't think I like this guy. I don't think I like this book. There are just certain books and I don't know how to explain it. I think what happened Is I as a younger reader. Like when I was in my twenties, I loved books from the perspective of middle aged white men who are having some sort of a midlife crisis that they talk about slowly. Like that was my genre when I was in my 20s, as embarrassing as that is. And now I almost have an allergic reaction to any whiff of that sort of. And so anyway, I'm going to, I want to, I want see how it plays out. I mean it's a self fulfilling prophecy. You got to see how it plays out. I want to finish this because he's such a good writer, but I am in. And also I get obsessed. Like I'm really bad once I start a book. I want to finish it. I don't want to put it down for some reason because I feel like it's a bit of a failure.
Luke Burbank
Count of Monte Cristo, right?
Andrew Walsh
Exactly. And this one will not take. Don't worry, it won't be another two years from now and I'll still be telling you what's going on on Saturday. But anyway, yeah, so I guess the end rant but I'm sort of like in about a quarter way into this book and I'm kind of like, I love the writing but I don't think I like the guy. And I don't know how long I can stick with this book knowing that it's all going to be in his head just on one day getting into the very like kind of the very detailed aspects of his particular life.
Luke Burbank
Do you think it's because at this point you kind of find particularly white, like middle aged guys cringe.
Andrew Walsh
I can't tell if you're joking or not, but I know, I feel like, I feel like that particular, that particular writer, that particular ass. I just want to keep that specifically to writing because I do think it's like you write what? You know, I think a lot of these writers are like, I just think that I did grow up reading nothing but like white middle aged men who are facing some sort like there's a whole genre of like white middle aged professor, male, you know, male professors who are like, oh, their marriage is falling apart or there's a, there's somebody in their class who catches their eye or whatever. It's just like this, just like.
Luke Burbank
So the books are all written by guys who are in fact white middle aged professors.
Andrew Walsh
Exactly. And so. And again like I used to gobble that up because maybe when I was a younger man I thought it was a very mature thing or I was very curious about it but Now I just think I read too much of it. I don't want to, like. I don't want to dismiss it all. If you've come up reading a more kind of, like, diverse style of writing and books than I did, maybe reading one or two of these here and there is still entertaining. I just think that it's like tequila when, you know, people say I got sick on tequila in my 20s and I can't drink it anymore. I think maybe that's what I'm talking about here.
Luke Burbank
The blues thing does really kind of says it all.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. You know, I'm glad that made sense to you, that.
Luke Burbank
That 100%, like, there's a certain kind of, like, listen. I remember when I was in high school and there was a show on kplu, All Blues with Juliet Zentelis. And I think it might have been on both Friday and Saturday night. And when I discovered this at age, like, 16, I thought I had personally discovered blues music at the Delta, the previously undiscovered form of music called the blues. And not only had I discovered it, I had discovered. Discovered the new version of myself. I had discovered a new Luke, a Luke who loved the blues so much. And I would listen to All Blues every Friday and Saturday night. And there was just something about it that was so compelling to me, and I loved it. And I took a blues guitar class at North Seattle, then called North Seattle Community College. I was so, so into it. And by the way, if you are listening to this and you love that kind of music, that's awesome. If I hear that kind of music on the radio, I'm not turning it off or anything. But there is, I think, particularly for, like, white guys, a certain kind of, like, kind of thinking that they've really found something authentic, but that they're maybe, like, they're uniquely interested in this style of music or they're uniquely this music. This style of music that was created by people that probably didn't look or sound like them under very, very trying circumstances, that somehow they understand it best. That just seems like a type of guy and.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
I mean, the only thing would be maybe equally bad would be if his son was really into reggae.
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
Luke Burbank
Like, then you just know that Ian McEwan really loves reggae and wants to write about it.
Andrew Walsh
Right, right, right.
Luke Burbank
I don't know. I just. I'm with you. The blues thing is that's a. I'm particularly sensitive to that kind of a thing because it just feels a little cringe to me.
