#4572 Corny On Main

Summary

Podcast Summary: TBTL #4572 “Corny On Main”

Date: October 9, 2025
Hosts: Luke Burbank & Andrew Walsh

Main Theme & Episode Purpose

This episode of TBTL captures classic “friends goofing through life” energy, with Luke and Andrew deep-diving into personal reactions to a recent, painful Seattle Mariners playoff loss. The discussion weaves in coping mechanisms for sports heartbreak, the psychology of fandom, childhood nostalgia, and tangents on everything from grocery stores to viral advertisements. The hosts’ unique blend of banter, sincerity, and pop culture references is front and center, with “corny on Main” moments about viral ads and social media lingo. The episode also includes their traditional "Blursday" birthday shoutouts.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mariners Playoff Loss and (Not) Coping Well

• Luke and Andrew recount the emotional fallout from the Mariners blowing a playoff lead. Andrew watched the loss unfold, while Luke missed the game due to work, only catching up later.
• Andrew chronicles his emotional pivot: from “drinking a midday Bloody Mary in celebration” ([03:20]) to getting hit with “sports pain” so acute he chose to go on a therapeutic walk and grill instead of wallowing ([06:44]).
• The hosts reflect on their evolving approaches to sports heartbreak—whether to buffer your heart against possible pain, or just live in the moment and deal with consequences later.
• Discussion of how processing sports loss sometimes leads to misplaced anger online:

  “Anything that’s a big deal to you is a big deal to you... Even if that thing is not important to someone else.” – Luke ([27:39]).

Notable quote:

“I'm not going to Rolling Thunder this sadness… I'm just not.” – Andrew ([04:32])

2. Mariners Group Chat & The Art of Sports Group Grieving

• The guys dissect the tone of their ongoing Mariners fan group text during the loss—debating the line between “venting” and “manifesting doom.”
• Disagreement over one friend’s “I always know…” comment (paraphrased as “told ya”), with Luke expressing that “pessimism for protective reasons” grates on him more than open despair ([15:30]).
• Insight into "text chain etiquette" for fandom and Andrew’s personal contribution:

  “I'm going to fucking puke.” – Andrew, reading his own contribution ([14:00])

3. Coping Strategies & Emotional Regulation—on the Field and Off

• Luke encourages that it’s fine to feel deeply about sports, so long as you don't weaponize those feelings against others ([27:39]).
• The hosts share recent moments where they almost misdirected post-game anger at random internet strangers—“It feels better to be mad than to be sad” ([27:39]).
• They reflect on the therapy maxim: “if it matters to you, then it’s real.”

4. Mariners Managerial Decisions & National Perception

• Discussion of how Mariners manager Dan Wilson is perceived by national media as “not a good in-game manager” in contrast to Detroit’s AJ Hinch ([34:03]).
• Debate on whether specific managerial choices (pitcher changes, etc.) truly “cost” the series, summarizing: “It’s a no-win situation for the manager. Unless you win.” ([35:41])

5. Pop Culture Tangents: Halloween Costumes, Viral Ads, and Social Trends

• Luke and Andrew riff on Halloween costume ideas (“Leo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another”) and the pitfalls of appropriating characters from other cultures.
• In-depth tangent on a Buffalo Wild Wings ad featuring SNL’s Heidi Gardner and a CGI buffalo, and the overt “horny on main” energy of the premise ([42:41]).
  • “She’s advocating for coitus with a massive buffalo… Again, a video of that on the Internet would get you flagged by the FBI.” – Luke ([42:16])
  • Andrew introduces Luke to the social media term “horny on main” ([42:47]).

6. Listener Community & Positive Influence

• They remind listeners not to weaponize the show’s community for petty grievances, referencing a past negative Yelp review situation. Luke explicitly tells listeners not to go after businesses on their behalf ([31:24]).

7. Childhood Nostalgia: Grocery Stores, Neighborhood Freedom, and Privilege

• Deep dive into Seattle history and personal nostalgia around Bartell Drugs and Fred Meyer closing ([51:04]).
• Andrew recounts the rich cultural experience of shopping at a new international-focused grocery store and the practical joys of a listener-sent foldable backpack ([61:22]).
• Both reflect fondly on 1980s childhood independence, comparing how “free-range” kids used to be vs. today, with Luke deliberately caveating commentary around “helicopter parenting” ([69:47]):

  “I guess all I’m trying to say is I am very, very grateful that I got to grow up in a way that was pretty free ranging and I would love... for more kids to be able to free range as much as possible.” – Luke ([66:00])

8. Internet Spam, Subscriptions, and Tech Headaches

• Andrew rails against the underhanded tactics businesses use to bury unsubscribe options in promotional emails ([92:22]).
• Both reminisce about the “Radio TV Interview Report” booklet—a symbol of analog promotional spam ([91:27]).

9. Blursday Shoutouts (Listener Birthday Segment)

• A round of birthday greetings to TBTL listeners, replete with inside jokes, loving messages, and some awkwardly explicit entries.
  • “To the determined little sperm who jumped my tilted uterus and made me a mom. Happy 30th, Blursday, Elizabeth…” – Paula’s message ([78:12])
  • “He wears his ‘No Mountain Too Tall’ hoodie with pride. Mommy loves him.” – Emily wishes James a happy 13th birthday ([77:36])

10. Upcoming Personal Excitement: Vegas Anniversary, Listener Questions for Susie B.

• Andrew mentions plans for a first real Las Vegas trip for his 25th anniversary ([82:01]).
• Luke puts out a call for listener questions for an upcoming special Q&A with his mom, Susie B. ([54:35]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I'm just not going to Rolling Thunder this sadness.” – Andrew ([04:32])
• “If you feel strongly about something ... If something matters to you, then it matters to you.” – Luke ([27:39])
• “It feels better than being sad: being mad.” – Luke ([27:39])
• “That was some real Hodor energy.” – Luke, to Andrew absorbing all the sports pain ([12:08])
• “She's advocating for coitus with a massive buffalo … Again, a video of that on the Internet would get you flagged by the FBI.” – Luke ([42:16])
• “Somebody's horny on Main.” – Andrew ([78:12])
• “I got really, really, really lucky with my young life in ways that it’s only now in adulthood do I realize how lucky I got it.” – Luke ([74:16])
• “I’m going to fucking puke.” – Andrew, re: Mariners’ loss ([14:00])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:52 – Show open, Mariners playoff pain begins
• 03:20 – Andrew’s Bloody Mary, and switching from booze to a walk to ease pain
• 06:44 – Mental health, choosing not to “Rolling Thunder” the sadness
• 10:41 – Coping with the loss: actively NOT watching vs. living through it
• 15:19 – Mariners group chat etiquette: what’s helpful vs. what’s toxic in fan despair
• 27:39 – Why sports pain becomes targeted anger, and therapy wisdom
• 34:03 – Mariners managerial criticism: Dan Wilson vs. AJ Hinch
• 42:16 – Critique and breakdown of Buffalo Wild Wings’ “horny for buffalo” commercial
• 51:04 – Bartell Drugs and Fred Meyer closing: Seattle nostalgia
• 61:22 – Andrew’s love letter to his neighborhood grocery store
• 66:00–69:47 – Free-range kid nostalgia and shifting norms around childhood independence
• 77:36–80:49 – Blursdays: milestone birthdays, listener tributes, “tilted uterus” shoutout
• 82:01 – Vegas trip plans: architecture, recommendations, and blackjack
• 91:27 – Spam email hell and longing for the pre-internet era

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Tone & Language

TBTL’s signature relaxed, tangential, and earnest conversational style dominates the episode. Listeners experience the emotional spectrum: sincere sports heartbreak, playful pop culture riffs, self-deprecating nostalgia, and the steady joy of inside jokes. The hosts’ open, self-aware banter is peppered with internet lingo and relatable moments.

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For New Listeners

This episode is an excellent window into what makes TBTL beloved by its fans: the show is as much about community, camaraderie, and sharing the messiness of adult life as it is about any specific topic—baseball, childhood, or viral advertising. Even for non-sports fans, the discussions about emotional regulation, group chat dynamics, and nostalgia are universal and entertaining.

Skip ads, intros, and outros—the magic here is in the messy, meandering middle.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Hey, Julia, can you say T, B, T, L? T, B.

[B]

T, L. Oh, TBTL.

[A]

Have you ever been vaccinated for chickenpox or measles?

[B]

This is like a vaccination but for your brain.

[A]

It hurts at first, but it makes you better skeptical. It seemed too good to be true. I'm so glad I tried it.

[B]

Okay, no sounds. No sounds. Just words. No, I need words, not silence. Just give me words. His lips are softer than the baked potato I practice on.

[A]

But just like that potato, he turned.

[B]

Out to be rotten.

[A]

That went slightly better than the worst it could have possibly gone.

[B]

Things are going to start happening to me now.

[A]

Well, all right. Hello, good morning and welcome everyone to a Thursday edition of tbtl. The show just might be too beautiful to live. Welcome to the Internet. My name's Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

[B]

There's a Hidden Valley Ranch party in my mouth.

[A]

Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio, perched high above the mighty Columbia where we temperatures have dropped, that is for sure, but we've still got some blue skies. It's been a fun week because the moon, the moon has been absolutely enormous and it's sticking around into the daytime. I don't know what the celestial explanation for that is, but it's kind of fun and weird when you can like look at the moon at 10 in the morning. It's still there for some reason. Anyway, I'm looking at it right now, but I'm also looking at this show sheet that tells me that we have arrived at episode 4572 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I wasn't looking at my phone yesterday during a critical, let's say, 90 minute period of baseball that was going on involving our Seattle Mariners, a big topic on the show of late. And so I was actually a little bit out of the loop on if they were winning or losing. And then later on I was able to find the answer to the question, did the Mariners win their baseball game yesterday?

[B]

The answer, sadly, is not yes.

[A]

I don't know. I may have discovered a new way to watch playoff baseball, which is to maybe not watch it for sections. I'm not sure we'll get into that. Also, it's a Thursday, AKA a blursday that's also got my mood improving drastically. It's my birthday today. Because we're gonna do the blursday messages today as we do each Thursday. And of course, we're talking to this guy, longest running cobra of the show. Oh my God.

[B]

He admitted.

[A]

Maybe best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh and he is joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

[B]

Good morning, Luke. I was just reading some catching up on my Nancy cartoons while you did that intro. Did I miss anything important?

[A]

Well, let's see. Let's go.

[B]

Do you want to do it again? And we can start from the top if you want. No.

[A]

Well, I can see the moon, which.

[B]

Is weird because that is weird. It is weird, but it seems appropriate for this time of year. I'm really embracing this season, by the way. This might be my favorite fall ever. Honestly. Went for a really long walk yesterday and just sort of enjoyed it.

[A]

Were you walking off the pain from the baseball game?

[B]

I was, yeah. You know, I told you at the beginning of the show or before we started recording. I don't want to like just turn this entire show into like an emotional well being check after each Mariners game. But I guess it is what it is. I don't have a lot else going on in my life right now. And yeah, yesterday's game was really, really painful. Really painful. And so around, I think maybe when there was one inning left or two, what happened was I had. I had made myself a Bloody Mary. More during the beginning of the game or middle of the game when things were going well and I was feeling good about things. It's like, I'll have a midday Bloody Mary.

[A]

It's possible that was. That was your version of sending me a celebratory text.

[B]

What do you mean?

[A]

Well, kind of just being like, let's sit back and enjoy this.

[B]

Oh, right.

[A]

Sit back and enjoy watching them lock it in. And we're going to celebrate by having a 2pm Bloody Mary.

[B]

Yeah, like. Like I was jinxing it for once in my life. I don't think I was jinxing it in that way. I jinxed it in another, which I don't even know if we want to get into that. But here was.

