Muse

Five, six, seven, eight! Trident gum is the chewiest gum Give it to your friends and chew it with your teeth Your teeth are bones that live outside They hang from your lips like bats Oh, outside bones, outside bones Never forget your teeth outside bones They're bones that you wash And when you're a kid, they fall from your head And to make things less weird We say they got stolen by a demon that's your parent? No! Trident! In lieu of my usual audition piece, that was a jingle for gum I just

made up. TBTL! Hi there, my name is Nick. I'm looking to talk to Andrew Walsh. I'm from the New York Times Book Department. We're gonna have to pass on your memoir entitled Cat with a Hot

talk story thank you luke it's carbs where you been buddy we miss you we're all gonna be hanging out tonight in a sofa's french bread pizza hope to see you there bye the man or beast that i run

from ain't been born and his mama's already dead i know those words but that makes no sense hey

do you think you could be my funniness mentor i can definitely be your funniness mentor

all right hello good morning and welcome everyone to a monday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live stinky my name is luke burbank i am your host oh yeah coming to you from the nest broadcast center high in the sky above portland oregon on a monday It is MLK Day. Each year, I wonder, what is the proper way to greet you, the listeners, on MLK Day? It's not like Happy MLK Day. Maybe it's a day for us to reflect on all the ways that we need to make this a more just society. So it is MLK Day, and I hope we're all reflecting on things. Boy, that's a heck of a sizzling intro to episode 3,339 in a collector's series.

Let the fun begin.

We do have a lot to talk about today, even though it is a holiday, including the fact that you should be more careful, probably, when considering throwing food scraps out onto the side of the road, out of your car, or while you're walking. I am certainly somebody who's always just thought, Eh, I'll throw a banana peel. I mean, it's composting. I'm actually helping, but it turns out. Welcome to Food News Today. That stuff takes like two years to decompose and sets off a whole chain of events with animals. It's like a bad thing to throw, like, peanut shells out your window of your car. So we'll get into that. Speaking of food scraps, they are recalling, I think it's like 700,000 pounds of Hot Pockets. Hot Pockets! because uh some may contain glass and plastic um so we will uh bring you up to speed on that as well plus emails plus females plus this guy the longest running cobra of the show known for his drawings of tall ships their grace their majesty he is uh a cuyahoga clam and we are very happy to have him here he had to uh dip on his usual mlk day sausage fest don't miss the sausage fest to be here and we appreciate it he is andrew walsh joining us right now from the roosevelt

neighborhood of seattle washington good morning my friend good morning luke i um would like i mean you're in portland so i don't think that you can be much help here but i'd like everybody kind of in the greater seattle area to be on the lookout for a dog what with a dog walker the dog should match the description of a dog who recently went to the bathroom the dog walker would match the description of somebody who would throw their dog's poop into somebody else's empty garbage can at the curb let me know if you know see a dog and dog walker combo that fits that description you can reach me at andrew at tbtl.net we are on the lookout for some suspects thank you when did you become aware of this situation oh just moments ago as i brought it's a it's a you know we're getting off to a late start today which is nice but they took your your garbage even though it's a holiday yes see and as a matter of fact all joking aside i was going to say that as much as i have many issues with the garbage collection service here on the days that they decide to skip pickup and then lie with their lying faces to my truth telling face uh and saying the curbs Worn on the outside bones I love that intro

And I love it because a it's super Funny and b I just like that You know

There was a writer on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt who was just had for years been thinking, aren't teeth weird? It's like a bone. It's like a calcium deposit is externalized. And they were able to finally write that into something. They were able to get that out of their system.

I was trying to think if I have anything like that, like if I finally got a writer's position on a show, what joke would I bring? But I think any quote unquote jokes I even try have already been like slathered all over this podcast. It's the bingo card. Yeah, there's not a lot left on these bones, as it were.

Somebody wrote on Twitter, like, I think we could get through this bingo card, like, in one episode or something. And I was like, you know what? We're allowed to make that joke. You're not, listeners.

But, oh, just to finish my thought on that, I will say, when the garbage collectors do their job, I'm very lucky that they never seem to stop for the Monday holidays. You know, garbage pickup day here is Monday, and on the occasions when Monday is a holiday, they still pick it up. So that is something that I should be hashtag blessed over. And then today, because it was a holiday and you and I were going to get off to a deliberately late start, so we could have a more luxurious morning. Sure.

Oh, I'm wrapped in fur right now.

Oh. I'm dripping with diamonds. It's a very luxurious MLK day here in Portland. I tried to do that Roy Orbison, like, sexy voice growl, but instead I just sounded like I was making a gagging sound at the thought of you in that getup.

Were you going for the part where he says, mercy? No.

I can't do it right now on demand. If I'm by myself, I can do it because I'm not as tense, and my throat will welcome that sound, that rattling, that death rattle. But right now I'm just embarrassing myself. But, yeah, so anyway, if somebody threw it, it's not a big deal. But yeah, I brought my garbage cans in later than I usually would is my point because we got off to a late start. Are you blaming me for this? Is that what's happening? No, I could have gotten my ass out of bed and brought them in as soon as I heard the garbage truck go by, but I didn't.

I am still, though, like in a way responsible for it because I was the one that proposed, you know, your beloved Cleveland Browns. And now to some degree, my beloved Cleveland Browns were playing yesterday. Big day for you. And also today, as I've mentioned now, nine times is a holiday and we are here doing the show because we love you, the tens of listeners. I thought, well, yeah, let's just let's luxuriate by by dialing up a little bit on the later side so we can sleep in, et cetera. But had I not suggested that we would have done the show at nine, you would have been up and Adam at 7 a.m. You would have pulled that garbage can and it probably would be song's poop.

Yeah, well, let's not get into alternative histories. Who knows? You know, one, you know, butterfly flaps its wings, maybe some other. Sure. Ben Affleck in sliding doors. Who knows? Maybe I get up so early in that scenario that one of the cans is emptied and the other isn't. And I bring the one can in. And because of that, the next truck driver misses the next can. Then I've got a much bigger problem. So in a certain way, you saved me. That's another way of looking at this.

Sure. You didn't know you needed saving, but I saved you. Um, now we've, we've been over this territory before, but I guess you wouldn't even have known if it would have happened, but you're okay. Kind of like morally and philosophically with someone throwing their dog waste in a bag into your garbage can.

If it is yet to be empty, if it is full, this is literally out there waiting and you would never know because then it gets dumped. Exactly. What's to complain about. Right. So you're cool with that. Yeah. I just think empty garbage cans, you know, people, I get a lot of emails from people who are like i'm a dog walker i also here's my favorite thing well i have a dog and i don't want to be carrying their poop around all the time what people actually say that yeah yeah no that is the and i got into a big fight about this on cairo a couple of weeks ago when i was filling in on the morning show um they're all beating up on me luke i didn't have anybody i didn't have you there yeah but um you know like that's not my problem that you have a dog it's it's like me saying like right i'm gonna throw my mcdonald's cup on the ground and somebody says you shouldn't do that And then I say, but I have a McDonald's cup. I don't want to carry it around everywhere. It's like, well, then you shouldn't have bought McDonald's, bub. Not my problem. Absolutely.

Nobody forces anyone to have a dog. So, like, the dog poop, it is a problem for the person carrying it, but it is a problem of their own doing.