Andrew Walsh
I wanted to make a joke. I Was gonna call you, like, Blind Lemon Burbank or whatever. And I'm like. I feel like I always go with Blind Lemon. And so I'm like, be an online. What's your blue.
Luke Burbank
How about Luke Belly?
Andrew Walsh
Oh, Luke Belly. Yes. I found a What's your blues Name Name generator. So you use the first initial. Okay. Use your first initial to find your first name. So they've assigned some sort of a, like, kind of a. A descriptor word to every letter of the Alphabet. So your first name is Luke. And so L is paired up with the word pro. Pretty. Okay. It's not. It's not. It doesn't start with an L. So pretty. Your middle initial to find your middle name. C is harp. Memory. They've a. They've. Christian. Right?
Luke Burbank
Okay.
Andrew Walsh
They've. They've kind. So you're pretty Harp. And then your last initial to find your last name, B is McGee.
Luke Burbank
So you're Pretty Harp McGee.
Andrew Walsh
Pretty Harp McGee. Let's see what's yours? Let's see. A is Andrew. And that. I actually like this. You're gonna. You're gonna get defensive, but I like it. It's fat. And then L is liver.
Luke Burbank
Oh, no, wait a minute.
Andrew Walsh
Walsh is.
Luke Burbank
No, Andrew. You're reading the Journal of the American medical Association.
Andrew Walsh
Wait, no. I have my chart open.
Luke Burbank
You're getting my colonoscopy result.
Andrew Walsh
This is my. This is my liver results.
Luke Burbank
No.
Andrew Walsh
So apparently I'm fat liver Bailey, which I. I kind of like. I wish the Bailey were a little bit different. I would take a Davis.
Luke Burbank
Oh, my God. Pretty Heart McGee and Fat Liver Bailey reporting for duty. That is whoever came up with that website. I mean, that is a. That's a genius work. There's a right way to rock in.
Andrew Walsh
A wrong way to roll. You can't just listen into your soul. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun.
Luke Burbank
You can be nothing.
Andrew Walsh
Number one. All right, Lucals, let's do some blurs day. Absolutely. Anybody would like to wish anybody a happy birthday. Happy blurs day. You can email me andrewbtl.net, put Blursday in the subject line. Corrine wrote in Luke, our old pal.
Luke Burbank
Corinne, the hot air balloonist. This is the closest thing I have to a hot air balloon.
Andrew Walsh
That's pretty good.
Luke Burbank
It's like if you had a. If you were in a helicopter watching someone who was in a hot air balloon.
Andrew Walsh
Is that the sound of your. Your lawnmower blades? Spin, spin, spinning away?
Luke Burbank
Hold on. Let me go start it up again. Yeah, yeah, I think that is okay.
Andrew Walsh
Good. All right. Corinne says Happy 60th to Kevin from Corinne, Lydia and the whole Hee Haw gang, including the six little Quigleys. By the way, I haven't pre read most of these, so if they're going to be complicated, you're going to have to forgive me for stumbling all over the place. So far we're doing great though. I'm going to give myself a put up. This is a celebration of Angel Andrew today. Nobody forget that.
Luke Burbank
Absolutely.
Andrew Walsh
But also a celebration of Kevin. You're a deep thinker, gifted musician, dedicated educator, engaged citizen, sharp witted comedian, compassionate human being and lucky for us, our beloved Potter Familias. Once the festivities die down, we hope you can relax with a good book.
Luke Burbank
Possibly Saturday by Ian McEwen.
Andrew Walsh
Saturday Kevin's a musician. Possibly a blues musician. We don't know.
Luke Burbank
Oh no. Please God, tell me it's not reggae.
Andrew Walsh
Taylor says happy Blursday to Kristen. Oh, these are our. These are our KC10s. Our royal fans out there. Happy Blurs Day to Chris 10. After leaving 10 Dents Seattle, I was so grateful to find a 10 in Kansas City and not just any 10. A Royals fan and the Andrew to my Luke. I'm. Oh, sounds like Kristen's the cool one. I'm looking forward to celebrating tonight. Here's to you and to Salvi's. Dumps like a truck.