[A]

You did not jinx it, my friend.

[B]

Here, I'll tell you in a second why I think what happened that makes me think I jinxed it. But it was more about how I changed the way I was viewing the game right at the critical moment. But this time I think you'll be proud of me, Luke. And you know that that's important to me that you are proud of me. But I did earlier in the, you know, I mixed myself up a Bloody Mary. Probably was more like two Bloody Marys. You know, like you mix it in the shaker and then the game took a really bad turn. And my mental health took a really bad turn and my emotional well being took a really bad turn. And I feel like. And this is where I'm proud of myself. And you can be proud of me or not. You can get on this pride wagon or not, Luke, but this is my pride week, by the way, and it's proud of me for not totally just giving in to the darker powers. In other words, you can imagine that there's a fork in the road there, right? The game, you're feeling good, you're drinking a Bloody Mary on a Wednesday afternoon. And then things start to go really south in the. In the entertainment that you're watching. And then you can lean into that and you can start cracking beers. You can have yourself another Bloody Mary or whatever, or you can put on your walking pants and walking shoes and. And just like, get out. And that's what I did. I was like, I can't sit here. I'm not gonna. Like, I'm not gonna. Rolling Thunder this sadness. Like, I'm just not. And also, we didn't have any good. Like, we didn't have any, like, relatively healthy. Like, we just didn't have any food in the house really, other than, like, you know, freezer, what we call freezer feast or whatever. I'm like, I'm not going to sit here and then, like, make tater tots later. Whatever is left over in there. Just. Everything just felt gross to me. I'm like, God damn it, I'm going to listen to the last inning or two of this game. I put on my. My walking outfit, which is a real sassy outfit, as you might guess, and I just hit the road and I went on this really long walk. I listened to the very, very end of the game, but it didn't matter. And then I can't remember what I switched to after that, but then I got out. Then on the way home, I'm like, you know what? I'll stop at sars, buy myself some stuff to grill. Came home, grilled myself up some vegetables and chicken, and Genevieve and I had a decent dinner last night. Maybe one of the last kind of nice weather grilling nights of the season. So, anyway, I was in a lot of sports pain yesterday, and I did not shake it off bravely. But I'm glad that I did not give in to my worst demons, at least.

[A]

I want to be very careful about sounding like I'm moralizing or telling you what is or is not the right way to process your feelings about the Mariners, etc, but I. That sounds Like a really good outcome as opposed to, like you said, it's just like, well, let's see if we can, if we can dull this pain.

[B]

Where's that bong?

[A]

Hey, Precisely.

[B]

Have you seen the bong?

[A]

Let's see if I can get. Let's see if maybe, you know, maybe finding the darkest corner of bad Alberts.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Will. Will help. Will help make this not feel this way. And then it's, you know, and then it's this morning and it's like, well, they still lost. And now we're also kind of like really operating with a major headwind, which is all the, all the stuff that was going on the night before. I didn't even really have the chance to do that because I had to actually work yesterday for my CBS job. And we were filming something that started at about like 1:30 and went until about 3 or so. And so my experience with the game was I started off watching it at home and saw them get a couple of runs and then got in the car and was driving down to where we were filming and was listening, of course, to the game in the car. And like the Mariners were leading three to nothing. The fans in Detroit were booing their own team. Bryce Miller, who does look like a wild Thornberry, was dealing. And I walked up to where we had set this shoot up, by the way, just to any aspiring television hosts, producers, camera people, what have you, if you're going to film something outside, if it's gonna be a sit down interview, let's double check if it's in an active construction zone and also under the flight path of Portland International Airport because those are two things that will really, really, really delay how the interview goes. I was sitting outside with this person I was interviewing and literally every time she would start to actually make a point, something that we want, I think. Oh, we might use this in the story. Alaska Airlines strafing us, just absolutely, just punishing our audio. Our sound guy Drew, holding up his hands going, sorry, we can't use this. And then me having to say stop and start over. And then if it wasn't that, it was someone's sawing something, you know, in the concrete because they're built. We were, we're basically out where they're building this new street in Vancouver.

[B]

But the story is not about bulldozers. At first I thought this is a follow up to the bulldozer. Oh, okay. So the construction noise is sort of built in.

[A]

Relevant. Yeah, we were, we had a great bulldozer right behind us because they're they're rebuilding Main street in Vancouver, Washington. So this was the sit down interview related to this Bulldozer Day story I've been doing. So it made sense for us to be there, except for the fact that it was literally impossible to conduct a normal conversation. I had no idea there were that many airplanes taking off from Portland International Airport. You know, I thought, okay, maybe once every two minutes. This would be like three of them every minute. I was like, whatever you've heard about the airline industry, the reports of its demise are greatly overstated, at least on this Wednesday in Vancouver. All that is to say, I'm walking up to the chute, I'm putting my phone away, I'm now laser focused on doing my job. And then when we're all done and we've got some B roll, we've flown the drone, and everything's all. I'm ready to get back in my car and head home. I pull my phone out and I look at it, and I am just absolutely shocked to see what has transpired. And the thing about it, indeed, I am shocked to see just absolutely how bizarre things got.

[B]

Your non reaction of I spired actually made me won. I wonder if you. If you got. If you caught what I was trying to do there or if you were just moving on because it was a no.

[A]

I was trying to think of, I.

[B]

Could also do this, man. No, thank you for. Man, look at us. Hey, we're riffing on a Thursday, everybody.

[A]

There's not. There's no way you can vargas this turd and make it look like something. That was a stretch. That was hard.

[B]

God, we were on top.

[A]

Yeah, Spire and Bizzardo did fit neatly into that framework of jokes. So I did not watch the collapse. And I was quite grateful for that because it was just, you know, to use an obvious sort of, I guess, analogy, it was just, I guess, kind of the ripping the band aid off very quickly. I didn't go. I mean, this goes back to that question that we've been asking all week that even our friend, television's Chris Hayes is now forced to ponder. The question of, is this fun? Like, it's so stressful for us, this whole, you know, playoff baseball thing. And I would. I would wager, I would say that I probably had a much less emotionally traumatic experience with this game than you did because I was not able to watch this collapse. Now, I guess you could say the other side of that coin is if the Mariners would have, like, triumphed, you know, if they would have been down and they somehow Came roaring back. I would have also missed out on the. All the endorphins from that.

[B]

So it goes, advancing, you know what I mean, of actually winning the divisional series, which, you know, you've waited a long, long time to see. Been able to take part. It wouldn't have just been like, hey, we survived another game in the series. It would have been a huge, huge win yesterday in a historic thing, obviously. So that would have been a bummer to meet. So maybe, I don't know, maybe we lost it. Maybe. Maybe I carried all the pain yesterday because the universe wants you to be able to celebrate. But that was incredibly.

[A]

That was incredibly kind of you. That was real. Some real Hodor energy.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You were just holding that door.

[B]

I didn't even. I didn't want to hold that door. I was happy to let that door slam right on your face with the party horns and meat inside.

[A]

I know. I'm sorry, buddy. Yesterday, I'm sorry for you and all of the criminals. Yeah, all of the. But let me ask you this. I've been hearing through back channels because I do have a certain member of the fun loving criminals blocked. I heard through some back channels that things got pretty. Things got pretty bleak, pretty dark on that text chain, which I would imagine is the case because again, the Mariners were winning, and then they went ahead and just totally, completely imploded. But, like, I heard that. That our friend Ders literally, after kind of. After just, you know, doing his normal amount of. Kind of negative. Negative manifesting in the text chain, when it was finally all said and done. And of course, everyone is in a very, very vulnerable, sad place if they're Mariners fans, which is everybody on that text chain. He then said something like, told ya. Now that I'm glad I didn't get to see that.

[B]

Oh, he didn't say told you. He said, I always know. I'm looking at it now because I didn't see any scene.

[A]

I was reading the paraphrasing of this. Okay.

[B]

So difference there. I don't know. It's funny.

[A]

It didn't sound different to me.

[B]

Do you want to know my contribution to the text? I have one. Oh, no, I had two contributions, but you're going to need major earmuffs. This is a. This is a 15 second swear warning on this.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

At one point, Andy is. Or. I'm sorry, Ders, I don't know who this Andy guy is. No, no, I don't know why that came out.

[A]

I've actually got a transcript of your text and you might be.

[B]

That'S gonna. Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that.

[A]

Yeah, well.

[B]

Well, let's hope it doesn't come to that. Anyway, I. One thing they. So at one point, Ders was complaining that they swapped out one of the. The hitters for Luke Rayleigh or whatever. And I just said, but Andy, he's a lefty. That's all that matters. That's just a little baseball, you know, that's sarcasm. It's a sarcasm. And then about. And then I think. And by the way, that had nothing to do with why we lost the game. No impact on the game at all, the way things end up going. But that was the only thing. And then I don't know what exactly happened in the game here. It might have just been when they started piling on runs and it was clear. I just wrote, I'm going to fucking puke. That was my contribution to the entire text chain yesterday. I didn't think that anybody was acting out because we were all miserable. And I didn't think Dur's misery was out of. Out of sync with everybody else's. I guess somebody said at one point, at one point he said, ball game. And somebody said, you might be right. This is unacceptably bad pitching. And he just said, I always know. Which maybe. Maybe that rubs him in the wrong way. That didn't bother me so much. But I guess we all have our different levels on that. And also we're all acting outside the. Outside the norms of how any of us should be acting in that moment. Yeah. You know what I mean? I give a lot of grace. That was a. That was a. That was a lot of badness that we were absorbing. And this wasn't like, oh, we only had a one run lead and he was predicting the outcome to be bad while we held.

[A]

Sure. You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, it was bad. It was a. It was bad.

[A]

By the way, I don't think you saying that you bleep and want to bleep and puke.

[B]

You can say it now, by the way, because I already said it.

[A]

You know what's weird? That does not strike me as a negative comment. That strikes me as you're sharing with us that you're feeling horrible about this game. And I think that's my problem with the other kind of discourse that Durs puts into it is it's if Durs's response was just, I am so upset by this because I feel so strongly about these things and I'm really worried that we might lose now, and this is just making me want to throw up. I would literally never be mad about a comment like that. It's this weird. Predicting the worst case scenario as a way of trying to emotionally blunt the pain. That's the thing that hits my ear weird. But somebody just saying, like, what you. When you said that, if I would have seen that in the text chain, I would have been like, oh, I. Yeah, I think I feel the same way. Like, that would not have felt weirdly enough. Even though that's a very, in a way, a negative comment, it's just you sharing how you're feeling. And that doesn't ever bother me. It's the kind of like saying, we always lose, we're going to do it again kind of energy that I have a tough time with. All that is to say, like, I feel. I think this is because of, like, I. Basically what happened was I got to take essentially a forget me not or forget me now. I got to just. Or it was, you know, it was like I just got to propofall right on out of that. Of that 80 minutes of whatever it was, maybe hour of. Of absolute nightmare baseball. It's like it never happened for me.

[B]

But your innie saw it, and that's what you have to remember.

[A]

I'm trying to. I am. I'm watching these videos over and over again and these flashing lights to try to train my Audi to tell my inn that we have to. We should have left Bryce Miller in for another inning. He was actually cruising.

[B]

You should see Genevieve's heli r Halloween costume, by the way. We should get.

[A]

Oh, I love it.

[B]

It's amazing. It's really good.

[A]

I was very excited. I can't remember if I mentioned this on the air, off the air, but I thought I'd really stumbled on a cool idea for my Halloween costume, which was going to be Leo DiCaprio in one battle after another. But that's. Many people have now thought of that.

[B]

Yeah, I could imagine. Is there anybody else in that movie, though, that you could be?