Exactly. Yeah. But actually, as a quick forward promo, I have not read, well, this is no surprise, But I have not read the article that you want to talk about today about compost and throwing things out, you know, out into the wild. I'm very into this topic because it also does kind of tie into my obsession with garbage and garbage pickup. Since we have like since we have, you know, compost here, what do they call it? Like municipal compost, which I have now come to believe that everything can be composted, you know, as long as. it's got a you know like pizza boxes and the like can be composted because they're going to be put into something that's really hot and smashed down and composted but i always wonder where the line

is on this stuff right and what we learned was like basically a pizza box is it's recyclable but once it gets grease on it then it needs to go in the food waste compost pile situation right Like it's – in other words, every – all pizza boxes can be recycled, but not all pizza boxes can be composted or should be composted.

I think we have that backwards. I think a brand new clean pizza box could be recycled. Maybe this is what you said, right? But if it's got any kind of food grease on it, then it's not recyclable anymore, but it can be composted. Yeah, which leads me to believe like if a pizza box doesn't have grease on it, is it still compostable? And if so, isn't that better than sending it to the the recycle center, which we've learned is not, you know, it might just be going in the ground anyway.

Exactly. You know what I'm not into? Speaking of dog waste, I'm not into we're going to I'm going to put a very hot, sizzling take out on this holiday Monday, Andrew, which is I don't think you should have a dog if you live in a 22 story apartment building. 21 you're cool 21 is fine that's the floor I'm on there's one floor above me that's what puts it over the top is the 22 stories the like what do you call that little area that's between the sort of sidewalk and the curb that usually will have a little section of grass or dirt and maybe a tree or two in it what do you call that? I call it a tree lawn okay so the tree lawns in my neighborhood are 100 percent dog poop i used to attribute this to the city of miami and an influx of very wealthy international people i am a xenophobe but only towards rich international people i like commonly when people ask oh how was it living in miami i would say it was very hot and i didn't like that these rich argentinian paris hilton knockoffs would let their dogs poop everywhere i didn't realize that that's just that's the last time i think i lived well with a brief interruption in on capitol hill in seattle that's almost the last time i lived in an apartment building what i think it is is people who live in apartment buildings and walk their dogs back and forth on a one block stretch and let their dogs crap everywhere i don't think it's miami specific because that what do you call it tree lawn that's what i call it that tree lawn is so full of poop and it's like don't have a dog in this apartment building if if it's so annoying to you to deal with them and let them walk that you only want to go 80 feet in front of the building and then let them crap everywhere like that's not good that's not being a good citizen of portland that's not being a good dog owner i don't think the dogs are happy like don't have the dog in this building

And it is the poop thing specifically. It's not like this isn't affecting you as far as you don't mind sharing an elevator with a dog or the other examples that you've given of running into dogs.

No, I actually very much like it. I mean, and in fact, my brother David and his girlfriend came over to watch the football game yesterday. We were all masked up, I'm happy to say, but they brought their dog Penny and Penny is adorable. It made me very happy to have Penny in this place. But I'm just saying, like, it's not a coincidence that all of the tree lawns around here, I mean, it's all of them, are just riddled with dog poop. It's because people come down, and I see them in the elevator all the time. They come down with their dog. There's no grass, like, a short distance from this building. It's a very urban environment. And people let their dog crap on those little things, and then many of them don't pick it up. And to me, it's part of an overall thing that's just not positive. regarding you know pet ownership like and this is not necessarily a cheap building it's not like well they they have a dog they love but this is the only place they can live like this is people choose to live here and i think you should choose to live somewhere else if you have a dog well then

you know for the people who do like kind of this is kind of kind of dovetails into what you're saying because again to what i was mentioning people saying well i have a dog what do you expect me to do you know it's one of the reasons i don't have a dog is because i don't think that i am in a good position whether it's ironically you'd be a great dog maybe but like the reason one of the big reasons we don't have a dog is because we worry that number one i might not be a good dog owner i'm a very anxious person and i look at people who have really good dogs and they tend to be i feel like often the people who have really good dogs are people who can just really roll with the punches and train them in a way and exude a certain amount of confidence that their dog can run around you know maybe be off leash for a while but you just always know the dog is coming back because there is an invisible leash between them and the I just look at that and I'm so, so envious, but I don't think I have the, the, I don't know, mental and emotional fortitude to create that bond. I could be wrong, but also I think that it's hard. I think it's really hard to own a dog, especially if you're a renter and there's a lot of responsibility that goes along with it. So I'm not the type of person who's just going to go and get a dog. And then if my dog poops on your lawn or I'm going to throw my poop in your garbage can, just say, well, what do you want me to do? I have a dog. No, I take responsibility for my stuff.

I think you would be such a good dog owner.

Really? I think my dog would be an anxious son of a gun.

Because you think your anxiety would somehow transmit to them? I do.

I worry about that. Yeah, I do think that some of the best dog owners, I've never, I'm trying to think, who's the most anxious person in my life who has a dog and what is that relationship? And then, of course, do I really want to dox them on the radio? I guess I can think of a couple of examples of dogs that I don't like to be around. And I do think that in a certain way that is a reflection of their owner. Not many, by the way. So if you're trying to think of like our friend list, I'm not thinking of anybody that you would know, anybody in particular right now. But I do think there's a – what's that? Are you thinking of me?

Yeah, I always think of you as just being too high strung and too – I am weirdly like, you know, obviously I don't live with Rudy right now. But I am, I think, sort of like, I don't even realize it, but I think I'm very annoying as a dog owner around people when they come over, they come to the Bellingham house, and Rudy is sniffing or wanting to jump up or whatever. It's like, that's, first of all, that's not great if you just come to someone's house and their dog wants to jump on you. But then the owner of the dog freaking out, being like, Rudy!

Yeah, right.

That adds a layer of stress. What I can report is people commonly telling me, it's fine, it's fine, which I think is them saying, you're making this worse.

Like my grandfather with Terry, which I always say is a funny name for a dog, which it really is. Terry in HR was also my grandparent's dog. The dog, well, the reason his name was Terry was it was a Terry Poo, like half Terry or half Poodle, I guess.

Well, they didn't go with Poo. Yeah. I know.

We save those names for our birds and our family.

But, you know, I just played that the other day, by the way, just randomly. The cartoon version of it? Yes. The cartoon version that's on YouTube. That's like probably the best thing that's ever happened on this show. And then the animation from that listener. Eric Yeager.

Or Jager.

Took it to a whole other level.

It's so good. I know. I want more. But unfortunately, that was the only funny bit we've had in this show since 2012. Oh, you saw. I saw you tweeted out about it and we were talking about it on text. But, yeah, there was something about I spent a little bit of time this weekend just kind of organizing some files. And this has kind of been an ongoing project. But a while back, I realized, like, you know, I didn't join the show until 2012. It had already been around for, what, five years, six years before that. And just like even on APM's website, they have archives of the old radio show of TBTL. But every third hour is missing. So some listeners had created like some sort of an underground kind of online marketplace where that stuff is available.

Point is, all of these wise, among others.

Yeah. And all these TBTL eras were kind of floating around the Internet. And there was not one single place where every single episode of TBTL and every hour of TBTL is archived. And I think through some work that I did maybe last year, I actually got like some sort of a website, what do you call it, scraper, where you can scrape all the data from a website to collect things. Either way, I was able to create, I guess, the kind of definitive archive of TBTL, which, you know, really speaks to my sort of sense of order and I like archiving. So I now have a hard drive with every single episode from 2008 up until July of last year. Then I ran out of space. But anyway, so everything that happens after July, screw it. It's like the old live TV days. It'll be gone forever. But anyway, it was very interesting to look at. Like I have a folder full of our secret shows, like the secret TBTL shows we did that we did for like special contributors way back in the early days and all these other weird projects we did. We tried twice to create a TBTL radio show pilot, once in like 2013 and once in 2015 under the umbrella of APA. Did it get any better two years later? I didn't listen to those. I've got to be honest with you, I didn't.