Luke Burbank
Wow. Salvi.
Andrew Walsh
Salvador Perez, the.
Luke Burbank
Oh, sure, yeah. The guy, that guy that had three ribby's on Tuesday night.
Andrew Walsh
Yes.
Luke Burbank
To my chagrin.
Andrew Walsh
I know. I don't want to tell you this. He's on my fantasy team. He's kind of like. Yeah, I know.
Luke Burbank
And so somehow I forgot you were still doing that.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
Even though we talked about it extensively. Yeah, he had a good. He had a good game. Which was very frustrating for me as a Mariners, as a true Mariners fan, not some weirdo who gets some kind of yayas off on Salvador Perez doing well because of a. Because of a pretend team.
Andrew Walsh
Salvador Perez actually though is. I was actually texting with Taylor about this yesterday. A very, very rootable guy. Did you hear the story about how, how I think this was happening maybe in the off season or maybe spring training, although my timing could be off on that. But he was like driving down the street and he saw kids in Kansas City playing baseball in their front yard. And so he pulled over and got out and started like playing with them. I just remember I'm probably messing up that story and probably Chris 10 and Taylor know it better, but I swear there's like, shaky cell phone footage of him like, like playing baseball in the front yard with these kids in this. In this. This home of. Of Royals fans. I mean, he's a very likable guy.
Luke Burbank
Do you know that he has the major league record for the most home runs ever by a catcher? And that is what Cal Raleigh is coming for this season.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, he's still. Oh, that's right, because we're only halfway.
Luke Burbank
Salvador Perez has.
Andrew Walsh
I think it's 43 or 43. Yeah, that. That would make sense.
Luke Burbank
So if Cal can keep at this pace, he. He might get that record.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, they. And by the way, we have to get into this, but I saw a shot of Salvi from kind of behind yesterday, and I was like, there are some similarities.
Luke Burbank
There dumps like a truck.
Andrew Walsh
There are. There are there. There's room in this town for more than one dumper.
Luke Burbank
Yes.
Andrew Walsh
At least for one more game. Michael says, I'd like to wish my daughter Puddle a happy blurs day.
Luke Burbank
Hey, we know these folks.
Andrew Walsh
Hard to believe that. I can't believe you were talking so much about dumpers right before this, Luke. That seems a little bit inappropriate. Honestly, I'd like to wish my daughter Puddle a happy blurs day. Hard to believe that you're going to be eight. You're fun, athletic, hilarious, and always think of others. I'm looking forward to spending the night with you in our tent in the backyard and watching any movie on the projector that mentions get ready for it. I'm ready, chicken jockey. I need your help with something, Luke, because I always need your help with this. And I need to remember this. How do you say the name of the town in Utah that is spelled T O O E L E? This keeps coming up. Tuel.
Luke Burbank
I was the person who knew this before.
Andrew Walsh
I thought. Because I feel like this is coming up again. T O O E L E L E. It's in Utah. And these are. These are, you know, listeners who write in quite a bit. And so it comes up from time to time. You're looking well. Here we go.
Luke Burbank
I've got this here. Let's do it too.
Andrew Walsh
Ella Tooele. Tuilla. So it says. To Vernon from Tooele, our dearest father. Happy belated blurs day. Thanks for spending your special day with us, even if it was a bit reluctantly. Wow. This next year you'll bike more miles than ever before and enjoy a trip to Crater Lake. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We love you, Ally, Cassie and Maddie Very.
Luke Burbank
Is that a Maddie?
Andrew Walsh
It's Maddie, yeah.
Luke Burbank
This is that family that was wearing the. Our sweatshirts out and about. I'm gonna see that family at. Wait, wait, don't tell me. In Salt Lake City, end of July.