[A]

Well, it's funny because I mentioned this on the live wire on our. We were just chatting. We were doing a recording session earlier this week, and somebody said, well, you could be Tiana Taylor. And I said, I see a lot of problems. So many problems with that.

[B]

For you. I could name a few, literally.

[A]

Pick anyone else.

[B]

Yeah. You can't do the voice. You can't do the voice. That's the first problem. Right. That's probably not in that registry.

[A]

I can't really get away with Benicio del Toro.

[B]

No.

[A]

Even though that would be a pretty. Like just at the end when he's dancing in his jean jacket, backing up to the cops. That's pretty funny. Yeah. Hell of a look.

[B]

Dancing the whole time.

[A]

Again, it's getting a little cross racial there in ways that I just don't think probably are a great idea for me. But anyway, all that is to say, yes, I. Only My innie knows about those innings. My innie knows about those innings, Andrew. But what it has created is this bizarre. All I can say is, and I know this isn't a word, but sanguinity for me, which is having the feeling of sanguineness, which is to be sanguine, to feel like I feel at peace. I feel okay about Friday. And I know there are some reasons I shouldn't. They are going to be putting out arguably the best pitcher in the American League of Baseball. And the whole thing was we wanted to avoid having to play him with the season on the line. I understand intellectually that's all kind of bad, but I just feel at completely Zen and completely at peace about this. Like, I just think they're gonna win. We're playing at home. I'm too blessed to be stressed. And I cannot attribute this to anything else other than I didn't see the bad. I didn't see the bad thing you all saw.

[B]

I'm. You will be surprised or you'll be unsurprised to hear I am the opposite of that. And it's not even about like, well, let's sit down. Let's look at the rotation. Let's look at starting pitching. Let's see what we can do with our bullpen. None of it has anything to do with the.

[A]

You feel like the curse is back.

[B]

It's not even that. It's not even that. It's not even a prediction. I think that it, I mean, I literally think it can go either way. But what I know is I've just. After how I felt yesterday, I have decided that I am not. I'm not going anywhere to watch it. I'm not gonna be around because I can't be even other heartbroken Mariners fans. I don't think I can be around people if, if we lose game five. And it's just, it just. It hurts too bad. And I just. So I've already. And like, I am just, I can't explain it, Luke. I'm not predicting that we're going to lose, but I am 100% emotionally preparing myself for the worst. I'm not entertaining any ideas. I'm preparing for a Friday night where I watch this game. There's a moment where I start to accidentally let hope seep in possibly. And then everything is going to crash around me and I am going to put on headphones afterwards, I'm going to throw darts at a wall and I'm just going to retreat into myself and then I'm going to have three days or two days to recover before we have to do TBTL again. And that is my, that's what I've been thinking about. I'm just like, my plan is to be prepared to that Friday is going to be a really, really tough night for me. But I will get through it and if I can prepare for it now, it won't hit me like a bag of sand like it did yesterday when it really, like you said, like the, when, you know, people were streaming out of the Detroit Stadium and booing their own team. And then for things to turn around really felt like a momentum shift. And that's one thing too that like maybe again for me it has less to do with like an actual prediction. But just like when you just saw the momentum shift like that and what, what they're going into Friday's game with versus what we're going into Friday' with. We've seen the Mariners rally before. They've had an incredible season. I'm not predicting or saying it's definitely over. I'm just saying I'm not getting my hopes up. I'm just, I'm just going to white knuckle my way through this and then hopefully again be okay on Monday.

[A]

I guess I'm really, really, really setting myself up for some kind of pain. I mean, I'm doing a little kind of back channel sort of pre justification of how I can still feel okay even if they lose. In other words, I'm telling myself, well, every year, all, every team except one is not the World Series champion. And I think about like the Mets, like the New York Mets had the best record in baseball in June and they failed to qualify for the playoffs. Like think about being a Mets fan right now. That's just devastating. And so like there are really good, really expensive teams that didn't even make the playoffs and that like gutted their fan base. So I'm telling myself, well, and sort of in a low key way, I'm telling myself, yeah, if, if, if the Mariners don't win this, it will be disappointing. But a, I will think of that Houston series as like that's, that's he's my president. That's who I voted for was the Mariners sweeping Houston in Houston. Like, that felt so delirious to me. There was. And by the way, effectively eliminating them from the playoffs. Like, that was like a. That was a quasi World Series, Us vs. The Cheaters, and we vanquished the cheaters. But also, that's part of the thing I've been talking about. Like, I just feel. I feel like some kind of a weird curse has been broken with this team. And yeah, you know, we had a really, really crummy game yesterday. And again, I didn't have to go through. I didn't go through the experience of watching that happen. And so I have this very odd perspective on it for me, anyway. But I just feel like I just don't think we're cursed anymore. I think we somehow broke the curse. And I just am kind of expecting us to just kind of like, do well on Friday. I'm not stressing about it now. That being said, it will be interesting depending on the outcome Monday, to the degree that you've. Let's say they don't win, to the degree that you are able to form words around it on Monday, it'll be interesting to see how it felt for me versus how it felt for you, because I'm doing almost no emotional care or for myself going into this over the possibility that they might not win. I'm doing absolutely no, I'm putting up absolutely no cushioning in my interior life for if they don't win. And that's. That could be a very dangerous game. Dano.

[B]

Yeah. And while yesterday really, really sucked, that loss sucked. The feelings I had really sucked. Luckily, it still didn't feel like. It didn't feel like force majeure. It didn't feel cursed, it just felt. And that's the thing that I'm trying to remind myself. Like, you know, yesterday I was in a very dark place here. Let me give you an example. Can I give you an ex? I'm crazy for the people who are, like, proud. You know, there's got to be people sick of us talking about sports, not even because they don't like sports, but just because I do feel like I've been one topic obsessed over the past couple of weeks with all of this stuff. But if you want to make fun of me, let me give you some fodder. Around the time this. Well, it was kind of like after the game was out of hand, but it was still going on. But it was very near the end of the game. As I'm probably putting on, putting on my walking shoes, I see somebody had posted on Blue Sky. This is not somebody that I follow. This was retweeted by somebody that I follow. That was just somebody saying, hey, I'm, you know, I'm on my timeline and I'm just seeing so many people lose their mind over their sports. And I would just like to remind everybody that, you know, if you're hot, we're living in a very chaotic time, and if the hobby that you use as escapism is causing you more mental distress, I beg you, take a step back, you know, and protect yourself or whatever. And on my walk, I came up with exactly what I was going to retweet that with, which was I was going to retweet it or repost it or whatever. And I was going to write, hey, if you're so terminally online that you feel the need to tell other people how to enjoy their hobbies, I would just ask you to please take a step back. I'm worried about your mental health. I was so mad at this person. I was so mad at this person who. I don't follow. Somebody else reposted them. I have no idea who it is.

[A]

And I found later doing so to roast them.

[B]

No, I was so. I don't think so. It's this. It's actually. It was reposted by this fellow who I really, really like, who's a hardcore A's fan and has. That's a huge part. Identity. And so, honestly, coming from somebody like him.

[A]

So it's not the owner of the team, right?

[B]

Exactly. So coming from somebody like him, like, I actually think it's interesting perspective because I actually do look at this guy who's seen sports pain that few sports fans luckily have had to endure like the A's fans have, you know, and so because they were like such loyal fans, they got screwed. So in our continuing to get screwed so hard, and I'm like, you know, like, honestly, when somebody like him repost something like that, I have no issue with him. I actually think that, like, that's a good source. But it lived in my head to the point where I came back home, I took some time to find the post almost, and I'm like, I got it. I know what I'm gonna. And then I was like, oh, it was actually something that she was responding to. It was like in a. It was in like a chain. And it was just like her responding to somebody else. And it wasn't. My point here is this Person wasn't trying to get in anybody's grill with this stuff. It was just her personal observation. And could anything prove her point more than me wanting to just burn the hell out of her? And, like, how dare you tell me how to enjoy my fandom. I'm having fun. And then my head turned into fire. So anyway, that's where I was yesterday. And luckily, finally, my better demons, I guess, took over. And I did not do that. I would have deleted it right away. And then I would spend the rest of the night regretting it and wondering who saw it. And I only have. I usually get one, like, on something I post on that stupid site anyway, so it's just, like, it would have been such a dumb idea. And also just proving their point, like, that is how insane I was being.

[A]

Well, that's the danger in all of this is. And I've been guilty of this so many times. And, you know, even probably, definitely towards our friend Ders, occasionally getting up on the edge of it with my brother DFTB on the text chain, it's that these games create for me this such a strong emotional response, and then I don't know where to put that emotion. Sometimes all it takes is somebody wandering into the frame like that video game Hogan's Alley, and I'm just, like, ready to fire. Like, I'm just like, oh, okay, I'm real mad and I'm real sad. And, you know, it feels better than being sad being mad. And now you have just somehow made yourself the target of my madness because you. My anger because you have said something about the team or our chances or that I'm feeling this too, you know, strongly like that person did, you know? Yeah, that's the danger around all of this is like, it's just like, yeah, freaking out in a way that is very regrettable and losing perspective on it. And then on the other hand, it's like, anything that's a big deal to you is a big deal to you. I mean, that's what you learn in therapy. Like, whether or not it. It matters in this grand scheme of things, which it doesn't. But if it matters to you, then it is a big deal to you. And if it does, like, ruin your weekend, then it is a real thing to you, and you are allowed to have feelings about it. That's another thing. I don't really buy the argument that because sports are not about actual world events, it is somehow. It doesn't make sense or someone shouldn't feel strongly about them, because basically, if you feel strongly about something. If something matters to you, then it matters to you. You. You know, even if that thing is not important to somebody else, I would just like next time you have that feeling, Andrew, and you want it and you're walking around and you're just. And I know that feeling so well. You're just like, you're crafting the perfect burn, focus all that energy, come home, get on Yelp and just leave. A zero star review for Felton Heating and Cooling Long view watch.

[B]

I'm kind of surprised that we haven't seen other people just like, I mean, please don't do that. No. Nobody write a fake negative.

[A]

No, no, no, no. Please don't.

[B]

Operation.

[A]

And not to mention just on the subject of that a little bit usually, I think there's something that you and I try to be pretty careful with with this show, which is we are so blessed and so lucky to have the tens of listeners and lots of folks who are very invested in our lives and who are very up for trying to help us out in our lives. And like, there's a lot of times where you and I could kind of like we could sort of marshal the forces of the TBTL10s to kind of go out and mess with somebody or do something or. I don't know, like, there's just. It is actually something that we, I think you and I try to be really careful about is not for our own personal. Other than the supporting of the show, which we appreciate and we desperately need the tens for. It's like, I think you and I both try to. Not necessarily, if I can use this term, sick the listeners on anyone unfairly or unnecessarily or just over some petty grievance that we have. Even when we have like a bad experience somewhere, most of the time we would never say, please, you know, go write this place up online or do not patronize this place or whatever, because.

[B]

We would only do the opposite. Honestly, the only thing that we would do is, you know, if somebody, you know, if one of our. Somebody in our listening community is. Is up for something or like we would say, hey, please support the other tens or check this place out. It's wonderful. And they should have your support, whether it's that local, you know, what's my rough and tumble or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, places that we discover that we.

[A]

Want to support Armani, our baseball player from Armani.

[B]

Speaking of Armani. Yeah, Like, I'm fine with that, but you and I, I don't think. I don't think we've ever done anything. We're just kind of like, go. In fact, I don't usually want the listeners to get involved.