Oh, like the Program Directors of America.

You did not listen to it. Well, you knew I always wanted to be a program director. Anyway, I don't remember where I was going with that, but it was interesting to sort of see it all laid out there in folder that's like year after year.

Now, let me ask you something, and I feel like the answer to this may not be what I want to hear necessarily. So I tweeted this out yesterday, a text you had sent me, because I appreciate, first of all, your attention to detail and your archival tendencies on our show with our show but my thought was oh um you know you there was a tough game for the cleveland browns fans we're going to talk about some of the no point by the way coming up later in this very stream but there was something about the idea that post cleveland browns really potentially frustrating loss in the playoffs your brain went to archiving tbtl and i think i wrote on twitter please you know try to find yourself a colleague like this now did you actually do it well well before the game but just got around to texting me after the game or are you

doing this post the football game oh uh so the most of the archiving here's what happened i did most of this archiving project like last year at some point and i had a hard drive with all of the all of the shows on it up until i don't know early 2020 i'm getting into too much detail here sorry i'm also out of breath because i keep on getting up to let theo in and out because he's being an

asshole uh that's my wow for new you're doing all of that without me even knowing it that's well

you can tell that i'm a heavy fella out of breath now but um if you hadn't called out being out of breath nobody would know um uh what i was gonna say was so this is kind of a project that i got in my craw a while back and because it just it started to make me anxious this idea that like wait we just i don't know i just feel like we needed to have all of our stuff in one place maybe i've been listening to too much levitard where you know they were with espn for a while And now they're not and they're their own thing and they have to they have just all these issues about, you know, where their stuff lives. And I just wanted to make sure that I have all of our stuff somewhere. Everything's fine, by the way. This isn't like somebody creating a new bank account because things aren't good with their relationship with their spouse. Everything's fine between us and American Public Media. But I just want it just for my own mental health, I think. So anyway, this hard drive that I had earlier this weekend, I added a few more months to it. And the hard drive was like, I'm about to be filled up. And I realized, whoa, this is the one place where everything lives. Like one bad thing happens to this corner of my apartment and it's all wiped out. So I immediately, this is earlier this weekend, ordered another hard drive in the mail and it showed up on Sunday. So after the Browns game, I was doing some puttering. I took a little walk. I was kind of, you know, bummed. But then I came home and I still had like, you know, all afternoon and evening. I was like, oh, this hard drive just got here. And what, you know, nothing is more soothing to me than putting things in order, right? Being able just to sit down, have a beer and just kind of put things in order. I love archiving, digital archiving. So I think it was less of a sacrifice and more of just kind of a, maybe a soothing self-care.

Well, I appreciate it. And I'm glad I don't have to withdraw my tweet. Oh, yeah, right. If you had if you'd done the archiving on Saturday and just sent me the photo of the of the little device that all the stuff is on that I need to be in possession of sort of like the nuclear football. Like we need we need this to be spread out across cities and across people. Although what are the what are the chances that I will not lose it? Well, it's funny.

Low. What are the chances I will lose it? High. I wasn't even because originally I wasn't going to text you this. I think I just got excited about it.

I was like, yeah, we have two hard drives. It's very cool, by the way. As an object, it's actually a cool little flash drive.

The one thing that I loved was somebody was actually an old, I think, kind of quasi colleague of ours from KPCC back in the day tweeted a response to you, something along the lines of like, ooh, and it's a solid state hard drive, too. Nice. And I'm just like, yeah, you get it. These are good hard drives. But anyway, yeah, so I think I was excited about having this. So I took a picture to send you like this is, you know, I'm not going to mail it to you. But the next time I see you, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to do one of those things where I have a briefcase that's handcuffed to my left wrist. And inside that briefcase is this little portable hard drive. I'm going to hand it to you. And before I texted you, I was imagining the moment where I hand it to you. And I was thinking about all the things I want to tell you, like to underscore the importance of keeping this safe. Do not lose this. Yes. And I want you to like just be like, oh, I need room for some live wire project. I'll just delete the 2000s. In fact, I got to look to see if there's a way I can put a password on this thing.

Honestly, there's a number of listeners who should be more trusted with this drive than me. That's a good point. I'm the last person you should entrust this with. Hey, by the way, while we were talking, we need to go to a break. But while we were talking, I watched a person who looked to be about my age. let's just say over 30 a man over 30 who was skateboarding and whose skateboard got caught in the i guess you'd call them max tracks you know the the mass transit is called the max and his skateboard got caught in the tracks that are embedded in the street and he just ate shit and then got up

And then did, like, a funny thing, which was, like, he was, like, did a sort of a, like, I'm okay, kind of, like, put his hands up and was, like, I'm good. To no one except me up in this room, 21 stories, not 22, but 21 stories in the sky. And I was reminded of the time that I totally did that in Portland also, like, skateboarding with this huge backpack on for some reason, because it was, you know, well before I lived here, and I think I was down here doing Livewire. and I got caught not in on the same intersection but a different intersection I got caught in those max tracks and fell and people got out of their cars like do we need to call someone this is not going to be okay a man of your age sir should not be skateboarding the streets of Portland

I had an accident on the max tracks one time too but I did not have wheels on my feet in fact it was one of the times where I believe Genevieve was cruelest to me ever although I will admit that I feel like she had no control over her reaction to this, but it was very upsetting as one member of this partnership. It was years ago now. Jeez Louise, we were pretty new to Seattle, so I'm going to put this about 10 years ago. But we were visiting our friends down in Portland, and we had had a day of consumption, a consumption of alcohol, consumption of other things. It was kind of getting, it was dark at this point. I'm going to say it's about maybe 10 o'clock at night. So, you know, we're not it's not super late night, but we're all kind of gallivanting around and not sober is the word I'm looking for. And we have to dash across these tracks somewhere. I think we had maybe rented bikes or borrowed bikes, but at this point we were not on bikes and we had to race across these railroad tracks. And what I did not know was there was an opening between the tracks, but then on either side of the opening were just like cables at about thigh height to me. If you can imagine that to keep people off the tracks, completely invisible to me, completely invisible. And, you know, basically like a cable clothesline or something at thigh height. And everybody's running. I must be running a little bit to the outside of the pack. Genevieve is behind me and she just sees me hit something completely invisible and just go ass over tea kettle forward and I must have just looked like I did a somersault in the air because she didn't see the line that I had hit and it hurt so bad. Oh really? I hurt my

Usually the one good side of the one good element of having a situation like that when you're a little in your cups is it doesn't hurt. You have weird like drunk power but this was not the case

Well, maybe it hurt because Genevieve was just laughing so hard as I was laying there. It emotionally hurt. I don't even know what happened. You know what I mean? It's one of those things where it happens so fast that you're just laying there in the dirt. You kind of are, you got the gravel in the heels of your hand. My thighs are killing me. You know, I'm just like, what? I'm trying to figure it out. And Genevieve is just doubled over with laughter. And then she starts saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. But she didn't seem sorry. she just seemed like she really couldn't stop laughing at me there must have been a brief

moment where she thought you had magic powers i think that was it i think there was part of it what was going on with the cable she was just like well okay he waited 10 years to tell me my boyfriend that he has the ability to just do a full like somersault in midair but he doesn't stick the landing so no he's very bad at the landing and he cries afterwards yeah but but it's still quite impressive yeah i wonder what her the math her brain was trying to do yeah i know

it's one of those things where i i i forgive her because i i can sort of imagine how bizarre that

must have looked from an outside perspective well it turns out that these uh max tracks are very dangerous to everyone and they should probably cancel the mass transit here in portland you know me because people skateboard crashing uh i've now i've done it myself i've witnessed a guy doing it near the starks vacuum cleaner company and you had your situation so i think it's uh it's clear we need to get rid of it all right uh let's take a quick break and then when we come back we will do these top stories we will talk about food scraps and i said this last week on the show andrew but you really like i really get a sense of what our wheelhouse is when a story happens and multiple people send it to me i had like 20 different people send me a hot pocket story including my own daughter. And I was like, I guess this is my brand.