Andrew Walsh
That makes total sense. That's. That's also in Utah. Yeah, also Vernon, Tooele and Salt Lake City. All Utah cities or towns or Providences. Did I say Providences?
Luke Burbank
Well, Providence is also a town.
Andrew Walsh
It is, but I meant to say Providence. Did you hear Rick Riz? And I'm not dunking on him. It was like a. It was in a fast, like, bang bang play, but he referred to Pascatino as Pasquino at one point. He's like. And I can't remember exactly what was going on with the play, but he just said Pasquino. And I was like, that's kind of fun too.
Luke Burbank
There used to be a guy named Dan Pasquale who was a baseball player.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank
He might have been a twin or something. You know, that Pascarino guy. Isn't there talk that we might try to acquire him at the trade deadline line?
Andrew Walsh
Oh, my God. I had. Oh, my God, don't say that. On Chris 10's birthday. I had not. I had not heard that rumor. That would be incredibly exciting.
Luke Burbank
Well, there was basically. I was reading a. A piece. I can't remember if it was Mike Forell or Adam Jude, but it was saying that the Mariners are expected to be highly active at the trade deadline and that what they're trying to do is either get like a real top tier bat, a player at first base or third base. Like, they, like, they actually like Williamson at third, but he's, you know, he's a rookie. He's still, he's still kind of learning his way. And then they've. They've been platooning first base. So like, that's. And I. That guy's name came up, I think, as if, if it were the case that Kansas City decided they were sort of selling at the deadline that. Because that guy's a first baseman, right?
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, that would be. I. I had not heard that.
Luke Burbank
I could be misremembering. I could be confusing him with someone else.
Andrew Walsh
Well, that's not a name that, that you confuse with like a lot of other names. It is, but. Do you know about the Pasquatch? Thanks to Listener Taylor, who we were talking about before, I'm pretty deep into Royals culture these days, and I try to check out the games when they're not, basically, if I need baseball and the Mariners aren't playing. I check to see if the Royals are. And they have this Sasquatch that roams up and down the top of, like, the Jumbotron or the scoreboard or something like that. And what I love about it is whenever you get a shot of it, the shot of it is always from really, really far away. Right. And so it really does have, like, a Sasquatchy vibe. But I mean, to steal the Pasquatch away from the Royals, I think would leave a lot of. Lot of heartbroken KC people.
Luke Burbank
You know what? I could be. Well, yeah, here's Kansas City's Vinnie Pasquintino and Cleveland's Carlos Santana are two other names worth monitoring at first base. This is from Adam Jude's piece in the Seattle Times recently.
Andrew Walsh
Wow. And so the Guardians would also give. I just don't.
Luke Burbank
But is that. That Carlos Santana isn't our Carlos Santana, is it?
Andrew Walsh
Oh, Carlos Santana is that. Oh, oh, that. That's the. Isn't he like 45 years old and a former Mariner. And a former Mariner for one season or two, maybe.
Luke Burbank
We brought him back like one. We got him off of the scrap heap. He's 39 years old. We got. He came and he actually hit some home runs for us. He, like, kind of was like a late season edition. And I remember because when he would do something good, Ders would put like. Or somebody would put a meme of the other Carlos Santana into.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, right, right, right.
Luke Burbank
Of course, the text chain.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Luke Burbank
But it's just like, funny because, like, that was seasons ago. And then all of a sudden it's like you have, you know, Adam Jude writing that, like, Carlos Santana is someone the Mariners are keeping their eye on. First base.
Andrew Walsh
I'm like, what? It's. Yeah, I don't. Yeah, I guess his role was also that very veteran presence, which people, like, kind of argue. Donovan Solano is for us now. And who was the red bearded, former Red sock. Red Sock. Red Sox player who played first base for us the second half?
Luke Burbank
Turner.
Andrew Walsh
Turner. Like, I think they're always just looking for that sort of like, veteran presence.
Luke Burbank
Andrew, I'll give you this. I'll give you this on Carlos Santana, and then we can keep blursing. I apologize to everyone who's having their blurs day ruined by.