[A]

No, I don't want that at all. And I actually. I didn't think it through when I used the real name of the place I was mad at. I did not. I didn't kind of like, as they say in recovery. I didn't play the tape forward. I didn't imagine, oh, if I give the real name, then the Yelp review will be public and people will be able to easily find it. And then also, folks, and nobody, as I understand, has done anything extreme. So thank you. But I'm a little. I'm mildly embarrassed because, again, I really, really, really don't think it's a good look for us to ever be using this show to try to get people to do an action other than positively supporting the community and the people. It's like, if something bad happens to us, then we complain about it on the show. That's content, in a way. They've done me a great service. They've given me something to be mad about for two weeks, and that's, you know, something for me to talk about on the show. So, anyway, every. My point in that is to say, first of all, I feel a little. I need to be more careful with how I talk about things like that because I do not want to create a scenario where we are ever messing with folks. Doxxing folks. You know, I want to be really responsible about that. And everybody who's been over there has been cool, but let's just keep it that way, please.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And, you know, I guess I just.

[B]

That's.

[A]

I wanted to clarify that we really want this show to be a place for positivity and love to be spread in the world and global loneliness to be cured, more so than, like, trying to shut down local businesses. Because they could have been nicer to me.

[B]

Now, do you think Dan Wilson is on Yelp.

[A]

That the pause you heard was me? I just played through. I just. I just did, like, you know, they have these computer models that can just run a simulation of something a thousand times a second, and that's how they figure out, you know, how to proceed on things. My brain just ran a thousand simulations of us getting more into Dan Wilson's managing.

[B]

I will say that would be good. No, it's not bad.

[A]

I think I came out with 800 times out of the thousand. It's bad.

[B]

It is not.

[A]

Do it.

[B]

I will just say this. I'm actually. I don't think Dan Wilson's managing led to the yesterday's loss at all. It was a fluke. It was because it was not his fault that we lost yesterday. Having said that, I do think it's his fault that the series isn't over, that it didn't wrap up on Tuesday or whatever. And it's been a little bit embarrassing listening to national media. I saw a piece and I don't think I was listening to this. I'm sorry. It's all kind of jumbling together in a cosmic stew in my mind. But I think I was reading a short piece by somebody who I don't think is a Mariners fan. That was taking more of a big picture look at the series and talking a little bit about like how managerially it's just not, not a good matchup because you. What's the I'm blanking on the title.

[A]

AJ Hinch.

[B]

Hinch is just like really smart and a good in game manager who knows how to do this. And Dan Wilson looks good in a mustache and used to be on a, I mean on a popular Mariners team, you know, like. And it's just like. And again, I don't, you know. So anyway, it's just kind of embarrassing when that sort of the national thing too. And again, I just sort of wonder where we would be with a more competent manager. But I will say I don't. I wasn't mad at Dan Wilson yesterday. I wasn't stomping around thinking about him. I don't think he did anything wrong or at least that cost us the game yesterday. Right.

[A]

It wasn't one of those things where there was a critical decision at the end of a one run game that swung it one way or the other. I mean it's, he's doing, he was my guess is he doing the stuff. He was doing the stuff that if you look at the data on it, this is what the, this is what the data recommends that you do. And again and then we'll thank some donors of this. I promise I'll keep this within like two minutes. But it's like if you look at the, you know, the game that we lost, it was like he was criticized for leaving George Kirby in too long. And then so then the next game he doesn't. He pulls Castillo and puts Inspire who does really well, does four pitches and gets Carpenter out and gets us out of a tough inning. And then, you know, if he would have in obviously now it looks like in, in yesterday's game if he would have left Bryce Miller in For a while longer it would have been better because Bryce Miller was. He had it, you know, he was cruising other than giving up a run and like. But then again, if he would have left him in and the next thing is a two run home run, then we're like criticizing him for not putting spot. It's a, it strikes me as a kind of a no unless you win. Literally, it's a no win situation for the manager. So you know, he did the, he.

[B]

Did the right move yesterday. He learned his lesson after that, that game one. But that game one should have been a win for us and we wouldn't even had to had this conversation today. But anyway.

[A]

Yes, but then you get into this butterfly effect thing.

[B]

That's true. Yeah. What other do game two and three.

[A]

Unfold in the same way if game one has gone in a different way? You know, it's like you got Marty McFly. It's just like a whole question of like, you know, how does that change thing. He's playing Earth Angel.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Instead of having Macklemore raising the ceiling because it can no longer hold us, you've got Marty McFly playing Earth angel, his hands disappearing.

[B]

Are you worried about the ceiling, by the way? Like, are we going like the ceiling can't hold this? It sounds like we have some.

[A]

It's a fire. I mean, first of all, it is a massive like OSHA violation, You know that that ceiling is incapable of holding people and we're not doing anything about it. And I think this is a public catastrophe waiting to happen.

[B]

Yeah, I have heard this. And I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard it might have gotten weakened because in the 80s people were dancing on the ceiling potentially. I don't know. Have you heard this too? Have you read about this?

[A]

I did. I've seen some old. On the microfiche at the library. I've seen some old articles about people that were dancing on the scene at the time. They described it though as oh, what a feeling.

[B]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

So they liked it. It was, you know, they had no idea how they were destabilizing that ceiling. That now we come back to its inability to hold us.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

This is what happens. It's, it's like if you do not invest in infrastructure, you know, it's not a sexy thing. Like, it's not, it's not easy to get the funding for it, but it's like if you don't take care of it, you're going to find yourself in a situation where the ceiling can't hold.

[B]

It's like the buffalo population, really. Not the population of Buffalo, New York, but just how we depleted them because we just. At one point, we just thought that they would just be there forever, but then event deplete the populations, and this is where we end up.

[A]

That reminds me of what I think is a very upsetting commercial for Buffalo Wild Wings, where the buffalo. It's clear that Heidi Gardner wants to have conjugal relations with a buffalo voiced by the guy from snl. Is it Beck Bennett? Is that his name?

[B]

Oh, that is Beck Bennett. I don't know that I. You might have actually told me that before, and then it whiffed out of my head. That's right. But, yeah, she gets real flirty. There's two, right? There's one where he starts rapping like Eminem. Not like Eminem, like somebody I don't know rap enough to know.

[A]

Like, Matt.

[B]

Was he rapping like Macklemore? It seemed like a more modern.

[A]

He didn't talk about drug addiction.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's probably not a Macklemore song.

[B]

He didn't weigh in on the crisis in the Middle east, so it probably wasn't like Macklemore. But yeah, then there's one where. Yeah, she does. She actually. Are you looking at it now? Did I see you dialing it out?

[A]

She's talking about how their kids are gonna look. I mean, I can.

[B]

Yeah, right. Yeah, we should.

[A]

It's. It's Heidi Gardner B Dub commercial. And the joke, if you want it. If you want to call it that. The comedic premise of the video is that the buffalo is not interested in being pinned down by Heidi Gardner, which, first of all, I just don't. I mean, that just the idea like this. How do I put this? This seems like an argument I might hear you making more than me, Andrew, but I don't want to put words in your mouth. But just the premise that it's like girls just want to have a bunch of babies and get married, and then the guys, they got to be free. It just feels like a very tired comedic premise to me. And then you overlay it on the fact that these people are not from the same. These things are not from the same species. And in fact, I think it would be illegal in every state in America for them to have a child together. Would that not be bestiality?

[B]

Did you call it bestiality?

[A]

Because you think we'll call it second bestiality? No. You know, I heard someone smart call it bestiality.

[B]

No. Do you know this so that might be the proper pronunciation.

[A]

I mean, I. That wasn't what I was raised with, you know, as a kid. Would you.

[B]

I was. I want to be on the record. I wasn't raised with this either. I just wanted to make it very clear.

[A]

Yeah, no, but I definitely, like, the first time I heard the idea of, you know, anything like this happening between human and non human animals, the term I heard was bestiality. And then I heard somebody who seemed very smart calling it. I mean, the thing is, the word beast is right in there. Yeah, that's what makes so much more sense, because you're talking about a non human animal. But. Okay, here's the commercial. It's Heidi Gardner, formerly of snl, by the way. That's a whole other thing. She was not renewed at snl, which is very strange to me because she was one of their. And I don't think it was her call. I don't think she was voluntarily walking away from it. I think it was a kind of a non.

[B]

Really, I thought.

[A]

I don't know the story.

[B]

I thought her and ego, just because they were. Well, they were besties, they were beasties. I connected those two so much because I know they're really good friends and they think they started in the same year of SNL and then they were ending their SNL careers in the same year. I just sort of assumed that they were sort of just like making that decision to do other stuff. Yeah.

[A]

I had heard somewhere, I don't know about the ego, what the circumstances were around Eggo's departure, but I had heard somewhere online that it was not fully Heidi Gardner's decision, which I found shocking because she's like, I thought, a very popular cast member for them and doing a lot of things. Okay, so this is now Heidi Gardner, who's sitting at a table of buffalo wild wings with a buffalo that is huge. Easily. I mean, 15 times her size. I mean, it's larger than an actual buffalo would be probably sitting in this. Buffalo wild wings.

[B]

No, I don't know. That's not true.

[A]

You think this is the size of their buffalo? Shocked at how I think they are up close.

[B]

Shocked if you ever saw a buffalo up close. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. All right, Wait a minute.

[B]

I got it here. If you don't know.

[A]

Okay, will you play it? Because I think I just. I may have gotten bamboozled by the Internet. You know what I mean?

[B]

Is that one of those, like a review of this commercial and then starts.

[A]

With a bunch of still frames of her and then whatever the Hell, that music was.

[B]

That probably starts about 10 seconds in or 5 seconds in, but I have this here. This is a 15 second buffalo wild Wings commercial, like you said. They're both sitting in this booth. Pick 6 for 19.99 is the perfect meal for two.

[A]

I can't believe we're on a date. Oh, I'm just here for pick six. Imagine what our kids would look like.

[B]

I don't want to have kids with you.

[A]

Six kids.

[B]

Six.

[A]

Pick six.

[B]

Wait, could we eat here every meal?

[A]

Yes. All right, I'm down. Pick six, meal for 10.

[B]

19. I don't know what it is. And by the way, I'm not somebody who's like a huge Heidi Gardner fan. I wouldn't have even been able to conjure her name if you hadn't said it. But I don't know, there's something about her performance that makes.

[A]

I like her performance. I don't have a problem with Heidi Gardiner in this thing. I think that she's. She's great at playing whatever that character is. I just.

[B]

Whatever that is.

[A]

I just find it interesting that, like, I feel like they're. I'm not trying to. I'm not trying to clutch my pearls so hard or create some kind of moral panic around this, but I do think the fact that she's advocating for coitus with a massive buffalo is weird. It is like that. Again, a video of that on the Internet would get you flagged by the FBI.

[B]

Well, just say what you mean. She's horny on Main. For that.

[A]

That.

[B]

For that buffalo, Luke. That's all it is.

[A]

I don't know that term.

[B]

Really? Horny on Maine?

[A]

No. Is that like. Is that an Ohio thing?

[B]

No, I think. I don't think I grew up with it, but I thought it was, like, from, I don't know, maybe a few years ago. Weren't people. Oh, horny?

[A]

I bet they were. I think I just messed up.

[B]

Well, let's see here. Know your meme. Horny and Main. Here we are. I gotta disable my handbooker.

[A]

All right.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Title.

[B]

Yeah, right. Part of a series. I don't. You know what. Part of a series on horny. Posting. I think we're done here. Thank you, baby.

[A]

All right, let's thank some donors. These folks are. Oh, I just realized I had a dream about this the other night. Andrew. Yeah, it's not that interesting. It really just has to do with the rate at which we clear out the donors of the day versus when we get into dazzling donor territory. This was my dream. It was. I was sort of setting up the donors as I often do, and I was saying something like, and now it's time to thank some donors. And you said something like, I think you mean dazzling donors. And I thought, holy smokes, we're already at that part of the year.