I mean, do we talk about Hot Pockets that much?

That's why I was a little surprised because I did not think of that as the TBTL brand. And yet I received, you know, updates on this from so many people. I thought I must, that must be a space that I'm playing in.

I guess it's like pop culture and crappy food or something.

Yeah, maybe so. So we will, we will delve into pop culture.

and crappy food in a moment here on TBTL.

Thank you, baby.

All right, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the people making the show possible with their donations, and we really do appreciate it. A.J. Nolan is in Norfolk, Virginia. Thank you, A.J. We appreciate that. Travis Worthington is in Linwood, Washington. Denver Dorsing is in Ellensburg, Washington. That's a solid name, Denver Dorsing. You love to see the alliteration. But probably can't live in Denver, right? No, too much. It's like when I lived adjacent to Burbank, California. Yeah. Most of my day was spent explaining I didn't own Burbank, California. I was like, would I be on this bus if I... That doesn't even work as a joke because you know I've never taken a bus.

Yeah, if anything, it would be your billboard on the bus. And then people are like, yeah, that makes sense. You own this place. I went to Walsh High School for a while. That was confusing. Exactly.

I've never sounded more like Lucille from Arrested Development than when I said, I never take the bus.

What could a banana cost?

What could a bus cost? $20? Anyway, Denver, thanks for donating Also, Mario Alonso is in Miami, Florida I manifested a donor from Miami, Florida today By talking about my disdain for the dog poop Cleaning up habits of the residents of Miami

That is not Mario, though If Mario has a dog, Mario is cleaning up after that dog I can feel it in my bones

In your outside teeth Outside bones, I should say I mean, listen, Mario We know that Mario is a conscientious person because they're donating to tbtl like and a person who donates cbtl who generously supports this show even though they don't have to would never just leave their dog poop out on fifth i believe i lived on what was called fifth street by tap tap which was a haitian place uh of the uh sort of not eating meat regrets i have one is i will never have the goat bits at tap tap what does What does Goat Bits mean? It was just like I was cut up pieces of goat meat. But I think it's a Haitian thing because that restaurant was, I think, run by Haitian Americans. And they just had something called Goat Bits, which were so good. Were they served in like a sauce or something or just? I don't remember them being in a sauce, but they probably were. They were just little cubes of meat. It must have been the seasoning and all that, but Mario gets it.

I have a bummer of an update on that story. The restaurant Tap Tap did quietly close after 24 years in the beginning of 2019.

Oh, wow. But that's pre-pandemic.

Yeah. So very, very much so pre-pandemic, almost a year before the pandemic.

Well, that's good. That means I'm not, I feel less regret about not eating meat because I couldn't even get those goat bits if I wanted to. Thanks, Mario, for the donation. Also, Juan Lopez is in Shoreline, Washington. And then Alan Jones is in Studio City, California Hey, not that far away from Burbank That's right So thank you to all of our donors of the day Thanks for making the show possible We really do appreciate it

Hello and welcome to Top Story

Alright, our top story today is from Well, let's see here I guess it's popular science Alicia McDarris writing in Popular Science. Once you know what happens to food you leave outdoors, you'll stop doing it. It's better to toss scraps into a proper trash can. Now, I had actually seen an article a while ago that I almost wanted to talk about, Andrew, with you, which was that some really weirdly high percentage of the invasive tree species in England are because of people, I guess, throwing like nuts and other like shells and things that they're eating out the car window. And then I guess that'd be maybe a walnut or something. It's actually creating a bunch of trees that shouldn't be in the part of England they're in. And it's because of people throwing whatever the seed is that that makes that tree happen. I could not find that article this morning. I was looking for it. And maybe I hallucinated it. But anyway, we get another chance to talk about food being thrown from cars because this article basically points out that it takes like two years for food to decompose in the wild, whether it's an apple core or what have you. And it also is really bad for animals because animals start basically they become attracted to the roadway or they become attracted to the food, which puts them near the road, which then leads them to get killed, which then leads other animals.

to come eat their carcasses and get killed it's a whole situation that that i did not expect i didn't i thought it was going to be something about like biodiversity or you know just invasive species or animals eating things and getting tummy aches i didn't think of that but that makes a lot of sense too i'm looking for this article about the trees growing from food scraps i can't you

know what i think i may have i may have just like you know hallucinated it as i said because i could not i looked part of why we dialed up even later than late today was because i was trying to find this the reason we didn't talk about that article at the time was because it was actually from a study that was from like three or four years ago okay so when i actually looked into it was like this is four years old and it's a study i just didn't quite the listeners will be shocked to know that there is some kind of standard for the topics on this show and it didn't i mean boy what a dark day for a news article if you don't meet the standards of the TBTL story.

I'll give up on that because that's the listeners will find it. Yeah, yeah, sure. Because I would like to know the details of that. Also seems uniquely British that it would be nuts, right? Like, well, I'm not going to do a British accent, but like, yeah, somebody is like, because they're always going around with like nuts that you need a nutcracker to crack open. That seems British, although inaccurate, I will admit.

That's right. Also, their monocles will fall out sometimes When they are cracking those nuts And then that's a whole situation Just monocles everywhere I was shocked to learn Based on this article That it takes two years For food to decompose Don't you have the At least I've always had the sense Like if I throw an apple core Out the window of a car It will start decomposing In that moment And one day later It will be gone And we'll have enriched the soil Isn't that kind of How you imagined it?