Andrew Walsh
I know, I'm sorry.
Luke Burbank
Baseball talk. But let me just. Let me throw some numbers at you.
Andrew Walsh
You.
Luke Burbank
Carlos Santana is hitting 240. He's got 10 home runs, 38 ribies. You know who those stat. That stat line is almost Indistinguishable from.
Andrew Walsh
Randy, your boy, Julio Rodriguez. Julio. Okay.
Luke Burbank
Julio's hitting under.250, has, I believe, 11 home runs, and I think should be maybe designated for assignment. Well, you.
Andrew Walsh
You don't. You don't do that yet because he does tend. I mean, he's frustrating, but he does tend to heat up late in the season. So you got to see where.
Luke Burbank
I would love if they would trade him, honestly.
Andrew Walsh
And then he'll go more valuable as a trade piece than.
Luke Burbank
Well, I don't know if anybody. He's owed so much money. I don't. Yeah, Based on his current stats, I don't think anybody would take over his contract. And he's a sweet dude.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
But did you see that thing he did the other day where he climbed the fence for no reason and the ball just whacked into the other part of the fence?
Andrew Walsh
No, that was definitely the Tuesday game because I missed most of that and I heard people. And you, I think I saw you was inanity.
Luke Burbank
I've never seen such a thing. He's running out there. He does that kind of performative fence climb that happens when it's like a long home run and then about six feet to his left, the ball just thwacks off, like five feet up the fence. Like, it was a totally catchable ball.
Andrew Walsh
He was just like. He was kind of hot dogging, right?
Luke Burbank
He was hot dogging.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
Yeah, he was hot dogging. And like, we lost by two. It was. It was two outs, it gave up two runs, and he was hot dogging, and we lost by two runs and. And it was so confusing. I've never seen. I've never seen a player do that. I don't think Carlos Santana would have done that. Either the guy from the band or the baseball player.
Andrew Walsh
Maybe the guy from the band. I have a great drop of people talking about hot dogging. But the problem is the algorithm. The SEO of hot dog in my audio library is.
Luke Burbank
Is robust.
Andrew Walsh
Is robust. Could it be?
Luke Burbank
It's bringing back a tremendous number of hits.
Andrew Walsh
It is. It's not Mike Leech. I think that it was a coach, though. This is Mike Leach, like, answering some dumb question about whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich, which that thing peaked about the moment was invented. Let me see here.
Luke Burbank
Bowling a Hot dog is. That's how. That's what I like to go with.
Andrew Walsh
Hold on. I know that the music ran out because we were talking about baseball.
Luke Burbank
Pretty harp McGee strikes again.
Andrew Walsh
Is Bowling a Hot Dog is the show title for today? I'M sorry, the nothing beats that. Not even our blues names. We need to get the birthday song going here again. We got to get back in this. Oh, that's the wrong birthday song. I didn't even mean to do that. All right, let's just go with this music for now. And Marie sent in a Blurs Day message a while back, and I appreciate Ann Marie's patience with us. As I say, I wanted to wish a very happy Blurs day to my husband Andrew, a longtime 10. This isn't me, by the way. This is different Andrew. Let's see here. To my husband Andrew, a long time 10, and the one who not only made me a Kugelman, that's Andrew's last name, but I might be mispronouncing it might be Kugelman, but also a fellow 10. May he get all the confetti sprinkles and time off to relax from work. And I'll even promise to let him game as much as his heart desires. I wonder what you're gaming on over there. I really thought this song was going to end by now. I think I might have made a nine hour monster mash of this at some point. Biagio, the Duluthy 10 Biaggio, by the way, is the is the lone 10 that I know of who actually has made a pilgrimage to the TBTL billboard and took a selfie of himself. That's who that is. Yes.
Luke Burbank
Okay. Okay. I don't know if I've interacted with Biagio or not, but so are we to understand that Biagio came all the way down from Duluth to get that picture?