[B]

Oh, no, we're not. But, you know, I almost reached referred to these donors as dazzling donors yesterday. Do you think that's why you had that dream?

[A]

The dream was a couple of days ago.

[B]

Do you think you foresaw my mistakes.

[A]

That might have been prophetic? Tonight I need to dream that the Mariners pitching staff really shows up on track.

[B]

You really do. You really do.

[A]

And there are dream on that hard tonight. Okay?

[B]

Yes, please.

[A]

We want to say thanks to Stephen McConkey who's in Riva, Virginia.

[B]

Do you think there's any relation to lad McConkey, whom my fantasy football team is named after? My fantasy football team this year, Luke, I don't know if you know, this is called McConkey business. That's a true story for lad McConkey.

[A]

Of the how is lad McConkey doing, by the way?

[B]

Not living to the standard. I think he was my very, very first pick.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Maybe first overall pick in the draft because I think I had the first. And I don't think he's been doing terribly, but I don't think living up to expectations.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's a whole class of. Of. Of what year is he lad McConkey?

[B]

I think this is his second year, but I had not heard of him until he popped up on my fantasy football draft, which I did no prep for at all. I just like lad McConkey. What's a lad McConkey? Well, McConkey business it is.

[A]

You got a good name out of it. And we got some Support from Stephen McConaughey out of this as well. This is, as I always mentioned, 100 listening or supported podcasting you're tuned into right now. These folks are voluntarily keeping TBTL in business. Also, Rebecca Robinson is in Federal Way, Washington.

[B]

Nice. Thank you, Rebecca.

[A]

I wonder if Rebecca is living and dying by the Mariners as we are probably. Do you feel like this thing has a way of. Part of my justification for how much we're talking about it is that I do think it has become a major conversation. I mentioned yesterday that my daughter reached out to about Mariner baseball, something I thought I would never, ever, ever see in my lifetime. And it made me. It warmed my heart, which is a reason that I hope that they win on Friday and Continue playing. Because it is like a fun. I'm not talking about the games being fun. I think we've established they're not.

[B]

But the.

[A]

Everything else that goes around it, I find it to be very fun and exciting. I don't know Josh Corey's take on it. Josh Corey is in Vienna, Virginia. We've got Riva, Virginia. We've got Vienna, Virginia.

[B]

We might have more Virginias. I don't know. Or at least states that their abbreviations end in a. That's my prediction.

[A]

I think your prediction. It's going to come true. Andy, you dreamed on this last night.

[B]

I did. I dreamed hard on it.

[A]

You knew that Jessica Haley was going to be in Dorchester Center, Massachusetts.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

Dorchester Center.

[B]

We're going to rock a rock a rock around tonight at the Government Center. You know that song? Just pretend like you know that song. Let's move on.

[A]

I sure do. Yeah. Is that Jonathan Richmond?

[B]

It certainly is. Modern Lovers.

[A]

How did I guess that?

[B]

Yeah, because. Because I channeled him and it sounded like you were.

[A]

You actually did. You know what? It's sort of RFK Jr. Doing Jonathan Richmond.

[B]

I feel like it was more like Fred Schneider doing Jonathan Richmond.

[A]

Listen, we have our own friends, okay?

[B]

Why did I buy this funky little.

[A]

Funky little purchase? But is Dorchester now? Wait, is. Is that because the. The word centers in the Jonathan Richmond song, or does Jonathan Richmond have a Dorchester, Massachusetts connection?

[B]

I associate him. Why do I associate him with Massachusetts? I think I always assumed that he was from that part of the world. He was very Massachusetts, and he's got a song called Government center, which I always assumed was about. Why did I always assume that was about a Government center in Boston? Maybe it's because I was, by the.

[A]

Way, born Boston, Massachusetts.

[B]

Okay, okay. I was gonna say I got into the Modern Lovers around the time, as you know, Genevieve was living in Boston. I was spending tons of time there. And just in this very moment, I was like, wait a second. Did I just always assume he was a Bostonian or had that connection because of where I was when I was listening to his music? Yeah. So I'm guessing that Government center is about.

[A]

He's raised in Natick.

[B]

Oh, okay. There you go. Nice. And I'm looking for Dorchester center, though.

[A]

It does seem that, like, if Jonathan Richmond, if you found out that he grew up in Santa Barbara, California, you would have to really reconfigure where he sits in your brain, sort of.

[B]

Except his other albums, like, I. Jonathan has such a West Coast. The whole thing is about Summer like summer parties and like. And it's got this really west coast sort of vibe to it, I think. I don't know, I can't think of a reason for that. It was funny how that second album, because I basically only listened to that first one over and over and over again and then never did any more exploring. But man, that guy has a ton of good stuff. Anyway, I digress, obviously.

[A]

Well, you progress right into Jessica Haley's name. Oh, that's our friend in Dorchester Center. I'm sorry, you were progressing us to the next names on this list, which is Alice and Gabe. Alice. I'm going to go with Weimers and Gabe. Claire.

[B]

That's right. And I apologize. I meant to format that better for you there, Luke, but instead of, oh, that's all right.

[A]

You figured it out though, that Alice is probably maybe since we're stateside, not going with Vimers. I'm guessing we're going Weimers. And I do know that they're in Davidson, North Carolina.

[B]

North Carolina. That does not end in an A like Massachusetts or Virginia.

[A]

It doesn't. But I have amazing news for you. Rancho Cordova. Andrew, they just moved it into California recently, like in the last week.

[B]

The safe for bacon, dude. For us.

[A]

For us, Rancho Cordova, California is where we find Alan Bartels.

[B]

Can you assume, first of all, thank you, Alan. And can you assume that Alan is very generous from this donation? You absolutely can.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

But can you also assume that any community, any like city or town or whatever that begins with Rancho is in California? Are there ranchos outside of California?

[A]

I bet you in the Southwest you're going to get some other ranchos. Yeah, you're going to get some, some ranchos in Texas and New Mexico. But it's a very Southwest coated. You're not getting it. Like the next town over from Dorchester center is not Rancho Mirage, Massachusetts.

[B]

Right. New Rancho Mirage.

[A]

Yeah. You're not getting your rancho really stops, you know, stops at a. Probably about, you know, like in like East Texas. I think you stop getting Rancho.

[B]

Rancho sure is up there in New England.

[A]

Yeah. Ranchershire. Yeah. It's got a couple of Cs in there we don't know how to exactly pronounce. Hey, thank you so much to all of our donors for making TBTL possible today. We could not do this without you.

[B]

Hello and welcome to Top Story.

[A]

You know, this is not the Top Story, but. But something about Alan Bartel's last name reminded me of the sad story I read in the Seattle Times the other day about the final Bartel Drugs in Seattle just being, you know, they're going out of business and they basically were selling everything inside the physical stores. And like a reporter went and just sounded deeply depressing.

[B]

Yeah, this whole thing is so depressing. They bought this. What started as a local store and a local chain and then was it, was it Drug mart? It wasn't drug, no, it was either.

[A]

CVS or Walmart or Rite Aid.

[B]

It was one of the, it was the one out of Ohio. So I think it was Rite Aid. And they just bought it and just ran it into the ground and now they're selling it all off. And you're seeing the same thing with grocery store chains. And it's like really sad. I saw some photos. I think it wasn't a piece. I think it was just like a collection of photos on Reddit that somebody had taken during the last day that the Fred Meyer in Lake City was open and all these people. And I was wondering, I almost sent it to you, but then I was like, well, if you do have a connection to that particular store, it might just depress you. But I was trying to figure out that store wasn't old enough for it to loom large in your childhood, was it? Or was that. That was yours. Oh, okay.

[A]

Well, here's why. Well, no, I had a couple when we moved to Seattle in 1980 or 81. We lived in the kind of. It's not quite Northgate, you know, where we lived. We lived about a 10 minute walk, if that, from the Pinehurst Park.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

Yeah. So whatever that little area would technically.

[B]

Be called Pinehurst probably. Right? Is it Pinehurst?

[A]

Probably Pinehurst. But we lived more towards Lake City way, if you will, than towards Northgate Mall. And I remember pretty vividly some snapshots from that house. So for instance, that Safeway that's up near the Pinehurst, that was always a Safeway. It just was a totally different old Safeway when I was a kid. That was the Safeway. That was the place where I first experienced seeing the naked form in a magazine when I was a little kid.

[B]

I'm so glad it was in a magazine. I was like, what's going on in that score?

[A]

You heard me trying to figure out how to say this in the least. I mean, you already said Horny on Main, so I feel like, you know, it's. We already got strike one for this episode. But like, actually I think you're. My commentary on Buffalo Wild Wings was strike one. I think that. But you definitely fouled one off with Horny on Main. And now I'm just fighting for our lives here. I'm just trying to make contact. I'm just trying to shorten up our swing and just spoil some pitches here. But I was trying to figure out how to say that exactly when I was a. When I was a little kid, we lived in this little rental house that was about a. This was the difference of, like, either the kind of parenting that I experienced or maybe more just how parenting kind of went in the 80s, which I know is a tired topic. And everybody of our age is always like, we went out and we didn't come home till the street lights came on. But we say that because it was true. That was really kind of what my childhood was like. But I remember saving up cans to recycle, to get some. Some. Some walking around money. And I could not have been older than 6 or 7 because we didn't live in this house. I mean, I was born in 1976, and we lived in this house first, like when we got to Seattle. But we didn't live there for years and years. We probably lived in this house for three years. So, like, I could not have been. I mean, I don't think I would have even been eight. Actually, my mom's here. We could, you know, I had a thought if we wanted to, for tomorrow's show, if we wanted to do a little Q and A with my mom, that'd be fun. Like, the listeners love hearing Susie on the broadcast. Maybe we put a shout out. If you've got any questions for my mom, email me today. So that's going to involve people who are listening to the show in real time, pretty much. Send lukebtl.net, send some questions for my mom, and maybe if we get enough, we'll bring her in tomorrow. We'll do a little Q and A with Susie B.

[B]

That'd be great. I'll put that on blueski, too.

[A]

Oh, nice. Okay, thanks. Maybe someone could post this on the Stens page, too, to get a little. To get a little bit of interest going. But anyway, my mom would know how old I was when we lived in this house. But I was very young. And all this is to say I would get my. I had, like an old lady. We called it an old lady shopping cart, which is just basically the kind of foldable metal basket shopping cart that you could wheel behind you.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

I filled that thing up with aluminum cans.

[B]

Now you're going around collecting these around the neighborhood. Or these are from.

[A]

I think maybe they're just. Maybe in our home environment, we're saving them. I'm putting them in maybe like some brown bags and then putting them in that thing. And by myself, walking up to that Safeway, which again, it was actually oriented different than the Safeway that you see there. Now that Safeway is facing a different direction than the old one. The old one faced whatever that is. 105th maybe.

[B]

Okay, yeah, but the street, I know exactly what we're talking about because yeah, you have to. Right now the front doors face the parking lot. But back in the day it would have been right. The doorway would have been right on the street there.

[A]

But I remember I probably only did this once too, because it was not a great roi. But I wheeled those cans up there, I traded them in. I don't think there was like a coin star at the time. I think you might have literally given them to somebody at the grocery store who might have just weighed them or something. Like, I don't think it was, you know, it wasn't automated in any way. And I remember, I think I got a dollar.

[B]

Oh, geez.