Yeah I mean I understand And we've kind of Touched on this Just a little bit And I know listeners Had a lot to say about it But like our ideas of compost and what makes something compost, you know, some of it is magical thinking, like the idea of composting is it's in a bin where it's both pressurized and that pressure is creating warmth and that warmth is accelerating the compost, you know, process as opposed to just a piece of organic material that is laying in in the air, you know, on the ground exposed to the air. Like, that's not how composting really works. But I would be lying if I said I didn't have the same thought you have. Like, I was, I don't remember exactly where I was, but I'm pretty sure I was in Utah in the passenger seat eating an apple. And I threw the apple core out the window on, like, kind of a rural. On the salt flats? It was past the salt flats. Because I was about to say, like, I think it might have been after watching the Browns game in Salt Lake City. And then we got back on the road and Genevieve was driving. and uh because i did most of the driving but i know she was driving then really i'm surprised

to hear that actually because yeah you know you don't in in the city like in seattle you're generally not stoked on driving right or are you the driver too in those situations if you

were in the car if it's me and viz i'm usually the driver not always but i think that i just don't like being responsible for a car that's where a lot of my dislike like i don't if i'm going to go into the city i would prefer to take a bus or a lift you know and we're just talking like normal times here um because that way you just don't have to worry about like oh i have a car parked somewhere like i don't know but it's more about an albatross sort of feeling but if we're both in the car together i think i think i'm the one driving but anyway yeah so um i had thrown an apple uh core out the window i think i was even thinking of your teacher who eats the whole thing or used to eat the whole thing because i wanted to be able to do that but i was like it'll be fine like i remember it was kind of one of those rural country roads i wasn't throwing it into like the middle lane of a massive highway, you know, I threw it as far from the road as possible. And I thought, okay, that's not going to be gone by tomorrow. But I definitely thought no harm, no foul, even though I wouldn't want somebody to see me do this. Like, I don't know about you, like if there's a car behind you, are you still going to throw that apple core out the

window? Yes, because my thought has been I'm making the world a better place. I literally think i'm adding to the composting biodiversity of this place maybe a tree will grow i'm a modern day johnny apples yeah like i now gum is a is a different thing because i don't know you know when we were kids we were told the gum would stay in your body for seven years that's got to be made up right yeah i don't think that's how do you remember that did you hear that as a kid i don't

think you swallow gum it stays in your body for seven years no i don't think that was something I had other issues I had I believe I had spiders living in me for a big chunk of my childhood so I just had other things on my mind but yeah like I would think like I would in front of you know like I'm trying to think of who's the most in front of Greta Thunberg I would throw an apple core into the grass literally thinking yeah I'm helping like that would be what my that's how I've thought about it until reading this article yeah like I I mean it's just It's funny how, again, like,

Like, my brain goes to this a lot. Like, we – actually, did I talk – I talked about this on some dumb podcast, but I can't remember if we talked about it here. Of course, not that this is a dumb podcast, but –

You have to be more specific about the dumb podcast that you're on.

I think I talked about this maybe on Cairo when we were off taping new shows. But the way I get rid of my Christmas tree is unusual, I think, by most people's standards. You eat it? Yeah, I eat the whole thing, and then I poop in the woods. And then I think, like, this is the best. I'm being a good person. And it comes out exactly, like, fully reconstructed, and it's very painful. It's not great. And then Genevieve is there just doubled over laughing at me the whole time, as she's wanted to do in my lowest moments. But the way I get rid of my Christmas tree is because we – you see where I live, Luke. You know, like, we have garbage pickup on the side of the road, but it's a very commercial district. We're the only, like, kind of residential area here, so it's a little bit weird and awkward. And so I don't know exactly what would happen if I just left my Christmas tree out on the curb. I can tell you that the businesses that I'm neighbors with would not love it. I wouldn't love that vibe. And so what I do is we have these really strong kind of pruning shears. And I just prune the tree down to nothing but a stick in our living room. And I take all of the bows, boughs, I guess, that I've trimmed off the tree, and I just put them in the compost one by one. And then eventually I'm just left with the trunk sticking up from the Christmas tree stand. But it's pretty thin at the top, so I can even take the shears and shear it into two. And then I put those into the compost bin downstairs, which, you know, there are arguments to be made that this isn't the best way of doing it. But it all fits in my compost yard waste bin. we take it out to the curb the next Sunday night and, you know, God willing, it's all gone by Monday. And it's relatively easy to keep the mess contained by doing it this way, as opposed to trying to drag a dried out Christmas tree outside, like across the living room and outside. I think it would just like drop needles all over the place. So this is my way of containing the issue. But in doing all of that, I created a huge mess of pine cones outside in our garbage area. Actually, Genevieve did. We lost a little piece of the Christmas tree stand, and Genevieve was concerned that it was in the compost bin that at this point was now totally full of Christmas tree boughs, but she went digging in it, and now we have just piles and piles of needles out in our shared garbage area, and I kind of keep sweeping them up into a little corner pile and thinking, I'm going to watch you compost over the next several months, but I don't think that's actually going to happen.

See, I was surprised to hear that you're doing the, you know, breaking down of the tree inside because I would think I would want to drag it outside so all of the needles that fell off would be outside. But I guess you're thinking even the act of dragging it outside would create a bunch of mess.

Yeah, I think that it would create more mess because the way the tree comes into our house, like it's all wrapped up in that net when it's fresh and green and springy and it's in a net and you easily bring it through your door and then you set it up in the stand and you cut it out from the net and it boings open, right? And but now Christmas vacation style. Yeah. Now cut to two months later or whatever it is. The tree is now not taking water anymore. It's dried out. The needles are just dying to shed themselves from the tree and the tree is not all wrapped up. Now, I know that there are people have said, like, we'll just get those classic like there's a type of like Christmas tree skirt that you keep underneath the tree. But then you don't have one of those. No. See, that would be a game changer for me. And maybe I should look into that next year. But I didn't want to try to take this thing that would no longer easily fit through the door, carry it across the living room, and the whole time just have it be shaking these needles. Like where the tree is, there's already a little bit of a mess on the ground from the dry needles. Let's just keep it all in this place. Let's trim it down, contain, contain, contain, and then just clean up that one spot when all is said and done.

i was very hardcore about live christmas trees or you know formerly live christmas trees um and very against like a artificial tree and then uh carrie got this um some kind of oil actually i think you and genevieve have it now too it's by the frazier fur company and it smells so much like a pine tree or a christmas tree that it doesn't even like you don't even need to get a real tree what i realized was i liked christmas trees because of the smell but you don't have to get a live christmas tree or a again a formerly live christmas tree to get that smell they have now synthesized it and you can just have that and then go nuts with the fake

tree right we do have that stuff after you told um genevieve about it and i love it i also do i mean now though we're just like what is it when you have a drug addiction and just like you just keep adding to the cocktail, right? Because we have a tree and the oil now. and also that oil is so fragrant and it has it's like in a diffuser right so it's like these little kind of like sticks like felt covered sticks that you like you're supposed to turn them over probably once a month maybe because it kind of like the the part that are down in the in the oil are absorbing the oil and then you flip them over and then the that fragrance you know obviously is out in the house and it used to be that when i would flip those over one time every month or two it'd be like a flavor or a fragrance explosion now i turn them over four times a day

yeah right and i and i now just keep them in my nose i keep the sticks up my nose and i turn them

around four times a day i have a devastatingly expensive fraser fur habit right now i'm snorting like half a container of it just to feel normal on a day and it's may um as i mentioned at the top of the show uh apparently uh my brand is or i goes on the top of the show but on the show i mentioned that apparently my brand is very hot pocket uh related because a bunch of people were updating me on the fact that the um department of agriculture's food safety and inspection division uh has put out the word that uh 70 762 000 pounds i don't know why that number grosses me out like i don't i don't dislike hot pockets by the way like they're not a thing that i would generally go to my way to eat they're generally meat based but there's something about 762 000 pounds of hot pocket having glass or plastic in them it's just the idea that and that's i don't even think that's like that's probably not even five percent of the overall hot pockets in america these ones are called uh the specific uh you know hot pocket i don't know what you call the hot pockets that are in question here are 54 ounce packaged hot pockets were labeled nesley's hot pockets brand sandwiches premium pepperoni made with pork chicken and beef pizza garlic buttery crust and just the fact that there's almost there's almost a million pounds of that specific kind