Andrew Walsh
I believe so. There was a note a PS in this Blurs Day message that I don't have in front of me right now saying that he was able to triangulate it from, you know, every. All the details we gave, but also by going on the Lamar website and like, kind of seeing what like the public record showed or something. But anyway, that's pretty cool, so thank you for that. I don't know if folks have seen it. It's floating around media. Anyway, Biaju says wishing a Happy Birthday to Justice in Thunder Bay, Ontario. May your day be filled with more happiness and joy than there were rocks in your fence line. And buddy, that's saying a lot. Okay. Oh, it feels good to be back here, though. It got weird there for a while too. A lot of baseball talk. Then that really frenetic birthday song, huh? Denise says Happy Birthday to Mike. Smart, funny, adventurous, just a great son. And I couldn't be prouder. Here's to many more years of road trips listening to the boys. Cute. Erica says, I'd like to wish my five Harmony a happy tenth Blursday. I can't believe you are in double digits.
Luke Burbank
What's the potty? What's your body?
Andrew Walsh
You are the most amazing army artist and I love how you are so kind to others. And I'm so proud of you and I can't wait to see all you accomplish as you grow up. But not too fast, please. All right, Luke, this final Blurs Day message is a little bit complicated and you're not gonna follow it. But you know what? It's not for you.
Luke Burbank
Oh, okay.
Andrew Walsh
It's for a secret agent. Agent.
Luke Burbank
Okay.
Andrew Walsh
Named Owen Bradford. This is a message for Agent Owen Bradford.
Luke Burbank
Okay.
Andrew Walsh
We've heard your mom makes you listen to us almost every day and thought it would be a good place to drop your secret codes to play pass number five. Get ready to write this down. This is a scavenger hunt, I believe, that is going on for Agent Owen Bradford where I think maybe inspired, possibly inspired or partially inspired by our billboard hunt. This is a.
Luke Burbank
Okay, do we need some, like, Mission Impossible?
Andrew Walsh
Yeah. What do you got over there?
Luke Burbank
Supposedly I have Mission Impossible. Let's see here what it's doing. This is a.
Andrew Walsh
Okay, that's good.
Luke Burbank
This is not the one I was thinking of, but.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank
Is this okay, though?
Andrew Walsh
TC Tuggers. They're not a joke.
Luke Burbank
You don't buy them as a joke.
Andrew Walsh
You don't buy.
Luke Burbank
You don't give them as a joke.
Andrew Walsh
No, no. Now you're playing with the big boys. Let's go outside. Gonna make a big boy. Okay, here we go. There it is.
Luke Burbank
We got this problem before. I think that was just like a Chevy commercial that was playing before.
Andrew Walsh
That sounds good. All right. This is a good place to drop your secret codes for play pass number five. Get ready to write this down. The first parts are the letters W, L, F, N, H, H, W, exclamation point. W, L, F, N, H, W, exclamation point. And the second part is a series of numbers. 11, 27, 102. Best of luck as you complete your birthday week mission from Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs Fan Intelligence Agency. Whoa. Oh, I forgot. You were playing the music, not me.
Luke Burbank
No, that's fine. It was really good timing, by the way, Andrew. I was just running out of Mission Impossible music.
Andrew Walsh
And I was running out of.
Luke Burbank
You read it right to the post.
Andrew Walsh
My ability to read. I hope I got that Right. Because it sounds like there's a lot on the line here for this birthday adventure. And sometimes, like, lowercase. Is that an. Is it an uppercase I or a lowercase l? I don't know. So, anyway, maybe consider that as well. Agent Owen, Whether or not that definitely is an L and not an uppercase I, but I think it's a lowercase.
Luke Burbank
L. Yeah, we got eyes on some of this because our friend John Skaroff, our colleague and TBT employee numero uno, had clowns clipped. I think an Internet post about this, and it looks so fun. If I was a kid and one of my parents was putting together this project, I would be so psyched.