[A]

Because this was the. I don't think that cans in. I don't necessarily think that the deal when I was a kid was that there was a deposit the way like there's a deposit in the state of Oregon. So each can is whatever you're, you're paying 5 or 10 cents on the can and then you get that back when you bring it in. I don't know if that was the deal in Washington or if it was just some weird thing where you could X number of pounds of cans, you know, got you whatever. I just remember getting this money, this change from the guy for getting my recycling and then just kind of wandering around this Safeway and then seeing like they had a big magazine section. And I remember looking at a magazine and I it was a photography magazine. It was probably some high end, you know, Richard Avedon type of thing or whatever. But because it was a high end photography magazine, some of the photo, some of the photography was, was naked models.

[B]

I'm picturing black and white probably.

[A]

I remember sitting on the, sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor of that Safeway in an aisle, becoming one of these magazines spread out, looking at this and going, something is really intriguing about this. I don't know what it is. I don't know what goes on with this, but boy, I can't stop looking at this for whatever reason. Okay, so here's my point that Fred Meyer down on Lake City Way, it was again it was a different Fred Meyer in the same place, if that makes sense. Like the Safeway, it was an older version that they then went ahead and built a new fancy Fred Meyer there. And it was across the parking lot, the old one. But that old one I used to. We used to go to because that was like, you know, we would take the bus up there because that Lake City Way, that run of Lake City Way from like where there's like a Taco Time now, that was like a Taco Bell when I was a kid. It's across from the mg, the MG dealership or the Mini Cooper dealership or whatever the heck that is. That whole run of Lake City way past Dick's and where there's that Wendy's and all of that stuff going up to that Fred Meyer. That was. We. We were constantly traveling that area.

[B]

So I am very growing up that I envied so much growing up in the country. Like, that's literally what I wanted was, was to be able to like get on a bike and ride to a 711 or a burger joint or whatever. Like, that was the type of stuff I only read about in like Archie comics. Well, I guess they were older, but like, just that. That was a dream to me. That was a dream of a, of a place and I thought a time gone by. But you were living it.

[A]

I was. And you know, this is where I would like to say to you what Nola was cracked up to be. But I am so great, therefore making you feel a little less sad about it. But no, it was awesome. It was such a gift to me to get to grow up at a time where. Yeah, there was like, first of all, here are the things about that that were lucky breaks for me. You could. We rented our house for $450 a month. That's why part of the reason my parents never bought a house until I was already in college was, well, a, they had no money and B, they were like, well, we're renting a house and we're raising our family and it's a block from Green lake and it's $450 a month. You could live in the city of Seattle affordably like normal people, regular people could live and a lot of regular people could buy houses. My parents weren't quite savvy enough to figure that out at the time. But like, it was. The cost of living was. Was so much more reasonable. I don't know where the levels of panic were around, around kids being able to kind of self direct during like, let's Say, after school and summertime hours. I don't really know how I feel about that whole conversation like this. I think that the knee jerk, the obvious one is, oh, man, we're all helicopter parenting and kids aren't allowed to do anything by themselves anymore. There's something about that argument that feels a little pat to me just because, like, I don't know what the research is. I don't know. You know, I don't know if that's really a thing or if that's just anecdotal, but I'm very glad that I grew up at a time where I just had a lot of latitude just to kind of roam.

[B]

I was in the grocery store the other day, my local sars, which, by the way, I truly, truly love, love SARS now.

[A]

I'm so happy for this, for you because you got off to a rough start.

[B]

Yeah, that, that security. Because when they opened this huge grocery store in my neighborhood that was closed down for a long, long time, then that reopened as like, this budget grocery store. But it's huge. And it. And it also has, like a huge chunk of it that is, like, dedicated to Latino communities and a huge Asian part of it. And like, I've told you, like, like the chicken I bought last night was halal cut chicken. You know, it doesn't matter to me, you know, chicken, but you know what I mean? It's just like, it's really cool. The types of things you can get. Like, there's a frozen food section that has stuff like kebabs and like, stuff that you wouldn't get in a normal grocery store. I shouldn't say normal, but in the types of grocery stores I usually go to, but also has, like, I told you when it was before it opened, I'm like, I just want to also be able to get, like, I don't know, the name brand cat litter that I want or laundry detergent or whatever. And it just serves all, almost all of my needs. Like, I go to other grocery stores for, like, other things, like maybe their deli department or whatever. But, like, for the most part, like, this grocery store is great. It's near my house. I'm there. I think I was there twice yesterday. I'm like, they're more than once a day at this point.

[A]

Are you at this point kind of on a friendly basis with the staff.

[B]

To where they're A little bit, yeah. I don't usually chat with them, but I know that we recognize each other. I'm in there so much, and actually there's Two different security guards now, both of whom are very friendly and say hello and goodbye and. Oh, you know, I gotta say that whole thing where I almost got into a fight with a security guard the very first day they were open, because I couldn't. I had this dream of just, like, going in there with my backpack and, you know, shopping and then bringing my groceries home. And shoplifting absolutely stopped that for you. It was just, like, all part of what I was expecting, like, oh, my neighborhood grocery store where I walk to and I bring my groceries home in a backpack and they have this no backpack policy. And I was, like, so mad about that because it's just like this one aspect of the dream kind of fell through on me, and I'm pretty embarrassed about that, but especially because a listener, and I think I mentioned this at the time, although I don't think I ever followed up on it. A listener sent me, like, a backpack that holds a lot of stuff, but it's like, it's probably for somebody who's camping or something. It folds up so tightly, and it's made of, like, this very thin but durable material that I can just, like, fold that thing up. And I carry it in, like, a little ball in my hand almost. And I. And so now, like, every time I go to the grocery store, I just have that. And nobody gives me any grief about it because it just looks like a little bag. And I throw it in my basket and I do my Shopp and then I have a backpack. So thank you so much to the listener who sent me that. You solved a huge problem in my life that I could have solved myself if I wasn't being such a big, stupid baby about it. And now I use that backpack literally every day, if not more than that, for one thing. And it's to go to sars, and I love it. Anyway, all that is to say I've really been enjoying the SARS experience. I really hope that they are able to stay there for a while. I heard that the first few months weren't exactly super financially great for them, so we'll see how it works. But I really am invested in keeping that grocery store in the community because, man, it's been a game changer. I was in there yesterday or the day before. And I want you to know that I am never the type of person who judges other people's groceries. I think that's a very gross thing to do, to look in somebody's heart and be like, would you ever write.

[A]

An I, Anonymous to the stranger judging people's Groceries and have your thing.

[B]

Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean that as a slight.

[A]

No, no.

[B]

I was actually kind of thinking of other people who would like have conversations at work. I remember specifically a co worker who. And I'm not going to name her, this goes back years and years and years now, but she would like kind of, oh, you wouldn't believe what I saw this person putting in their grocery cart at market basket or whatever. And I was just like, what a gauche damn thing to say. Like, you live your life and you want to live a healthy life, that's fine. But like, whatever. I think there's class involved in that.

[A]

Never freezer feasted.

[B]

Oh my God. Anyway, I think that's pretty gross behavior. But I will say that I was walking in the store and kind of near the, the checkout aisles or whatever and I saw a short guy who is pushing a grocery cart. I kind of saw him from behind. I'm passing him on the right and he's got a little girl with her and she's young, she's almost like toddler. She's like walking but you know, very, very young kid. And then I go and I grab. I think I was just in there to grab a Gatorade, honestly. So I grab a Gatorade and I turn around immediately and then I'm walking back towards these people again. And I gotta say, as I passed the grocery cart, I was like, this is a little bit. I don't even know if it rose to the front of my brain, but in the back of my brain I was like, man, that's nothing. But this is just like a bunch of bags of chips and candy bars in there and mostly empty cart, but all just chips and stuff. I grabbed my Gatorade and then I'm walking back towards these people and I realize that's not a short man. Those are two children just grocery shopping together. And there was something so funny about it. I have no idea if these kids were there with parents or if this kid. And I'm going to put this kid somewhere between, I don't know, like 9 or 10. I'm not great at. I'm not great at judging those kinds of things, but let's say the kid was about 10 years old and this is probably his little sister or something. And there was something so funny about it. I was just like, I don't know if they walk to the grocery store themselves to do some grocery shopping or if maybe their parents were their guardian or somebody were somewhere else in the store or what, but When I thought it was a man with his daughter. And then I come back around and it's just a 10 year old and a 4 year old grocery shopping. Of course that's what would be in their cart. They're not gonna have artichoke hearts in there.

[A]

No, no. Or hearts of palm.

[B]

Or hearts of palm. I was trying to remember when you were doing hearts of palm.

[A]

I missed that. That's so funny. But see, that's the thing. And now here I am. I said I didn't necessarily wanna get into this argument because I don't really know what the data is, but like the number of times that I was in a grocery store by myself before the age of 10 would have been like 100 times. Like it was a totally normal thing. And like, I remember what me and my friends would mostly be trying to do is I don't know if you remember that this American Life episode, I think it was called like starting from scratch or something. It was a very memorable for me because one of the people this is in the early days of the show, one of the people that they profiled was this guy who was a. I think he was like a limo or cab driver in Vegas and I think he was somebody's dad. So it was like his adult child was kind of like interviewing him or telling the story. And basically what this guy's deal was, he was a compulsive gambler. He'd get up every morning and he would just like have no money. And then he would just hustle up all this money throughout the day by running around and driving his cab and picking up fares. And then he'd have 20 or 30 bucks and he'd go in the casino, he'd run that up to a few hundred bucks. But by the end of each day he'd always have kind of blown it all and it would be gone and he'd be starting from scratch. And this was his thing. My version of that as a child was wake up, it's summertime, you have no money, none of your friends have any money. How are we going to get enough money today that we can then be seen walking around a store buying a tremendous amount of unhealthy food? That was our main favorite thing would be to get money so we could then go to the grocery store so then we could buy candy and chips? So like, I totally get the mindset of those kids, but I also think I'm thinking about where I was the other day, where I saw probably a 9 year old kid somewhere and there Was no adult right next to them, them. And my thought was like, oh my, this kid is lost. And I think, I forget, I think ultimately I, you know, I observed that their parental figure was somewhere just, you know, a little ways away or whatever. But even I'm in that mindset now. Like a nine year old kid without an adult hovering right next to them. I'm like oh my gosh, do we call someone? And then I think about how many times that was the case for me as a nine year old kid. It was the case almost all the time. And again, maybe it just turned out better for me than it is. I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to for some reason explain 66 minutes into the show or whatever it is, I push back on the idea that the world is a more dangerous place for people than it used to be. Like, I don't really think that that's, I mean there are certainly dangers out there and unfortunately in my mind a lot of them are created by us. The prevalence of guns, fentanyl, there's a lot of stuff out there that's dangerous and not good, good. To me it's not. The, the person is going to kidnap your child, the person in the van is going to kidnap your child and disappear them. Like that's, that's the sort of boogeyman thing that I think is probably not a high likelihood of it happening. And I guess all I'm trying to say is I am very, very grateful that I got to grow up in a way that was pretty free ranging and I would love to it for more kids or for. I just would like kids to be able to free range as much as possible. Again, I don't know what the safety of that is. I don't know if we've, if it really is as different as I think it is from when I was a kid. I just know that when I saw a nine year old kid the other day and I thought they were unsupervised, I was about to call 911.

[B]

It's interesting, I wasn't sure if you were saying that people really don't allow kids to have those opportunities anymore or if you're saying that maybe it's a falsehood that actually a lot of kids are doing this. It just depends on.

[A]

I don't know which is the falsehood is what I guess I'm trying to say.

[B]

I will say, and again, I can't speak to this, I'm not a parent. But now that you mention it, it's Kind of like. Because I was actually even thinking, like, I have a strange thing, like, when I pass somebody on a walk now, I always have my big blue over the ear headphones on because the earbuds kind of cause distress in my ears because they only play Throbbing Grizzle for some reason, so. No, I like that.

[A]

That's your problem. It stuck.

[B]

No, but the over the ear headphones are better for me and they don't cause issues. So when I'm going on walks, I have these big headphones on, right? So there's not an expectation of me saying hello to people when I pass them. But I really don't want. I'm not good with eye contact, as you know. But I also don't want to be the person who doesn't say hello. And I'm like, passing somebody almost like shoulder to shoulder. So I kind of do this thing now where I kind of just like, look at them and nod. But I've been kind of like, just like, kind of raising a hand to say hello. Sort of just like, hello, you know, Because I do think Seattle is a city. People who move here are just like, man, people really don't make eye contact with you. Nobody says hello on the sidewalks. Nobody. Like, people just kind of of like, rush by. I'm not judging that behavior, but I. I just wanted people to look at me and just first of all know I'm not a threat. And also that I can just say a quick hello. But then I got to say, lately I've been seeing, like, kids. And then I sort of give them the same treatment. But then in the back of my head, I'm always like, do I look like a weirdo waving to kids? And I can't tell you how quick these interactions are. I'm talking about, like. But I'm just like, now I'm sort of like, based on this conversation you're having, I'm thinking about, oh, yeah, those three little girls that I passed the other day who are like, kind of running and skipping through the street not far from my house and those kids in the grocery store. And maybe it's just because it is fall and I've been going on more walks. I've just been seeing more of that. So I also wonder, and I'm not even trying to weigh in on it, but I wasn't sure if your point was. People say that we don't trust kids to go out on their own anymore, but there's plenty of that happening in some communities. Or if you're just saying that I don't really know, but I see it a little bit and it always fills my heart with a little bit of joy, a little bit of envy. And I yell at them and I say, you should be in the country. The way I was isolated, how dare you skip about. No, it's, it's adorable. It's cute. And it makes me happy that they are able to do that.

[A]

I think what you heard me struggling with was trying to not say something that's super asinine. Like on the one hand, an asinine thing probably to say would be like, like we're helicoptering all our kids all the time for no reason. Let them roam. Because A, I don't have any young kids anymore, and B, I don't really want to get into trying to judge how other people are parenting. So that's where you heard me kind of sort of getting tentative there. And then also. But then there's also this idea that I don't buy into the fact that the world is a more scary, dangerous place now. And I think that that unfortunately is what one, certainly one sort of political ideology really, really wants to push right now, is that everything is a threat and everyone's trying to kidnap your child out of Starbucks. And like the world is this dangerous, scary place. So we all need to be armed and we all need to be worried that our kids are gonna get human trafficked. And therefore we need more law enforcement at all times because that's the only way to control this extremely real threat to, to you and everything you love at all times. I think that's just such a dangerous, dangerous way to get people thinking about the world. So it's like, I kind of want to say, like I don't want to tell parents from my perch, hey, just let your kids get out there and, and, and, and, and do what I did in the 80s, which is to literally be unsupervised for hours out of the day. But on the other hand, I also want to just say I don't agree with the premise that the world is a more dangerous place now, again, other than things that are self created, like the prevalence of guns. You know, like, there are unfortunately some stuff out there that I don't feel like was out there when I was roaming in the 80s. I don't know. Again, this is where you hear me. Like I said this to somebody the other day. I forget. We were, oh, we were recording something and they said something and then they doubled back and then they tried to give a bunch of contacts and I said, you sound like a person who's been yelled at on the Internet. Oh, you know, it was Brandy Brown. We're talking about our friend Brandy Brown in. In Minneapolis. And Brandi was saying something where she was Talking about Minneapolis versus St. Paul, I think. And I could hear her saying something and then already imagining the comments and then trying to, like, kind of, you know, ameliorate the comments of the things she had just said, which is something we've all done. And I said, you sound like somebody who's been yelled at on the Internet. You know, we all get kind of. If you have a job like this, you can. You can relate. But anyway, I don't know what I'm trying to say other than I would. Very much, very privileged in my childhood, but not in the ways I used to think that a privileged childhood was. You had a lot of money or you had all these cool toys, or you didn't, like, hold hands and pray before dinner in public, which I found very embarrassing. There was. You know, there was stuff that I thought was privilege. And what I realized is I had a very, very privileged life. I had two parents who loved us and were around.

[B]

I live.

[A]

We had no money, but I got to live in a vibrant city that was full of all kinds of different people that looked different and were different. And I just. I got really, really, really lucky with my young life in ways that it's only now in adulthood do I realize how lucky I got it.

[B]

You know, that was top story.

[A]

That's how you do it.

[B]

What were we supposed to talk about there?

[A]

There's a right way to rock and.

[B]

A wrong way to roll. You can't just. Just listen to your song. Just remember that life is number one. You can be having so much fun. Just remember that life is much fun. You can be nothing but. I know what you're thinking here, Luke. You're thinking, well, it's obviously time for the Blurs day segment, but how can people wish other people or themselves a happy blurs day here on the TBTL podcast?

[A]

I've always wondered that.

[B]

I know people stop me on the street all the time, and they ask.

[A]

Me that with tears in their eyes.

[B]

With tears in their eyes. And this is what I. I'm gonna tell them. I'm gonna tell you what I tell them, Luke. You email me. AndrewBtl.net, you put hey, dummies in the subject line. No, you don't submit. Sorry, that's a different thing. You put blursday in the subject line or birthday wishes in the subject line. And I will read your message on the show. Clark says, Happy 40th birthday to Amber. You've reached another milestone, started a new chapter, taken one more step in the journey that is your life. And some other metaphor about getting older, wiser, creaky as all get out. You are my ecological copy, ecologically conscious, community driven, spooky, goth rock karaoke queen. Happy birthday, Moonglow. Now that's how you blurs.

[A]

Yeah, man. Love it.

[B]

Jim in Bellingham says my niece and goddaughter is turning the dreaded 40. Is it dreaded for her or dreaded for you? She's. In theory.

[A]

I wouldn't mind turning the dreaded 40 at this point.

[B]

I know, right? It's a splendid 40. Lordy, Lordy. Let's see here. Jim says she's a very kind and wonderful person who, if President would release the Epstein. The Epstein files. I hope see that coming. Seriously, I can't say enough good things about her and wish I could be in her life more. I would be eternally grateful if you could do this. I can do it. You say you can't say anymore. I wish we had her name, and I don't think I cut that out. But I guess if you could say more, I would include the name of your niece. But either way, happy blurs day to Jim.

[A]

You're telling me that this person got the Epstein files in here, but not the name of the person who's having their blurs day?

[B]

Yes. I should be somewhat careful in case I. This was my omission, but I don't think it's in there. But anyway.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Jim's got a niece. He loves her. Happy birthday to her. Emily says, Happy 13th birthday to James, who wears his no Mountain too tall hoodie with pride. Mommy loves him. Aw. Happy blursday, James.

[A]

Cute.

[B]

Paula says, oh, my goodness. What are you guys doing to me today?

[A]

Oh, no.

[B]

What are you doing to me today.

[A]

Paula Ghislaine Maxwell Reference. Why in the world someone will be transferred to a minimum security prison after meeting with the President's personal attorney?

[B]

No offense, but I think I'd know if Jelaine was in prison. Paula says to that determined little sperm who jumped. I can't even.

[A]

Somebody's horny on Main.

[B]

To the determined little sperm who jumped my tilted uterus and made me a mom. Happy 30th, blursday. Elizabeth, for you, there truly is no mountain too tall. Wow. What are they doing to me, Luke? What are they doing to me? They're making me say words That I don't wanna say.

[A]

Yes, you don't like to say, wait, you didn't get up today hoping that you'd get to utter the phrase tilted uterus.

[B]

Is that a phrase you've heard before?

[A]

I haven't, but it's my new favorite phrase.

[B]

That's why I was looking at it. I'm trying to fig that's an L in there. I never heard that before. We got.

[A]

I love that phrase. I don't know if that's a medical. If that's like, you know, a particular known sort of thing in medicine, like if somebody has a tilted uterus, if that affects anything or if that's just how that that listener likes to describe it. But I mean, I'm here for it.

[B]

I'm looking it up, which I shouldn't do. It is a. It is a. Yeah, I guess it is something that is a description if a uterus is tilted in a certain way.

[A]

So the shout out is actually to the spermazoa that became the child that's now turning 30, right?

[B]

That's my understanding of this, yes. I mean, love it. We could get into zygotes, but I choose not to. Eric, the original Sweeten says for my blursday I'd like a patented heartfelt congrats from my favorite pod bros. I turned 5050 on Monday. Yes. I'm exactly one day younger than Kate Winslet, so happy 50th to her too. See? Thank you. You remember Kate Winslet in the blurs days. Finally Eric says, love you guys. What you do is so important. Drop me a line when in the scandies. That goes for all the tens out there too. Happy blurs day, Eric.

[A]

You know what I like? I really like getting that message from Eric because Eric is turning 50 and Eric is obviously vibrant and full of life. And you know, that's the next number that I'm gonna turn. And I've been. I'm actually not particularly put off by turning 50, but I like to hear other people turning 50 and being excited about it.

[B]

Yes, me too.

[A]

Good for me.

[B]

Yes, exactly.

[A]

Happy birthday, Eric.

[B]

50 is going to be my year. I'm only 48 right now, by the way. I'm just skipping 40 and. But 50 is then going to be my year.

[A]

In this economy, who can afford to turn 49? But I am a. I think that my 50s are going to be. I'm. I'm naming it and claiming it. I'm feeling really good about that decade.

[B]

What are we doing for my birthday this year? You taking me Anywhere nice.

[A]

Birthday month. Because that's what you love to do.

[B]

I like to start. You start a little bit.

[A]

Beginning of November. It is November.

[B]

It is. Yes. And it's at the end of November, so we like to make the whole thing my birthday month. I like a lot of it. Attention.

[A]

I know. It's wild. It's like, enough already.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

We're doing Vegas, Andrew. We're doing.

[B]

We're doing Vegas. Boy.

[A]

You want to know about the financial health of Las Vegas?

[B]

I do.

[A]

I mean, if you want to. If you want a leading indicator. That place. I am getting daily emails from multiple casinos. Hotels are being like, would you like to come down and stay for a week for free? Would you like us to give you $200 a day of gambling money?

[B]

It's like they're begging. Huh?

[A]

They're begging, and it's like, it's. I'm not going down there. But it's funny because it's just like, you can tell that there are. You can tell that they're having problems keeping the rooms full in Las Vegas.

[B]

You know this, Luke, aside from our weird little adventure in an rv, which we parked in an RV lot one night in Vegas, or. Yes, I guess just outside of Vegas. No, we were in Vegas proper.

[A]

We were in Vegas, not on the Strip.

[B]

That's literally my only experience in la. Las Vegas. So, like, I've never had a Vegas, but our Genevieve and I. Now, this is a blurs Day segment. It's not a blant of blursary segment, but our anniversary. Our 25th anniversary is coming up in January, and we'd like to go somewhere, but we have a vacation planned in March. So we're just trying to think of, like, a good, maybe extended weekend getaway. And Genevieve's been thinking Vegas. And that might be my first Vegas trip trip.

[A]

I mean, here's the thing about Las Vegas, is that there is a ton of fun stuff to do. It does not have to be in the. On the floor of the casino. You know, like, I mean, that will.

[B]

Really give them that. Do they have a leaning Tower of Pisa I could go to as well? Probably. Don't they have a lot of the worlds. Don't they have recreations, a lot of the world's wonders?

[A]

Yeah, unfortunately, they're tearing down some of those, I think, because, like, well, let's see. They've got the fake Eiffel Tower. That's at the palace.

[B]

They do have the Eiffel Tower.

[A]

I think Luxor's probably got some kind of. Well, Luxor is a fake pyramid, so that's still there. So that's pretty cool. They've got a mini New York skyline at New York, New York. So that's got a rolly coaster, Andrew, that goes all through it goes around a fake Statue of Liberty or a reproduction that's not as large as the Statue of Liberty.

[B]

So no leaning Tower, though.

[A]

I'm trying to think that would be. I'm not. Well, the Venetian doesn't have a Leaning Tower of Pisa that I remember, but they do have canals.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Gondola ride in the canals of the Venetian.

[B]

Okay, sounds good.

[A]

No, I mean, honestly, like, I do think there's a lot of.

[B]

Take an architecture tour in those canals, like in Chicago, you know?

[A]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Right.

[A]

With the. You know, here's the funny thing is, like, I have. Well, I have a lot of thoughts about the architecture of Vegas because my favorite little section of Vegas is where the Cosmopolitan, the Aria and the Vdara are. And I believe at least a couple of those buildings were built by the architecture architect I.M. pei. And they're actually architecturally interesting buildings that apparently nobody has any time to look at because they're too busy going to look at the mini Eiffel Tower.

[B]

Like, it was a.

[A]

It was a. It was a. It was a. It was a seen as a grand mistake for the city of Las Vegas to try to build architecturally significant buildings instead of just something that looks like a different building that people are familiar with.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, and they're like my favorite buildings in Vegas. I'm like, these are really cool. And I read this New Yorker thing that was like, yeah, those were failures. Yeah, those were. They. They missed the mark on those.

[B]

Well, I'll let you know if I need any. I've got.

[A]

I've got about a hundred recommendations for you, by the way, if you do go down there. Because that's the other thing you and Veeves would love, love, love a lot of the stuff that's just off Strip.

[B]

I should mention Veeves has been down there. You know, she's been down there with you guys, I think, and also with a bunch of other friends and stuff, too. So she's not. She's not as naive to it. And she says she's got some places she loves to eat down there.

[A]

There. Oh, yeah. Tons of great restaurants. And then, yeah, there's like a really great steakhouse that people talk about that I actually haven't been to, but I know about it. And, like, there's a lot of really good food and interesting stuff. In Vegas. So I don't want to sound like I'm dissing on Vegas, but I do think that. I do think that you'll probably want to build in some time. That. See, for me, it's like, do they have triple fortune dragon bonus in the high limit slots? That's a kind of a. That's a KPI for me.

[B]

I would probably need to.

[A]

Maybe.

[B]

Maybe I'll get my iPad out and relearn how to play blackjack.

[A]

You know what? I. Yes, I love that for you. You know, I. I've talked about this before. I'm. I'm not. I'm not really a. A gambler of any note anymore in that I just don't gamble very much. I don't. I don't really. I just doesn't come through my life very often. But I'll tell you what I do see a lot of on TikTok is other people playing slot machines. And it is fascinating. Casinos have decided to let you film in the casino now, I think again, probably owing to the fact that they're like, look, whatever gets someone in the door. So there's this whole culture of slot machine, I guess you'd call them influencers. Except all they do. Yeah. All their thing is, is they just sit there and they dump insane amounts of money into these slot machines and they play these slot machines and sometimes they win big money and sometimes they don't. And it is crazy how satisfying watching this is for me, really. It absolutely scratches whatever itch I would ever have to gamble again.

[B]

That shocks me. That surprises me. I would think that it would make you itch more.

[A]

No, this is what's. This is what's counterintuitive about it. I'm like, you know, I'm like, I want to see them, first of all, I want to see them win. That's more interesting when they hit a huge bonus. But then when I watch someone put five grand in a slot machine and they're betting $50 a spin and they just crash out, they end up with $0. I. I feel like I'm in the movie Final Destination and then like, that was my death and I somehow avoided it. Like, I feel this huge sense of relief and like, oh, God, I'm glad that wasn't my money. And also, like, if they win, I'm happy for them. It is like, I do, I don't. I may never play. That's not true. But I kind of do not care about playing a slot machine again in my life as long as I can watch Other people playing them on TikTok.

[B]

You know, I was thinking the other day, maybe it was yesterday that I'm a little bit. I'm more than a male. No, I'm gonna say I'm a little bit bummed still about all these Internet gamblers who basically absolutely destroyed the possibility of just getting a regular pack of baseball cards at the store that you open up and flip through.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The other day I was like, it would just be fun to, like, just buy a couple of packs and come home and see what's in there. Not because I'm looking to, like, get rich off of it, but you remember, I mean, that's one story that I experienced in real life before we realized it was like a huge national trend, is I would always get one pack of cards at the beginning of the season. Or I just did that a couple of years in a row. And then one season I couldn't. I couldn't get cards anywhere at the Bartel that I went to all the time. The Bartel drugs that we're just talking about, they didn't have any. And then I would go to the Target and they were behind glass and all, like, kind of picked over. And then I was like, what is going on with baseball cards? And we realized, oh. Because now there's this whole phenomenon of, like, they're worth tons and tons of money and people are breaking them online. Breaking them. Breaking packs open online. And. Yeah, and then. And there's so much money behind it. It was sort of. It was almost like whipped up in the kind of the. The flurry of the what? Not the bitcoin. What's the other digital currency that was such a big deal at the time. Like. Yeah, Everybody was basically opening up packs of digi currency or whatever, and it just became such a thing. And it's like, now I can't just sort of like, randomly grab a pack of baseball cards as a kind of last minute purchase at the cash register and just kind of come home and, like, see who's in there and then maybe learn about a Philadelphia Philly or something like that. You know, it kind of bums me out.

[A]

What do we. Why not Fungible tokens, But what do we call that kind of art?

[B]

Yeah. What was it with the little monkeys? They were the fun monkeys.

[A]

Yeah. Those monkeys were valid. Yeah.

[B]

Fallon and. Yeah.

[A]

And Paris Hilton.

[B]

Paris Hilton.

[A]

Love financial minds, Right? No, Those were called NFTs.

[B]

NFTs, right. Yeah. Fallon never touches his NFT money. Never touches his.

[A]

Like Marshawn Lynch.

[B]

Exactly. And finally, Lisa In Tacoma. Sorry to keep you hanging so long, Lisa. Sorry about that.

[A]

Worth the wait.

[B]

We had to talk about some. Luke and I had to get some things off. There's that little chirp in your.

[A]

In your favor. I almost. I don't want to fix it.

[B]

Wow. All right. Lisa in Tacoma says, I'd like to wish my old pal Tiffany in South Orange, New Jersey a very happy blurs day this weekend. You are like definitely. You're the real thing that a lot of people say. I love listening to the same bright podcast with you across the country. It's very nice to everybody involved talking.

[A]

About us though, right?

[B]

It might be. Might be Pablo and. And I hope Apollo cat, you and the fam celebrated up right this year. Happy blurs day. That's indeed right. And that, my friend, is where we will leave the blurs days today. Unless I should check my spam box. I check my spam box really quickly here. Sometimes they go in there. My spam file is just filled with all of those. Remember about two months ago, maybe three months ago, we just started getting slammed with all kinds of crappy press releases. Luke, did you get those too? I marked them all as spam, so they're all going into my spam folder. But it's like Florida backyards worth a shocking 427,000 each as property values skyrocket.

[A]

Oh dude, somebody just hundreds of these things. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know who compromised our identity and put them on these lists, but that's. I need to actually take the time to mark these as spam because all I'm getting is like an American awakening. The independent relationships of spirituality. And I don't know how that sentence book review, interview, opportunity, secrets, deception and a shocking twist colon the and then review new children's book makes big concepts like food and like I'm just not reading to the end of these of kind cause I don't have enough room for the subject line. But they're just all. It's basically the Internet version of that magazine that we used to always talk about. It was like rt.

[B]

Oh yeah, the radio. Radio Times, I think it was. Oh no. Rtir. You're right. Yeah.

[A]

That little booklet that would have all of these guests that had written some self published a book and they wanted to be on any talk radio show they could get on. And we never actually availed ourselves of that. But this is like the email version of that. It's just a fun of, you know. And I don't. Yeah, I should mark them as spam.

[B]

Rtir, the radio, tv, interview report. But that's the magazine. You know what? They do this thing and a lot of. A lot more of these spammy, kind of like, let's say, promotional emails. Like, spam is something that is, like, completely uninvited into your life. But these days I feel like. Like I bought a new Bluetooth speaker from Best Buy a couple of months ago, and it's by the. The brand Marshall. You know, they make the amps or whatever is.

[A]

And is it like a little mini Marshall?

[B]

It does look like a little mini Marshall amp, which is fine. Like, that's not.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

You have that one, too.

[A]

I've had that for years. Addie got it for me, like, four or five years ago.

[B]

Oh, is it the kind that. Because the reason I went with this one is it has physical buttons and switches on the top of it that you actually turn up and does it go. Yeah, when you turn it on? Yeah. I didn't know you had that riff. Yeah, I was like. All of the user interfaces for Bluetooth speakers now are just like little rubber buttons that you push up or down or whatever. And I was really taken with the fact that this has, like, knobs and switches and buttons. And it's very satisfying in that regard. So. But anyway. But I bought it through Best Buy. I never signed up for anything through Marshall. I didn't go in, like, you know, since I was a kid, you'd get a new electronic and it would say, go, you know, register this. Used to be able to register your electronics by mail and now, of course, via the web. Anyway, I don't know. Like, Best Buy told Marshall that I have this thing now. And Marshall starts sending me literally daily promotional emails. And I don't know if they particularly do this, but I know other things like that, what they do. And all of these spam emails that we're talking about right now, these. These bad, like, fake press releases or whatever they are, they don't let you unsubscribe. They make them so long. I don't know if you realize this, Luke, but there's some sort of a length limit or something in Gmail or they put a length limit on it. So you open this email, you scroll all the way to the bottom looking for the unsubscribe button, but it's not there. There's another button that says, click here to see this whole email. Then it opens it up in another tab. Then you gotta scroll all the way to the bottom of that view in browser. Sometimes It'll say. And then at the very, very, very bottom of that, you finally get to an unsubscribe button, because I think legally it has to be in there. But they're, like, doing all of these, like, crazy things to make sure you can't even find the unsubscribe button anymore without clicking four times. It is. I know I use this word a lot lately. It gets stuck in my head, but it's very pernicious.

[A]

Well, Andrew, this is going to make you feel better. This is a little preview for tomorrow's show. Okay. I, While we were talking, received. Received a lengthy message from my niece, who is studying abroad in Scotland, but who's apparently listening to tbtl.

[B]

Now.

[A]

She wants to weigh in on your anxiety about puppy sitting.

[B]

Oh, okay. Yes. I thought you were gonna say this had something to do with the grandkids taking over the text.

[A]

Well, not. I only scanned this message as we were doing the show, but it's. I believe she is very team Andrew.

[B]

Oh, I'm very glad to hear that. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I kind of realized that that's a story is a tough one for me because I don't know if you could tell when I was telling the story, there are just, like, certain details that I can't kind of share with everybody. That also affects how I feel about this whole thing. And so. And me being somewhat delicate to other people's privacy and stuff plays a role in this adventure as well.

[A]

Well, I think you're going to feel very seen by Maddie's experience of dog sitting and also maybe more nervous and all in.

[B]

And also, we're gonna see if your mom can hop on tomorrow as well, right?

[A]

Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's do that. We'll. Maybe we'll blend that together. I'll have various members of my family weighing in on the show from across various continents. Anyway, so do if you can join us for that tomorrow. Of course, we're back here with more imaginary radio. In the meantime, everybody, have a great Thursday. Take care of yourself. Happy Blurs day to all of those who are celebrating this week. And please remember, no mountain too tall.

[B]

And good luck to all.

[A]

Power out.