of hot pocket that's just out there in the world there's a million pounds of that in my bloodstream right now uh that's actually not true i don't eat that many hot yeah it's too much cheese for you right well i love pizza i would eat a hot pocket my problem with hot pockets is um if i have a problem with it is like there have been a couple of times this football season where i think maybe Genevieve was out or whatever and I was just left up to my complete own worst ideas as far as what I wanted for snacks during the football game right and since Genevieve doesn't eat pork sometimes I consider that when I'm picking up stupid freezer feast snacks as we call it stole that from our friends who um they would do a thing where they would get uh really stoned and then just say I guess it's time for freezer feast and just empty out everything in their freezer like all these like kind of you know pre-made processed frozen foods and just cook you know whatever tater tots next to a hot pocket amen so anyway we call it freezer feast and um and you know when i'm picking up freezer feast food i usually avoid a hot pocket like i'll get like a french bread pizza maybe instead i'm i have this weird thing in my head and maybe this is just because we made them incorrectly growing up but i feel like a hot pocket can never get properly heated all the way through in a way that part of it isn't going to be hard and rubbery or part of it isn't going to be cold i guess we did eat now i'm thinking about it we did eat these a lot i think growing up i would take these to lunch um you'd slip them in a little little cardboard thing right you put them in the microwave but it just never seemed it would either be like you're gonna burn your mouth on it and the outside is gonna be terrible or it's gonna be cold on the inside and that's

even worse well my friend you have basically without even knowing it you have done a jim gaffigan bit is that what the bit is i know that he has a hot pocket thing but i didn't know that that was actually there's there are many you know there are many elements to the bit i i saw a stat this was pre-pandemic obviously that jim gaffigan was making something like 50 million dollars a year as a touring stand-up comic wow which is a lot that is hard to believe uh it's i mean believe it like i saw him at the paramount and i think it was like he had maybe three or four sold out shows and you know it was 30 bucks a ticket i think i probably got on the list or something but like the paramount is like how we know this 450 years a couple grand like oh a couple okay okay so like i mean if you do the math on that if you figure most weekends pre-pandemic he's you know playing a show where he's netting you know maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars a night in ticket sales but anyway it's

quite shocking actually the the highest or sebastian maniscalco was on there um and uh jim anyway point is jim gaffigan was allegedly making 50 million dollars a year and i wondered how much of that is just because he ate a hot pocket at one time and was like started riffing on it because i know i've brought this up on the show before but i years and years ago like 15 years ago i was living in dc uh working at npr and somebody said oh this guy jim gaffigan is playing and it was like a comedy club it was not the paramount it was like you know giggles or whatever and it was sold out and uh he killed and he did this hot pockets thing and that was the first i'd heard of it and i just was i was totally um i was in into it uh but it's just amazing to think how much money that guy has made off of the observation that hot pockets give you diarrhea and are frozen in the middle um in fact i'll even play a little bit of it if you don't mind uh of the of the bit this is i think the i can't i couldn't quite tell when he did this maybe early 2000s or something but i think this is kind of the original like hot pockets bit that jim gaffigan does

take a listen i'm moving a little slow tonight i had a hot pocket for dinner

oh the crowd knows it the crowd loves it yes you can tell it's it's it's like they're like we know what's coming next which i'm sure that the last time this came up we talked about this as well but it's like why is it weird to me when people get excited to hear a stand-up riff that they know why is that weird to me but if a band starts playing a song and everyone gets

excited that's not weird to me yeah but because i think comedy and music are very different like i'm with you i think that's very weird like i i don't know like i guess if spaulding gray were still alive and he was gonna come and do what's his famous vietnam um swimming to cambodia yeah I guess I would want to go see it, even though I've watched the video of it before. But but that's kind of different when you started into the I don't know. But that's also different because that's a full like what, 90 minute maybe presentation. So that's a little bit different. But like I don't know, I really struggle with that as well, like going and then getting really excited. And it also speaks to, I think, a distaste I have for a certain a certain sort of comedy audience, which is probably snobbish of me. But yeah, like kind of doing like getting excited and pumping your fist in the air because you're about to hear the same joke that you've already heard. It just seems weird to me.

I want to mention that I think Jim Gaffigan is actually very funny. Like when he performed at the Paramount, I thought it was really good. But he did do Hot Pockets. And this is like two years ago.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't have anything against him. Because he has to. I know I've heard this whole bit before. I'm kind of embarrassed. I wonder if maybe partially my memory of Hot Pockets has been somewhat infiltrated by this stand-up bit, I wonder.

I mean, I think you come by it honestly. You were eating them, you know, for lunch in Ohio. So I'm sure you had. The reason this resonates is because it's a real thing, you know what I mean? Like the people have noticed about it. Good to see I'm not the only white trash here. oh by the way there's just in this two minutes there's like four things that you wouldn't say anymore you know and I don't think of Jim Gaffigan as being particularly edgy or problematic but it's just really funny anything recorded and I'm sure that includes every episode of TBTL pre 2015 is problematic

I buy the hot pockets I go in grocery stores I'm like I've never eaten a hot pocket and then afterwards been i'm glad i ate that i'm always like i'm gonna die i paid for that

that doesn't seem relatable to me what's that this part doesn't seem relatable to me like i has is that a do you don't regret your when you do eat a hot pocket you don't regret no my and now i'm like trying to reclaim my originality here after being shown up as just another person stealing gaffigan's um most famous bit but um like if anything i think of a hot pocket well Maybe this is the gluttony in me, but I think of a Hot Pocket as not being satisfying enough. You want more Hot Pocket? May, I think so. I mean, it's been forever, but I don't think that, like, of all the shit that I eat and the quantities, I don't think that I've eaten a Hot Pocket and thought, like, oh, no, I've eaten too much. And I say that after everything, as you well know. That's true. I've definitely witnessed that.

My back hurts. Oh. I was looking at a box of Hot Pockets. They have a warning printed on the sign. It's a warning.

You just bought Hot Pockets. Hope you're drunk or heading home to a trailer. You hillbilly enjoy the next NASCAR event.

I feel like we wouldn't say that.

Hot Pockets.

Or if we did, we wouldn't be good at comedy. This is a guy who's making $50 million. You're being funny. So I'm not trying to. Listen, if anyone was to.

hear the stand-up comedy and i put that in air quotes that i was doing back in the day i'm sure 100 of it was hacky and also not appropriate and i made far less than 50 million dollars doing it 40 wow applause break for the nascar trailer trash show which you know they've all heard

i like nascar he's a jerk never really see that on a menu when you go out to dinner you know let's see i'll have the caesar salad and the hot pocket uh tonight's specials we have a sea bass which is broiled and we have a hot pocket which is cooked in a dirty microwave and that comes with a side of pepto is your hot pocket cold in the middle it's frozen

there you go there you go everything okay and again i i like jim gaffigan too from what i know of him i find this mostly unrelatable and not very funny yeah there are a million things that they don't serve in fancy french restaurants like i just i kind of don't get them my back hurts i'm

bloated like i don't quite get all do you get that it doesn't seem relatable my back doesn't hurt i mean i probably have eaten one hot pocket in my life and i don't remember back pain but i feel like you know the the reason this bit works is because people have a lot of digestion issues and so when you throw out various symptoms there's going to be somebody in that audience like that has happened to me i have had that happen um but uh i do think that the sleeve i'm not trying to now do my version of gap again although i will accept 50 million dollars if listeners would like to pay me for this riff but i the sleeve is interesting that's there's something there's like what is the deal with that what is the deal i mean i think it has to do with

the exact problem that we're trying to solve because i think there's some kind of thermal regulation yeah and i think it may be add because don't the ends stick out from that sleeve and the sleeve and the inside of it has some sort of reflective deal right that that silver reflective

yeah and so it's ready it's it's directing the heat into the middle which is probably the hardest

part to to heat so I mean I guess it sort of makes sense in theory but again like all I can think of is just like having it on a plate the last my last experience with a hot pocket was not having one but actually bringing one to Genevieve on our road trip because we were staying in some hotel and it was late at night and there was no food anywhere but they did have hot pockets for sale downstairs and I didn't get one for the exact reason I was hungry but I thought it's not going to be satisfying it's only going to burn my mouth and it's either going to be too hot or too cold How was Genevieve's Hot Pocket? You know, I asked her the next day because I forgot while she was eating it, and the next day I said, how was your Hot Pocket? She said, it was a Hot Pocket.

It's interesting that you were like, this is not fit for me to consume, but I will give it to my life partner. I mean, she wanted it, and I'm not too good for it either.

In fact, what I probably had for dinner that night was I had this bag of pretzels that I made it through several states with me. I was at a rest stop, and I was going to buy just like a one-portion bag of pretzels, but they only had the big kind, and pretzels and meat sticks are my go-to road trip foods. They really are. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I don't know anyone who loves pretzels more than you. I don't know why, because you know why?

I don't know why. You want to know why? I do. It's a new character I'm doing where I'm an idiot. Hot pretzels. I don't like to eat chips so much as a snack on a road trip because my hands will automatically feel very greasy. You know, I'm saying that Gaffigan's thing about Hot Pockets is unrelatable, but now here I am talking smack about a snack that most of America loves. But, like, if I'm trapped in a car, I don't want to eat a greasy potato chip because I'm going to feel greasy and gross the rest of the way. I do want something kind of carby, something that's going to absorb some of the coffee. I love the saltiness of pretzels, but I love that it's a non-greasy snack. Even those Gardellos, which I love, like, I just don't want to be, like, sitting there reeking of, well, I was going to say reeking of garlic, but that's where my meat sticks come in. Although I had to really minimize the usage of those in the car because Genevieve does not like the smell that comes from opening a bag of, like, some sort of a beef jerky product.

I'm sure that I have made this reference many times on this show, and I definitely tweeted it as well, but it is just, yeah, you open a bag of beef jerky, like, on a flight. Because for a while, Alaska Airlines, that was one of the things that was in the like, if you happen to be lucky enough to be in first class, but on a sort of shorter flight, they would bring around a little basket of stuff and beef jerky would be on there. And when I was Mr. High Protein, Low Carb, you just open that up and it is a very fragrant. It smells like a bag of farts.

Yeah, that's what Genevieve has always called it. She says, you can't bring any of your bag of farts.

She had like a... that she was like a hard no on your Landyager habit? Well, she wasn't a hard no because at one point she stopped and got some bag of ruffles that were some sort of cheese flavor. And I would challenge you to say that that smelled. I put on my mask for a while. It sounded like a pretty rude thing, but it reeked. So we found some middle ground. I found some opportunities to snap into a couple of those Slim Jims. They weren't actually Slim Jims, but I tried to save them for times when maybe we were in less of an enclosed area.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, any emails or V-mails that are of note? Boy, this little fader that I'm using, it goes from too much music to not enough music real fast. Very sensitive. Any emails or V-mails that are catching your interest today?

Yes, I like this email that we got from Rachel, who's writing to us from Maine and the subject line was Little House Breaking News Rachel says I'm a huge fan of the Little House books and as a mom to a four and six year old I have been steadily trying to work the Ingalls Wilder world into our lives with mixed success we have listened to the books on tape read the picture books and watched the Little House TV show on Amazon I mean I don't know how you measure success but from a quantity standpoint I mean, yeah, I don't know how you could ask for much more than that. That's a ton of Ingalls Wilder being injected into the family structure. That's right. Now, I guess maybe the success is based on how it's being accepted. What is the smile to little house ratio? Rachel says, I just finished listening to this adult book. I don't think it means dirty. I just think it's a book for adults about the true life and times of Laura Ingalls Wilder prairie fires by. Oh, yeah, that was right. Yeah, that book was kind of, I think, a big hit. I remember it making the round. The book is fantastic and does a beautiful job of dispelling myths about the books and acknowledging the horrific acts of settlers, particularly towards American Indians, while still paying homage to the importance of the books in the American literary tradition. But at the end, the author explores the Little House TV show. In my mind was blown. Here are a few relevant to our interest facts. Number one, Michael Landon completely took creative control of the script, edging out all other authors and stealing the script from the books and steering the script away from the books and towards his own Republican Reagan supporting interests such as living off the land and small government. Landon.

I am so unsurprised to hear that. Not the political side Although I guess that kind of makes sense But like The heroism Of Pa A.K.A. Michael Landon on that TV show Is almost comical He's just the most inherently good Person He wins every fight He doesn't want to ever fight But if he has to he wins He's just like the best human Even as a kid I was like we get it Michael Landon pa is very we're rooting for pa or we appreciate pa but to know that he actually i mean i don't i don't think i ever even read those books but i would imagine that he completely he really amped up pa's amazingness because he was playing pa ingles i'm sure and then as if that wasn't enough

his next project is highway to heaven where he sure does he play a literal angel or is it his buddy in the A's cap who's the

angel. I think he is, right, he is, I believe an angel. Yeah, they're both angels. I don't want to guess at the name because I'll get it wrong and people will correct me, but he, I think maybe they're both angels.

That sounds about right. Okay, number two. Landon apparently got some good feedback about his hind quarters in a previous TV show, and so he purposefully did not wear underwear under his tight prairie pants during Little House shoots.

huh that's really interesting i don't know if that makes it better like if you have a yeah i don't know people are liking your rumpus dude is it better to have no underwear on it under the

pants yeah it's hard to say i don't have a rumpus so it's really hard to say i have an okay rumpus

which is like honestly the only part of my physical body i don't absolutely hate like um yeah that's you know that's that's the one thing that appears to be working for me and of course I'm 44, so I can't get on TikTok and do a video about how I have a pretty face, slim waist, and a big behind. Because that would be, you know, I'd be the modern-day Michael Landon if I were trying to accentuate that. I think you should do that. Really?

Yeah, I think you should. Okay. It'll give us some content for the show. Will you do that? And then we can get back tomorrow. Let me know. How it goes? Okay, thanks. I'll consider it. Okay, number three. Landon added scenes that would allow him to show off his shirtless physique, and he prepared for each one by shaving and oiling his chest. I do that for every show. I do that for TBTL. Yeah, no, it comes through, too. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it's one of those subtle things that, you know, people say, God, that must be time-consuming. I'm like, you hear it, though. You just sense it as a listener.

Absolutely, and also it's about the process, right? It's not just about the final appearance. Yeah, exactly. And finally, Landon smoked heavily and had a bottle of wild turkey on set that he would take swigs of between the scenes. Rachel says, I'm glad to have some TBTL friendos with whom to share this life altering information. The whole book is great if you're looking for a good read. No Mountain Too Tall from Rachel in Maine.

Huh. That seems like now I want to go back and watch an episode and see if I can tell him if I can see that he's getting progressively more drunk.

I don't know if they shoot an order. That's the problem. That's right.

Hey, he sobered up during this episode.

I feel, I mean, I remember liking that show a great deal as a little kid. I also, my sister was three years older than me, and I wonder if, you know, I just kind of liked what she liked or kind of, you know, let her kind of take the lead on the things we watched. I do remember, though, I feel like as a kid, I just constantly had a crush on, like, looking back, it seems like just every girl on TV and in my classes. that can't be right but i do feel like i have a memory of having a crush on laura ingalls wilder but then switching my crush to mary was that her blind sister yes i remember having a big crush on blind mary for a while and then i think i got to a point where i just i couldn't make up my mind who i wanted to be loyal to and stop watching the show and you went with nelly um is nelly The annoying, she's like the annoying, with the curls. Never had a crush on Nellie.

There was a part of the plot of that show, like years later, again, this makes more sense now, reading this email that talks about, you know, how much they had deviated from the books. Because who knows if this was even in the books or not, but like, at some point they moved to like the big city, they moved to Mankato, and Mary gets this boyfriend, Albert. Oh, Albert. He was kind of a good kid, right? Yeah, but there was a plot device where Albert was blind, but then got his sight back through an explosion, which even as a kid, I was like... Landon, what are you doing? It was really like, I have this memory of him getting his sight back, again, my memory is it was through some kind of an explosion, and even as a kid, I was like, I don't know if that's how that works.

I'm looking this up now, I'm on the Little House wiki. Maybe it was in the books.

Who knows? But I don't think that's how, again, I don't think that's how any of this works.

He is definitely in an episode called Blind Man's Bluff. But aside from that, let's see. Let me read the description of this.

Or maybe he loses his sight in an explosion and then he slowly gets it back. Again, this was like my seven-year-old brain.

That would make more sense, obviously. But listen to this. Okay. In episode 516, Blind Man's Bluff, Laura's schoolmate and friend, Jordan, Jordan Harrison, so not Alfred, has dreams of one day working for a circus but is troubled by his quarreling parents. After an accident causes temporary blindness, Jordan pretends to remain blind in an effort to bring his parents closer together and avoid their upcoming divorce.

Wow.

Could it have been Jordan that you were thinking of temporary blindness?

That I have just, like, conflated all of these things There are, like, three or four just, like, seared in my mind Memories, which clearly are false and implanted About that show One of them was There was I want to say Who was the guy It's not Martin Mull But he had a name very similar to Martin Mull Was he on Little House? He was on Little House He did, like, a cameo where he plays a guy who had gone and, I guess, fought in the Civil War, maybe, who got addicted to morphine. Okay. And he's having these flashbacks of his time in the war.

This is so much fun. You describing these and me finding them. I found it, and I know who you're talking about now. Okay.

Who is that actor?

I am looking up his name, but he's the Richard Bull is his name, right? Okay.

Sounds like mole

No no no no that's not it The picture of him Because IMDB is doing this thing Where it's hard to find Who the

While you're poking around For the listeners who don't want to watch The Little House But want to hear a 44 year old man Try to remember it 40 years later Yeah he We'll be right back.

goes and uh he he comes back to um i guess it would be uh wherever they live on little house and walnut grove and he uh has an opium uh opioid addiction essentially or a morphine addiction and he's getting it from doc baker but he's getting too much and he has these flashbacks of the war and i'm sure that if i watched it now it would be comical but it scared the living shit out of me as a kid these flashbacks from the war i believe it it's um it sounds very dark and

Oh, I think his name is maybe Richard Mulligan. That's who I was trying to think of. He plays like I knew him. He was the guy from Empty Nest. That's how I knew him. That's exactly what I was talking about. The father from Empty Nest. And can I read you the description of this plot? Please. So this is from an episode 1976, The Year I Was Born, Soldiers Return. Coming home after 12 years of performing with a busy Philadelphia orchestra, Mrs. Whipple's troubled son, Granville, hopes that the piece of Walnut Grove will help him shake the nightmares and the morphine addiction that resulted from an incident during the Civil War Battle of Shiloh.

huh yeah that one stuck in my brain there was also one where there is somebody who just wants to see the ocean so they go i guess to california which was convenient because they were probably shooting in you know yeah laguna beach or something um there was somebody and i want to say i forget if it was i i don't remember anything about the character other than he was dying he was a young boy and his dream was to see the ocean and i believe pa are you ready for this Sandra, I believe Pa carries him into the ocean because Michael Landon cannot miss a chance to be the hero.

And I'm sure it almost seems like like a baptism.

I can picture definitely got some echoes of that. Yeah. Are you able to locate that?

Are you talking about 1979's The Odyssey? This is all from the top of my head, by the way. But I believe you're talking about the episode where talented young painter Dylan Whitaker promised his dying father that he would someday see the ocean he loves and put it on canvas. But some day comes too soon when Dylan is diagnosed with incurable leukemia. And to keep his promise, he and his concerned friends, Laura and Albert, sneak away from Walnut Grove to hop a railroad freight car bound for the California coast. So you might be wrong about.

They literally just wrote that episode so they could stop pretending they were in Minnesota. Right. So they could have a day at the beach. Can we can we write an episode where they time travel to the late 1970s and go swimming? Right.

Right. They play beach blanket bingo. Although you might be wrong about Pa, though, because it sounds like it's the kids who run away on a train, Laura Albert and Dylan Whitaker, the painter.

Right. I mean, that's just. Yeah. I mean, that's when we've definitely gone. I do not believe that that was in the original Laura Ingalls Wilder books. The time they went to California with a painter dying of leukemia. All the episodes were named the one where they go to the beach.

Anyway, that's a lot of dazzling details. I love this game. It almost reminded me of a winter game kind of situation there. I feel like maybe we can do some more of this.

We're going to present this as a TBTL summer game, by the way. So just pretend that you didn't hear any of that stuff. Luke remembers Little House episodes, and Andrew fact-checks it. That's right. That's fun. I like it. All right, man. Well, I guess we should probably wrap things up. I was wondering if you would be up for going out with the Faye Webster song, Pigeon, because we've been talking about Joe the Pigeon a bunch and missed the opportunity to go out with our very favorite song by Faye Webster.

Yes, I have it right here. Let me see here. I think this is the song we're looking for. Right? No? How have everybody said about the bird? You know, I'm sorry that I had to stall there.

Because it's a holiday, my defenses are down. You know, my problem is I had Pigeon ready to go. It took you a while. I should have known something was up, because really where my brain was going was, he knows what this song is. We talk about this song all the time. Why is he having trouble with it? But I didn't realize that you were going to, you know, you were going to roast me.

Luke, the sad part of this is I had Pigeon queued up and ready to go. I could have done it because we had talked about maybe doing it before the show. Before the show, we talked about maybe using the song, I should say. And then it wasn't until you started talking that I was like, well, it'd be funny if I swapped it out with the obnoxious sounds of Surf and Bird or whatever the fuck that song is called. But OK, here is a very different vibe right here.

All right. Well, listen, thank you, everybody, for hanging out with us on this holiday. We are going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you. Also, for the sport-loving folks in the audience, we will be doing a no point today as well. So if you can join us for that, that would be awesome. All right, thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, take care of yourselves, take care of each other.

Remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. I wonder if he remembers my brother's name. That one was sad at once, but was he listening? It's the little things that just aren't the same. I used to make my bed, but now I see no point in pain. He's awake the whole time that I'm asleep Maybe that's why I don't see him in my dreams Don't know what to do I have nothing to do There's nowhere to go I just stay at home I send a pigeon with a note to his love I hope you hung it up But probably threw it out Power out