Andrew Walsh
Yes, yes. It looks very, very creative.
Luke Burbank
Absolutely. Fun challenge.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, absolutely. So happy Blurs day to everybody, agents and otherwise.
Luke Burbank
Absolutely. That's gonna do it for today's episode, but we will be bringing you a brand new original TBTL tomorrow. Even though tomorrow's 4th of July. Even though their podcasts take the day off. We won't take the day off. In fact, we're taking the day on.
Andrew Walsh
Are we, Are we gonna do it? Are we gonna do our special challenge tomorrow?
Luke Burbank
100%. Do you know how excited I am to eat a Big Mac? To be professionally obligated to eat a Big Mac, something that I, I don't allow myself to eat for sometimes moral reasons, sometimes waistline reasons, but I have. I owe it to the listeners to try to eat this Big Mac in under a minute, as do you.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, I told Genevieve about this.
Luke Burbank
Or are you double? Are you, Are you having second thoughts?
Andrew Walsh
No, I'm going to do it. I told Genevieve about this yesterday. I think when she left for work today, I think she said, good luck with your stupid thing or whatever. I, I, I did. I do think it's weird that I've never eaten a Big Mac before in my life, and my first experience is going to be trying to eat it in under a minute. I think that is weird. I feel like I'm not well. I feel like I'm not well prepared for this. I feel like I should have maybe practiced yesterday or something, or at least just gotten used to the temperature of the water by eating one at a leisurely pace.
Luke Burbank
I had that thought, too. We can just do this on tomorrow's show. But, like, I was driving near McDonald's yesterday, and I thought, should I get one and just, like, should I basically do a trial run, fun training day, so that. I know, right? Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Like, should I just. Should I see if this is even, like, if I'm gonna embarrass myself on the Friday show? But then I decided not to. I'm gonna.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah.
Luke Burbank
On tomorrow's show, I will be. It's probably. Probably be the third Big Mac I've eaten in my life.
Andrew Walsh
Oh, really?
Luke Burbank
Okay. Because you don't usually. Not my go to, either.
Andrew Walsh
Yeah, Me neither.
Luke Burbank
At McDonald's. Not my go to. But anyway, we'll talk about all that on tomorrow's show, so please do join us for that. In the meantime, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourselves, everybody. And please remember, no mountain too tall.
Andrew Walsh
And good luck to all.
Luke Burbank
Well, there's. There's that fine line between, you know, have showing emotion and being a hot dog.
Andrew Walsh
Power out.
Podcast Summary: TBTL Episode #4502 - "Is Bowling A Hot Dog?"
Release Date: July 3, 2025
Hosts: Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh
Title: Is Bowling A Hot Dog?
In Episode #4502 of TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live, hosts Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh dive into a myriad of topics with their signature blend of humor and camaraderie. The episode kicks off with casual banter about nightlife activities, setting the tone for an engaging and multifaceted discussion.
The episode prominently features the celebration of Andrew Walsh's birthday, affectionately referred to as "Blurs Day." Luke announces, “And we'll celebrate this guy as we do, well, five days a week. He's the longest running cobra of the show...” (04:16). This segment evolves into heartfelt birthday wishes from both hosts, creating a warm and festive atmosphere.
A significant portion of the conversation revolves around their YouTube channel's subscriber count. Andrew remarks, “We're at an even number of subscribers for TBTL. YouTube, by the way. I think we're like exactly 1400 or something...” (12:09). They discuss strategies to increase their subscriber base and outline plans to live stream their shows from Friendship, Wisconsin, emphasizing community engagement.
Luke shares a tense moment when a private jet nearly crashes into their studio: “There’s a plane just heading right for the Madrona Hill studio. Eventually banked at about the last possible second...” (04:31). This anecdote underscores the unpredictability of their broadcasting environment and adds an element of suspense to the episode.
The hosts reflect on a tragic maritime accident involving a ship on the Columbia River. Luke describes, “It's all sort of happening in slow motion, but there's nothing anyone can do about it...” (06:33). They express their thoughts on the fragility of life and the impact of such events, blending personal reflections with broader observations.
Transitioning to more personal topics, Luke narrates his journey into repairing his lawnmower: “At age 49, I’m finally getting into fixing things the way that many 8-year-olds in America have already done.” (33:19). Andrew offers humorous advice on dealing with the malfunctioning equipment, emphasizing their collaborative troubleshooting approach.
Andrew shares his experience with reading and listening to books simultaneously: “She’s doing them concurrently. She’s reading the written word while listening to someone saying verbally the written word.” (50:31). This segment highlights the intersection of traditional reading and modern audiobook practices, providing insights into their personal reading habits.
The episode includes a heartfelt segment where the hosts read and respond to Blurs Day messages from listeners. Andrew delivers personalized greetings, such as:
These messages foster a sense of community and connection with their audience, showcasing the show's interactive nature.
A substantial part of the episode is dedicated to sports, particularly baseball and the Seattle Mariners. The hosts engage in lively discussions about player performances, trade rumors, and memorable games. Luke humorously quips, “Do you think it’s because at this point you kind of find particularly white, like middle-aged guys cringe.” (60:38), reflecting on their evolving tastes and opinions in sports.
Looking ahead, Luke and Andrew outline their plans for a live streaming week from the Adams County Historical Society in Friendship, Wisconsin. Andrew enthuses, “We are going to be in the absolute heart of downtown friendship. We’re going to be on Main street broadcasting.” (22:07). They invite listeners to join virtual and in-person events, including a picnic, enhancing listener engagement and participation.
Throughout the episode, the hosts engage in playful banter and humorous exchanges, adding levity and personality to the show. For instance, when discussing YouTube subscriber goals, Andrew suggests, “Let’s go with 990. I'm getting a little bit lost in my math.” (20:56), showcasing their relatable and down-to-earth dynamic.
As the episode wraps up, Luke and Andrew tease upcoming challenges and segments, including a Big Mac eating contest slated for the next day's show: “I owe it to the listeners to try to eat this Big Mac in under a minute...” (84:49). This anticipatory hook leaves listeners eager for future episodes, maintaining engagement and excitement.
Notable Quotes:
Andrew Walsh on Celebrating Luke:
“You always celebrate you personally, off air, receive even more blabbering from me than the poor listeners...” (04:15)
Luke on the Airplane Incident:
“I saw a big frigate sailing down the Columbia River, and then it just started snapping the masts...” (06:33)
Andrew Reflecting on Audiobooks:
“It's like having the closed captions on, I guess while you're watching...” (51:27)
Luke on Fixing the Lawn Mower:
“Any of these people have really sort of had a huge impact in Hollywood in adulthood...” (15:41)
Andrew Encouraging YouTube Growth:
“We have to get 990 more people to sign up. That’s it.” (20:56)
Key Insights and Themes:
Friendship and Collaboration: The long-standing friendship between Luke and Andrew is evident, fostering a genuine and relatable rapport that resonates with listeners.
Community Engagement: Through celebrating birthdays, reading listener messages, and planning live events, the hosts prioritize building a strong community around their show.
Adaptability and Growth: The hosts discuss their evolving interests and skills, from fixing lawnmowers to experimenting with new reading habits, illustrating personal growth and adaptability.
Humor and Relatability: Light-hearted jokes and humorous storytelling make the content enjoyable and accessible, ensuring a broad appeal.
Sports Fandom: Deep dives into baseball and the Mariners reflect the hosts' passion and knowledge, catering to sports enthusiasts within their audience.
Conclusion
Episode #4502 of TBTL: Too Beautiful To Live encapsulates the essence of the show—a blend of humor, personal stories, community interaction, and diverse topic exploration. Luke Burbank and Andrew Walsh's engaging dialogue, coupled with their authentic connection, offers listeners a rich and entertaining experience, making it a standout installment in the TBTL series.
Timestamp References: