Muse

I just noticed something that in one of your interviews with John Candy, I believe, it looked like an older interview, you had less hair than you have today. How do you explain that?

I don't wear a wig, sir.

Paint your bald spot?

What bald spot?

You paint your bald spot?

I don't know what you're talking about, sir. My hair grows.

You paint your bald spot?

I don't have a bald spot.

How come you had less hair on the tape?

Maybe my hair grew. Maybe I had a bad haircut that day. By the way, something. What do you care? Paint your bald spot? I don't. Do you paint your bald spot?

Paint your bald spot?

You're sick.

TBTL!

Gimli the battle troll. You're Gimli the battle troll? Yeah.

We're going to kick you in the teeth, all right? And when you punch us back, we're going to smile at you. And when you knock us down, we're going to get up. And on the way up, we're going to bite a kneecap off, all right? And we're going to stand up. And then it's going to take two more shots to knock us down. I'm just, I'm kind of flabbergasted when you say things like that, it's weird. Thank you. Not a compliment.

Wait a minute. I read a tweet about a New Yorker article about you.

You know, this is beginning to seriously undermine my self-esteem. All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live.

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You know, maybe we shouldn't say just anything that pops into our heads. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where there is the ever so slight chance that we may see a light dusting of snow this week, particularly at higher elevations.

Snow, snow, and more snow.

Which would be kind of a nice little change of pace visually. Meanwhile, here on this Monday, it's a little overcast, but certainly not the worst. We have a fun show in store for you. It's episode 3,344 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. I say fun show, but it starts off on somewhat of a sad note. Suspenders are flying at half-staff today because the great Larry King has passed away.

I'm a professional, look it up in the book

I think it will be a fun show though because Larry King created a lot of memorable moments, not just on this show, I mean in terms of us playing his tape, but with his interviewing style, he was in every sense of the word, he was sort of inimitable although I guess actually people did do funny imitations of him, so maybe he was inimitable, like Fred Armisen on SNL

If you're watching in HD, I apologize

I can't believe I just said somebody was basically not imitatable, somebody who was regularly imitated in the public space. That was pretty much the least helpful word I could have chosen in that moment. Anyway, we're going to remember the life and career of one Larry King. Also, speaking of lovable old codgers, of course, Bernie Sanders and his mittens have been memefied. Now the teacher in Vermont who made those mittens is, well, she's granting interviews with Slate Magazine. And I have to say, she sounds like an absolutely delightful human being who is keeping this very much in perspective. So we'll give you the update on what's going on with those particular mittens. They are not knitted, by the way. Just want to clear that up right here at the top of the show. a lot of people thinking that they are knitted they are not knitted they're made from upcycled old sweaters um that and more will be revealed when we get to that story in the top stories plus we got emails and v-mails and we got this guy the longest running cobro of the show known for his drawings of tall ships he calls cakes big old cookies and um you know he's had some issues with uh theo the cat as theo the cat has continued to return to health and become even more vocal They had a conversation earlier today before the show, and he recorded what Theo said to hold him to it. Meow, I want to be petted. Meow, I want to be in there. Meow, why are you closing the door on me? He is Andrew Welsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning, Luke. Hey, at the top of the show here, I have some information that you might find interesting, but I worry that it's going to come off as taco-splaining. Do you mind if I taco-splain to you for a moment? Please. It's not actually my taco-splaining. And that implies a certain amount of I don't know, tone Which I didn't mean to apply to this I just wanted to say tacosplaining Early contender for show title Just right out of the box It is a Monday, I feel a little sluggish Apologies in advance

I'm going to try to be a good co-host today, but what I was going to say was you had an adventure, maybe not an adventure, but you bought some food at a taco time in your new neighborhood somewhat recently, and you noticed that it was different than the taco time you were used to. Is that correct?

In a way. Now, I didn't do this recently. I did this years ago, but it was such a taco trauma to me that I made a note to never again go to that particular what is called taco time here in Portland. There is a place, I believe it's on Interstate Boulevard here in Portland. Interstate, that's sort of the highway. It's not quite as robust as Highway 99 was, but it has a lot of motels on it. It must have been, well, in fact, now that I'm describing it this way, this is getting more boring. And also, I'm realizing it is very much like Highway 99 or Aurora Avenue in Seattle. The story with Aurora Avenue is it was the way you got through the city of Seattle before Interstate 5 was built. And so there were lots of motels and lots of things there for the weary traveler. And then you build this big, giant freeway, Interstate 5. And then all of a sudden, Aurora Avenue, a.k.a. Highway 99, kind of languishes. And the very fact that the road I'm describing for you, Andrew, is called Interstate here in Portland would probably indicate it was at one time the main highway through the city of Portland.

It's just called Interstate now. That's it. Just Interstate?

It's just called Interstate. That's the name of the street. And so anyway, it's got lots of really great old neon motel signs. I mean, the motels are there as well. But you can tell that there was a big sort of building boom along this road at a time when they were also making really cool neon signs. And so all of the a lot of the restaurants and motels have these great signs. Some of them are in disrepair. Some of them are doing OK, at least pre-pandemic. Point of it is there's a taco time on that road, Andrew, and I went there one time and I was all excited because I love me some taco time food, and it was completely and totally different than the taco time stuff that I'm used to, and I realized I have to get up to, I believe, Kelso, Washington to get to the first taco time that functions like I think of a taco time as functioning.

And you might already know this, but I happen to see a conversation going on on Slack about this. And listener Scott says, indeed, there are two taco times, but it was an evolutionary divergent taco time that you were talking about, Luke. Scott says, I recently learned that Luke's right. There are two separate chains, Taco Time and Taco Time Northwest. If you search for Taco Time Northwest in Google Maps, you can find locations for the chain that uses the fresher, superior ingredients. so at some point they were one they split off but if you're looking for your taco time try taco time northwest and that's that might be what takes you up to the border there ironically you'd be running for a different border for a taco

hey you know what that's actually very helpful information because now I'm looking yeah you know what it would appear that there may be some of those what I think of as legacy taco time There may be some of those here in Portland. So the great news is, whereas I had, I believe there to be, I don't know, 50, 60 miles between me and more high-calorie food. Turns out, nope. We've shortened that distance. Now I can get to that high-calorie Mexican-esque food right here in Portland, Oregon. And that's good, I think, for everybody, including my cholesterol level.

When you go to the – I'm just going to call it the down market taco time, and apologies if that's not what I should be calling it. But when you went there years ago, did you remember like, oh, the menu is exactly the same. It's all the same stuff you can get. But then when you got your food, it was worse. Or you could tell from the moment you looked at that menu that you were dealing with a different experience. Oh, Andrew.

I'm trying to think because you didn't it seems like you didn't really grow up in an eating out culture as far as any kind of fast food chain or, you know, restaurant chain. And in fact, even into adulthood, I think I mean, you I think you eat out fairly regularly, but it's it's never from it seems like it's very rarely from a chain. You like a you know, you have like a specific I don't know what, like like I like my tubs now, right?

Yeah, you like Tubs.

You don't go to Jimmy John's or Quiznos. You go to Tubs. That's kind of a one-off in Seattle. Or you and Veeves will go to a particular, you know, cafe or like Euro place that you like or whatever. But it's like you generally go for kind of one-offs, right? Would that be?

Yeah, generally. I mean, I got my opinions. We can talk about them at some other point. We've already done, you know, like I like me some Burger King. But like, yeah, it's much more rare.

and I'm going to a brewery than like a one-off kind of place. Yeah, and definitely growing up, we didn't have a specific association. I mean, we were Catholic, so during Lent times, like we were that classic Catholic family that would get McDonald's Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. I remember that. But aside from that, we did not have a lot of fast food traditions. And when you hear that my fast food tradition really was dialed into Filet-O-Fish, it's probably not surprising that I didn't grow up fetishizing it.

So you may not be able to relate to this, But because my dad did all of the menu boards for this restaurant chain in question, Taco Time, we grew up like we didn't we didn't eat a lot of fast food either. I think my parents just thought it was overpriced, which is funny because of all of the criticisms of fast food, I don't think cost is usually one of the ones at the top of the list. but um so i have it from my youngest days when my dad would say hey do you want to come like in the summertime do you want to come with me and help me you know do a put up a menu board or the drive update the drive-thru at the taco time in wherever i would go with him even though it made me feel very embarrassed to be on a job with my dad i don't know why i mean my dad my dad's great he didn't do anything embarrassing i don't it felt weirdly subservient to me which is strange because you might i mean i could see a different interpretation where you're a kid and you're like yeah my dad's the guy who redoes all the lettering in here like you might think it's kind of cool or like yeah we work here like hey man can i get my own little toolbox and bring it with you and kind of be your like you know assistant i didn't view it that way maybe part of it was because of the one time when my dad was we were at camp casey which was a kid's camp and my dad was redoing some signs there and i was with him and as i've told the story many times the one of counselor said get over here to me and i was like no and he's like get over here and i was like i'm not in your camp it's very embarrassing for me remember that to be around kids my age who are just like recreating right and i was like there with the hired help again it's not none of this is on my dad it's it's just my own mental hang-ups but um so anyway i would agree to go on these taco time jobs because i would get lunch from taco time and that was enough i mean that's how my dad could always get me to agree to anything would be like we're gonna get lunch we'll go to her fees okay i'm in um so i have a very very very very overly developed sense of what the menu at taco time is and what should and should not be on there and this minute that i pulled up to this taco time interloper here in portland that's you know this sort of what i'm trying this is where my knowledge of the evolutionary tree was going to let me down. Because you know how people will say, we didn't come from apes. And it's like, no, no one says we came from apes. It says, I believe that the theory is we have a common ancestor with early versions of basically hominids on this planet. So animals that were walking on two legs upright, we came from one branch of that, and apes came from another branch of that. It's not that apes are our uncles, it's that they're like our distant cousins I believe would be uh scientifically where we're at right now with that anyway whatever I don't know if if if that taco time is the ape and and the real taco time is the human or what but the point is I knew immediately Andrew that it was the wrong place but it didn't stop me because I was hungry and I just was like the tires you have

to check out the goods but now I'm at the website of this particular um different uh version of this restaurant that i like and yeah i can just tell you right now uh super soft taco come on get out of here with that noise a soft flour tortilla filled with your choice of seasoned beef chicken or pork carnitas they don't even have that at the real taco time come on what about the tater tots that everybody talks about at taco time uh they are let's see they do call them mexi fries here and they do have the little uh but then and they've got them um i guess registered oh got the Circle in the R, Mexi-Fries, R. Is that a shot across the bow at the other chain? I have a feeling that there's probably some shared intellectual property. Probably because, I mean, seriously, I'm sure that there's some agreement, some legal agreement as to who's allowed to call what what. And these guys are, this store is probably allowed to use all the same terminology. They just have chosen to go in a different direction, which I respect. They're allowed to be wrong, and they are. They're allowed to offer stuffed Mexi-Fries. Stuffed Mexi-Fries. I mean, that is like have some self-respect, please. I'm going to close. I'm going to get too angry if I keep looking at this website. But it's good to know that there maybe is some. I mean, the thing about it, though, is like I think some part of me was relieved to not be in a five minute to not be a five minute drive from four or five different versions of this restaurant that I would be tempted to go to too often as it is. You know, when I lived in Bellingham, there's a bunch of them. And some part of me was like, well, this is good. This is one less.

Like I said, calorically dense thing that I crave that's right around the corner. And now, Andrew, what you've done is you've made me aware that there are maybe some of them in this town. And I honestly think it's kind of that was kind of low of you. That was a dirty trick.

I blame Scott, honestly. Like, Scott infected my brain with this information. I wanted to tell you, if Scott had just kept his trap shut, we wouldn't be in this situation right now.

You know who would never do this to me? the kindest person I've ever met in my life, star of television and film, David Duchovny, Andrew, who I interviewed on Friday.

That was a smooth transition. Can I ask you one quick question about tacos before we move into the smooth transition?

What do you think the listeners are more interested in, David Duchovny or tacos?

Tacos, I think.

Actually, you do know the listeners.

Out of curiosity, does Tacos of the Sea, what is that, Taco Del Mar, does that even register for you? What are you, Hilaria Baldwin? I couldn't remember. Cucumber.

How do you say?

Because Vizan, I think it's such a funny name that every time we see these places, like when we moved here, we had never seen a Taco Del Mar before, and we thought the name was so funny because what is a taco of the sea? But anyway, I was not trying to do a hilarious there, I promise.

No, I love it, Andrew. I was not doing that on purpose.

I do promise you I was not trying to put out an affectation there because that's really embarrassing after I went after her.

Andrew, if we if we established anything the other day when you and Genevieve and I were talking about Hilaria, it was that you are the opposite of whatever it is that's driving Hilaria Baldwin to lean into her supposed Spanishness. So I don't think you did that on purpose. I think it's hilarious, though, because you just did without meaning to basically that exact thing like taco of the sea. I wonder if they got started with fish tacos. Yeah, that's why. Yeah. But anyway, keep going.

Anyway, my quick question is because I am stomping all over the other conversation. But just really quickly, does that – because I'd never heard of Taco Del Mar before we got here too. And I just see Taco Times, Taco Del Mars. I file them in the same place. Yet I don't hear anybody talk about Taco Del Mar at all. And I don't know if that's just because of my circle of friends or if it just – it doesn't have the same kind of – Caché. Yeah, caché quality.

I don't know enough about the history of that place. I know that when I was growing up in Seattle, sometime probably what I remember to be maybe high school or college, you started to see some of these tacos of the sea. And I've certainly eaten there plenty of times. I don't – it doesn't have – it seems like a very sort of just like prosaic kind of – a place that you might go on your lunch to get something to nourish your body to keep you going through the rest of the day. I don't know anyone who gets up in the morning and goes, OMG, we're going to Taco Del Mar. Like, it's kind of the Subway sandwich, as in the actual place Subway, of that kind of stuff. You know, there's a kind of counter or whatever that's behind a sneeze guard, and they've got a bunch of different fixings, and they put them in. And, again, I've eaten there a lot. When I was low-carbing, I would eat there a lot because they would throw – you could just get it without any tortilla, and they'd just throw all the fixings into a bowl. and that was pretty yummy you know and and um i'd eat that too in a pinch i guess um so it just doesn't it for whatever reason it doesn't seem like it has because taco time has been around forever they spend tons of money on local advertising if you grow up in seattle you just have been to it enough that you have some kind of story you have what you like or what you don't like it's just it's kind of in the culture of the northwest it's sort of a bigger deal i see and

also i just want to point out here even though they are called tacos of the sea their mascot Scott is not a big duck. Speaking of ducks, how did your interview with Duchovny go? I tried to get us back there, man. I did everything I could to get us back there. Because you think his name is Duck Covey?

It was the best I had, man. It was good. It happened. He wrote this book, which was pretty long, right? And I wanted to talk about the book because that's why he was coming on the show. But I also knew that he is more well known for being, you know, on the X-Files and and Californication and things like that. And so I was sort of wanted to make sure we honored the the work that he put into this book. But also I wanted to kind of like get to the X-Files and everything else. But I didn't know if he was going to be I had been reading a lot of interviews with him and interviews about him or I should say articles about him. And I kept seeing something coming up where it could say he can seem standoffish. And I was like, oh, boy, like when you start to when you see the word standoffish coming up around somebody when they're in interviews, you get nervous if you're me. And and so I went into the chat with a tiny bit of hesitation. He was the he did something that has never happened to me before. in the doing of Livewire, certainly in this kind of pandemic version, which is we talked for like 45 minutes. He was really nice. He was happy to talk about anything. He brought up the X-Files many times on his own. And then at some point I said, all right, well, David, because I'm starting to think of our editor at this point, because she's got to cut this down to like 12 minutes. I was like, all right, well, David Duchovny, thanks a lot. He's like, hey, man, it was really fun talking to you guys. And then we're done. And then something else came up, and he said, well, let me just, he goes, I just want to tell you about this. This doesn't even have to be for the interview. He proceeds to talk to us for like another 20 minutes. Just about something else that was on his mind. Was it about tacos? It was about Tacos of the Sea. And he's a co-owner of that chain of restaurants. He just was just chatting with us. He was just sitting there on – he was literally sitting there on his iPad and was just so friendly and nice and kept apologizing that he was talking so much. he goes I'm like that person you get stuck at at the party who just won't shut up about their thing I was like well we did ask you to come on the show to talk about your thing but he was just like incredibly nice and talkative and whatever my fears about him being standoffish were were very misplaced and then I had to get off of when we were finally done done like literally I had to sort of hang up on him I was like well thank you so much and then so I said alright goodbye and so I left the zoom call apparently there was another 20 minutes that involved because let me just put it this way i don't want to i'm not trying to overly gender this but i can only report what actually happened andrew which was there was not one woman who works even tangentially with livewire who was not present for that zoom call i'm talking about he was talking about the 90s right our writer who we actually have not even been able to use because of the way the production model has changed we had

staffers who have not worked on the show in over a year that were on that zoom call really which yeah which you know suddenly you're just like wait a second you guys have been cashing checks all this time um because you know yeah he's a very uh he looms large in the mind of a lot of people and in particularly a lot of women um and so what ended up happening was just everybody who wasn't me stayed on the zoom call while david dukovny attempted to upload his audio file to our server because he had been recording himself on his phone he's at his like incredibly well designed tasteful but beautiful malibu home which has this like lap pool there's a crazy story on that too which is he had this lap pool put in at his house and he happened to see somewhere that there was a para olympian this didn't come up in our conversation with him for livewire but i just read a story in the New York Times about it he he saw that there was when the pandemic happened there was a a Paralympian who lived in Malibu where he lives who was having a hard time finding a pool to train in because all of the like you know everything's closed for the pandemic and so he reached out to the guy this is like a guy in his early 30s who doesn't have legs so he uses various modifications he runs and uses those kind of blade legs and has you know swims and uses a special prosthetic for that so David Duchovny said hey by the way you know I like I have this pool if you want to come use it you absolutely can and so the guy was like okay cool thank you and when he comes over they realize that they actually know each other when David Duchovny had done a triathlon in Malibu 15 20 years ago this guy when he was like a teenager or whatever had also done it and they had taken a picture together because as Duchovny said uh told the the the the young man the young man didn't have any legs after finishing it can't come up To David Duchovny and said do you want my autograph And then Duchovny was like sure And then he goes do you want to take a picture with me And Duchovny was like okay so they had actually Met at some point and this was Their sort of reuniting so I Brought this up to Duchovny I was like that pool Looks really cool oh yeah I want to check it out so he gets his iPad out he's just wandering around his backyard Trying to show all of us His like swimming pool that he really likes like just In the most aw shucks way it was A very very Fun chat with somebody Who turned out to be totally nice and not whatever i don't know because also he went to yale and he went to princeton and he writes and he's very literary and he's very rich uh and i just thought maybe we're not gonna have a lot in common because i'm only like three of those four things yeah um right but uh no it was good it was it was good so um that's gonna be on live wire i think this week that'll be on the radio so uh folks can check that out um let's take a quick break and then we come back we want to talk larry king i i feel like i've been saying this a lot this week andrew or i should say uh

in recent times on the show but boy you really get a sense of of where we've where we've hung our hat as a show when there's a news story related to someone that people associate with us and i don't know if there's any media personality that people associate

associate tbtl with more than larry king yeah we have talked about larry king a lot over the years i mean just the paint your bald spot tape which i want to say i think we found out about because of the don and mike show the great great don and mike radio show um but uh yeah larry king has been a huge i don't know just presence on this show even though of course he had never heard of what a tbtl was nor would he probably care but um yeah he passed away uh and uh we're gonna talk about them a little bit coming up in a moment here on tbtl let's thank some donors of the day who are supporting the program with some financial contributions which is the way That we can do this thing 52 weeks a year I was going to try to show off And say how many shows a year we do Andrew But I actually have no idea I mean I guess actually it's a knowable thing It would be What is 52 times 2 So it would be 104 So it would be 365 minus 104 So it would be 261 times a year

Wouldn't it be 260 We don't miss any weekdays We do something And so 20 isn't 52 times five, 260.

Is it? Did you do that in your head?

I did it with a calculator. And also because it's five times two, it would have to have. But I think, you know what? It was a leap year last year. So I think that it was. That's what I was talking about. Last year. Yes.

Thank you.

That's a true story, actually.

That was total luck that that bailed me out there because I was trying to do the math. I didn't even know there was something called leap year when I was doing that math. in my head um let's thank elona geary in newport news virginia i've always been fascinated with the

name newport news virginia it always makes me think of the movie the shipping news which i don't

think they have anything to do with each other i don't think so i think that happens up in like

nova scotia or something i think you're right i didn't remember liking that movie very much although i don't need to be negative about it maybe it's great and i just was in a bad mood

when i watched maybe the book is great right the book oh that's right by that writer whose name is it like e and prue it's 260 i just looked it up i can't ever i can't say that writer's name correctly because uh because i'm not good with names which is why this is a perfect segment for me where i read multiple names in a row i wonder if newport news virginia is because this is where the news from europe would hit new port news you know what i mean i wonder if it was like interesting okay like because things had to come at some point things had to come by ship right i'm wondering if it was where you would go to find out you know what was going on in the world of the wider world across the pond as they say andrew and it would get delivered it would show up at newport news virginia at this port in

virginia that'd be one of the first places maybe why did i think that annie prue because i did not realize that Annie Prue wrote that I think it's Prue and I feel like Annie Prue I feel like I only know that because she was a New Hampshire writer but that does not seem to be the case at all so maybe I am confusing her

with somebody else. Annie Prue why did I say E-Anne

Prue or whatever I said. I'm looking it up now and it says that and I might be confusing maybe I'm mispronouncing it but it was written by somebody named E period like an apostrophe you know like an initial E Annie P-R-O-U-L-X so you would be right about that And if I'm right, Annie Proulx, I don't know why I feel like Annie Proulx is a New Hampshire person. I can say S's now. Mrs. Bean, she was my speech teacher. She did a lot of S-lisp exercises with me. Anyway, I am reading, as I mentioned to you, a book about the Lusitania. Am I saying that right? Yeah. The ship that, of course. The U-boat book? Yeah. It's a Titanic book about submarines.

That's the dumbest thing. I just have to do that to try to make you laugh.

But anyway, they have before the before the boat leaves the New York Harbor, they have these newspaper reporters who are shipping news reporters and they are actually on the ship getting a bunch of news and then they have to get off the ship before it departs. And I was like, oh, I want that's what shipping news might be.

Maybe about Newport News, Virginia, the official website, the city of Newport News. Let's see here. Oh, man. It was one of those things where I had it on the Internet, but then when I clicked on the larger link, it took me to something else. Newport News was named for Christopher Newport, captain of the Susan Constant, the lead ship of the three-ship fleet that carried the Jamestown settlers to the New World. But I still – oh, I see. The change to Newport News came about –

through usage by 1851 the post office department sanctioned newport news as the name of the place and prue lives in new in in seattle how many days do you think uh annie prue i was trying to get us back to a leap year conversation

i'm looking it up because it's like oh she was born in connecticut but then it's

i wrote in what state you're obsessing over if if how you got it in your mind that she had a

new hampshire connection yeah and i'm also wondering if i'm confusing her with somebody else and if i'm mispronouncing her last name because there's somebody else with a similar name from new hampshire it doesn't matter but i mean listen we all learned we've learned a lot we've learned about yes we have port news we learned about annie prue we learned about shipping news we learned about taco time and taco time northwest and david duck coveny and now is that

a show title duck and coveny all right can we please reboot the music so that i can get back to the business of thanking the donors of the day. Anything important? Yeah. Of course, we thank Ilona, who's in Newport News. We also need to thank Jonathan Clark, who's in Chicago, Illinois. And then Katie Gerhart, who's in Seattle. Thanks, Katie. Christopher. What's that? Just like Annie Proulx. Yeah, exactly. Famously. Christopher Anderson is in Everett, Washington. Thanks for the donation, Christopher. Thanks for helping us do this. Gary Allen is in Scarborough, Maine. That's M-E. Don't make me. Do not make me play that Gary Gullman post office thing again. M-E really throws me, though. That's one of those ones. Because I guess it's the last letter in Maine, but I don't think of it as a primary part of the word Maine. But there it is, M-E. I think of Gary Allen as a primary part of TBTL. Thanks for the donation. And then we've got Matthew and Julie Adamchick of Savage, Minnesota. Wow. Yeah. Savage, Minnesota. That sounds like quite a place. I'm sure that each year when that comes up, we probably comment on Savage, Minnesota. I wonder whereabouts in Minnesota that is. Regardless, Julie and Matthew, thank you for the donation. Thanks to everybody for keeping TBTL going. And we absolutely would not be here talking tacos and Annie Proulx without you. So thank you. Hello and welcome to Top Story. Our top story, Larry King has passed away. It would appear to be the result of COVID, actually. He was 87 years old. He passed away in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai. He was born in Brooklyn. He was born Lawrence Zeiger back in, well, a long time ago. I don't have it right in front of me. But he grew up with a fascination with radio. and he uh was trying to he didn't go to college but he was trying to find a gig in radio in new york and somebody told him because he's working as a delivery boy post high school somebody told him go to florida because this was long this was so long ago that florida was kind of just becoming a thing like it was growing i think a lot of the growth of florida has to do with the invention of air conditioning do you know this um you know that rings maybe a little bell like uh yeah a lot

of the architecture in florida like the boom in florida has to do with when it was possible to really live in florida comfortably year-round um and anyway larry king went down there and he did sports he was at one time he was the he was a like color commentator for the miami dolphins which i had uh no idea about he also had a crippling gambling addiction he would bet on the ponies a lot and apparently wasn't great at it even as he was kind of um uh his his his stature in the in the florida media and then later in the national media even as his stature was growing and he was making more and more money he was also gambling more and more money had to declare

bankruptcy twice i could see him on track he looks like yeah he looks very much like a guy

who would be sitting there with just like a like a racing form in one hand that's just Crushed up into like a tight fist Because you know His horse didn't come through in the seventh race At Saratoga or whatever But Yeah so he has He would tell the story Of his first time he ever got to talk on the radio

which was he was working at the station, but I think he was like doing like he was sweeping. He was doing janitorial stuff at this radio station and he wanted to get on the air. And finally, I guess the guy that was doing the nine to noon show, I don't know if he got fired or he was sick or he didn't show up or whatever. So they throw a young Larry Zeiger in there, Lawrence Zeiger. And like a minute before he starts talking, the program director says, don't be Lawrence Zeiger. You should probably be Larry King Because they had a liquor distributor That sponsored the radio station That was called like King Liquor or something So He decides on Larry King Like a minute before he could start talking On the radio And then he So he was sort of like there was like a music bed Right that was playing and then he was supposed To fade the music bed down and start doing The show or the news or whatever he was supposed To deliver and in his Like one of his many Biographies or autobiographies uh he says he like would bring the music down and then he would get too nervous and then he would turn the music back up and then he'd start to get his nerve together and he'd bring the music down and start talking and then he would get nervous and he'd bring the music back up until finally the program director like stuck his head into the studio was like you got to start talking now and so apparently what he did according to his description of things and i'm sure larry king probably mythologized himself uh a lot as all good showmen do he apparently then brought the music down and then immediately started talking about how he had been too nervous to talk into the microphone which i if that's true i love that so much he just started talking in the moment about how nervous he was yes yeah exactly he basically said he just started explaining what had been going on he started talking about how he had been too nervous to start talking which is the most tbtl thing you could ever do really and also like and it also does sort of set the brand right

He's kind of he was flummoxed a lot on the air. Right.

Well, as as as I mean, do you think he was flummoxed? I mean, I feel like he was. You mean flummoxed because he never did any research on any of the guests?

Well, yeah, I mean, I am. I'm very much of an outsider on Larry King. All I know about Larry King are the things that go viral and that we talk about on the show. But like, you know, I know that we've played the tape before where he's talking to Jerry Seinfeld. And, you know, we'll probably hear that a little bit. And, you know, he's he's acting like Seinfeld lost his job at the network when they famously went out. And it's like, well, here, I let me just do me to play it. Yeah. But I was going to say Larry King, like I think that it seems to me that like he knows what he's doing, like he's using this somewhat flummoxed character that he does to get reactions out of people. It seems to me I could be wrong about that. Yeah.

I mean, I think what he did that was really smart was he just realized, you know, as they say, be yourself. Everyone else is taken. Like, I think he just realized that being I mean, other than the fact that he changed his name one minute before he started talking. But, of course, I think that was pretty common back then, you know, for to have your radio name or whatever. I think he sort of just realized that, like, trying to be a different kind of broadcaster than what he naturally wanted to be, which was as this this this obit that was in The New York Times said with the folksy personality of a Bensonhurst schmoozer. i think he kind of realized i have the folksy personality of a benson hearst schmoozer and i'm just gonna do that like i'm not gonna try to reinvent myself to the point where i'm a totally different person or i'm behaving like somebody who i'm not he was just sort of knew who he was was good with that and and there's something really powerful about that you know what i mean like there's just something there's something that made him very watchable even though yeah He was often like, this is him talking to Seinfeld, where he was clearly not 100 percent up to speed on if Seinfeld had retired or ended the show voluntarily or had been canceled.

Lasted how long? Nine years. 180 episodes. You gave it up, right? I did. They didn't cancel you. You canceled them.

You're not aware of this? No, I'm asking you. You think I got canceled? Are you under the impression that I got canceled?

Have I hurt you, Jerry?

I thought that was pretty well documented.

Don't most shows go down a little?

Most people do also. You do. Yeah, no, I went off the air. I was the number one show on television, Larry. Do you know who I am? Jewish guy, Brooklyn. 75 million viewers, last episode.

Don't take it so bad.

Well, that's a big difference between being canceled and being number one.

okay i'm sorry we'll be right back b movie opens There's something about him trying to get in the B-movie plug that just really kind of timestamps that.

Yeah, definitely timestamps it. It's just you, especially upon listening to it more. I remember you sent me, I had not heard that tape. Obviously, that's a very old tape. And you sent it to me, I don't know, like in the past year or so. And I hadn't heard it. And I thought it was great. But listening like the more I listen to it, the more I feel like, again, unless I'm misreading the situation, I feel like I'm more reading the love and between these guys and that they're that they're doing more of a bit than at first I thought it was Larry King really just kind of like being unprepared.

Right I mean that was the thing That he That was the thing That he had sort of you know established With any potential guest on there You know particularly like that TV show But just once he got famous everyone knew Like he's not going to like read your book He's not going to necessarily know Everything about your career and so Yeah I think Jerry Seinfeld is Charmed by that and also Jerry Seinfeld being Really funny senses a comedic opportunity There I don't think it's like you know nowadays it'd be like jerry seinfeld claps back at larry king for being underprepared larry king stands clap back at seinfeld heads over larry cancel culture like like i just don't think i don't think that that's i think that was there yeah that was all in the sort of um i think seinfeld sort of in on the joke there and and larry king is to a degree now here's There's a bunch of stuff I want to say. One thing is what he apparently did do, Larry King, very well, he didn't prep for these interviews, but he was super-duper present. I read so many accounts from people who had been interviewed by Larry King who said he was the most present person you could ever experience. He looked at you like Bette Midler was around. You know, who was writing about this actually was Jesse Thorne from the Max Fun Network was talking about the time when he got a chance to go interview Larry King at Larry King's home. I think as Larry King got later into his career and once he was not on CNN anymore, you know, I'm sure like, well, one thing was famously. Did you ever work with Steve Profitt? No. OK. Well, he was a L.A. radio producer that I worked with at NPR and he's worked at a bunch of different things in L.A. but uh i think he one time maybe he and alex chadwick or maybe it was just him like larry king would have breakfast at the same place in la like every morning with his like buddies and you could just go apparently i never did it but you could just go in there and like hang out with larry king and just like talk to him i think he was pretty accessible and so anyway jesse thorn got to go interview him and i'm sort of paraphrasing jesse's tweet about this but he just basically said like that Larry King was incredibly present like he just listened to you and gave thoughtful responses and I mean I have a feeling and like I said I bet Bette Midler talked about that um Bill Clinton every I saw these celebrities talking about their experience of being interviewed with Larry King and the thing that kept coming up was how much he made you feel like you were the only person in the room where you were the only thing he was interested in and that's almost it's a real dale carnegie thing right like it's a real like oh yeah you know what people like to have a sense that you are paying close attention to them like that's something very deeply programmed into us to want to have that experience and i think he really had that down and that's why he was able to do all these interviews and get good stuff from people and and not prep it was because the people felt connected to him or like he was connecting with them i also think it's an incredibly hard

thing to do as an interviewer and i say that as somebody who has done very few interviews and really does not like doing like interviews i do this show with you we talk blah blah blah um but i think often if we have somebody on the show who i don't know that well um you know isn't like a friend of the show um you can hear me tighten up stiffen up a little bit not to make this all about me but i just think that it one of the things you're the only person in this room right now yeah exactly one of the things deeply into your soul i think you know you can do the prep you can put out you can set aside time before the interview and do a bunch of prep and i don't but you can um but what's really hard is in the moment not to be thinking like well what's the next question where is this going where where do i take it after this do i have something if they stop talking right now what do i say and you can get into your head and make it terribly hard on yourself whereas um if you can just like really really be in the moment i mean that that to me is something that i think i really struggle with and of course you interview people all the time so

you probably but you know what the longer that i've gotten uh or the more that i've done this i have to say the like less casual i've become which i'm kind of as i think about as i as i read all these people who are interviewed by larry king and enjoyed the experience i mean not also

by the way that the times obit points out that he was sort of came under criticism a lot for just like softballing you think like jimmy fallon tussling trump's hair was you know sort of whistling past a graveyard i mean larry king was the master of that larry king would have people on he had nixon on and he apparently asked nixon does it feel weird when you drive past the water gate hotel oh which is maybe not the most like the most pressing question you can ask richard

nixon i'm sort of interested in the answer i'm not gonna lie i'd like to know how i answered that

right so um but i was as i say like the the longer that i have been doing interviews i have to say the more that i i want to be prepared i think particularly when it's people who've created something you know whether it's they've written a book or they've done a film or tv thing you i i guess what it is and honestly on some level it's insecurity on my part i want them to know that i put in the time familiarizing myself with their work so that they'll then give me hopefully good answers because they'll see me as somebody who is deserving or worthy of that sort of like you know response as opposed to you know like i've had it said to me before like even on like when we're on stage oh you actually read the book and people sometimes seem kind of surprised because if you're doing a ton of media i bet you a lot of the you know people interviewing you for a you know whatever tv quick tv spot they didn't actually sit down and read the book i'm sure that some part of me is wants that approval from them and also wants to try to make it a success and like but man now that larry king's shuffled off to that you know big television studio in the sky maybe there's an opening for the under-researched uh affable dude uh who's uh losing their hair by the way that comes up so much like we're playing the paint your bald spot thing this is um in this new york times obit mr king had what one writer called a face made for radio it was gaunt and bony with a prominent nose receding hair thin lips and beady eyes behind oversized black rim glasses like okay all right just calm down everybody dude's dead i know right like i mean like let me see i'm i'm trying to get to um this was um uh the robert mcfadden is the person who wrote this um this obit of larry king it's like oh by the way he continues uh he was raptor thin a strict dieter since 1987 since a 1987 heart attack in his trademark shirt sleeves and suspenders he slouched in a chair on his elbows and peered over a desk at his guests his voice a raspy rumble delivered bursts of irreverence and humor but his questions were usually brief and friendly i just thought do you think of larry king's overriding quality as

being a receding hairline i mean he goes on to say you could you could smell death on his skin as he was slumped into the room like a scepter um or scepter uh scepter what do you call it What's a fancy name for ghost? I said scepter. That's not right. Spectre. Spectre. That's what I meant to say. That joke would have been fun.

But it's like it's his obit.

I guess the point is. I will say that his look, Larry King's look, is a big part of Larry King. When I think of Terry Gross, I mean, listen, this is an unfair thing to say because the media are different. But I think of Terry Gross. I think of her voice. I think of Larry King. I think of how he looks. Well, and his voice, I guess. But, I mean, you know, he cut a figure.

He definitely did. But I just think he was gaunt and bony with a prominent nose, receding hair, thin lips, and beady eyes behind his oversized black-rimmed glasses. Just seems like, okay, we get it. He didn't, you know, he didn't look like every other maybe handsome person on television. But, yeah, no, I mean, his look was – and also he definitely – I was surprised to learn this is since I guess we're just piling on Larry King's legacy here and memory I was surprised to hear he was only 87 he seemed I if they would have said Larry King passes away at 117 I would have said yeah that that seems probably about right like I don't think of 87 I mean 87 is not young but it's not that old to me like Larry King seemed old when i was a kid and i would hear his overnight radio show uh which which is that's another big part of his his sort of redemption story so he gets charged with fraud i think in like the 70s he had some he had some business partnership that went sour and he was uh he was charged with fraud to the tune of about five thousand dollars which immediately

scuttled his career like he lost his radio jobs he had some newspaper column writing jobs he lost all of it and eventually the charges were dropped but it was he was sort of you know he had a scarlet letter he was trying to make money doing freelance writing and apparently he was the pr person for a racetrack in louisiana and uh eventually he you know i guess that he's welcome not welcomed but like he enough time has passed that they're going to let him sort of come back into being in the media and he got hired to host this overnight uh call-in radio show which is famously where that like drunk larry king tape that we have played many times where he's you know um talking to this caller about i don't know what you about about breaking into the media although he thinks the guy wants to know how to break into medicine i don't know this you have to know this or maybe when you play it for me i'll remember it but this was so he had this he had this overnight radio show i assume it went on like it was like hours like maybe by four live hours in the middle of the night i believe it started from dc and went out all across the nation take a listen to this this is larry king maybe he's just exhausted it's we've we've always described it as larry king

drunk i'm not sure but take a listen like i a lot of uh professors are telling us how hard it is to get into the field at first they're just like you know since you're in the field do you have any advice on that for instance experience is that important uh-huh sure but is that probably the

most important uh well it's way up there it's way up there anything anything else anything Pressure under fire. Done this before. I don't want it to be his first surgery.

Okay.

Applied himself well. These are things I'd have confidence in, a young MD.

Okay. I'm talking about journalism field.

I'm lost. What do you mean?

Journalism. Like, I'm a student of journalism at a college, and I was just wondering the most important aspect of getting into journalism, not the medical field. I think you're exhausted from 30 nights.

I am exhausted from 30 nights. No person, even those of us who are superhuman, those of us with Herculean appetites for the diverse and the bizarre, Even those of us who have shown an aptitude to fight the good fight and stay the good long battle, even those of us can get tired. And your boy is tired after 30 consecutive nights. I have a half hour to go, and I'm going to do that half hour because I'm a pro. That's what pros do. I'm a professional. Look it up in the book.

Did you know the context for that? Never. I've never heard this. I've never heard this. This is amazing.

That's what we do. We're pros. We're never rude. We don't comp out. We don't tell you that we're ill or that we're looking for the farmhouse in the middle of the desert or that we're parched. We don't tell you that maybe the check didn't come through this month and where the hell is it going anyway if you're a guy who's left 16 forwarding addresses. Okay. So what do you do? What is the answer? Yeah, you're a little perturbed now. Kind of worried about the club.

The club.

Don't worry about the club. Don't worry about maybe Jackie might worry. Nah, don't worry. Oh, Larry. Okay, just cool it. Life is a breeze. Of course, some breezes, as you know, are 110 miles an hour and get promoted up. The hurricanes, I just thought I'd pass that along. Speaking of passing along, we're going to pass along now to the newsroom, the mutual newsroom, high atop the overlooking downtown, beautiful downtown studios of Wallace, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. The mutual newsroom will get us up to date on the news headlines, and we'll come back with a little more open-phone American. We'll have our salute to my man, Duke Zebert, by taking him to one of his favorite places, one of mine, too, the town of Cooperstown, New York. This is The Larry King Show in Washington, and we'll be right back.

That was amazing.

I can't believe you've never heard that.

No, and I never knew what Look It Up in the Book came from. I mean, I knew that was Larry King. But, wow, no, that's amazing. And just hearing that kid, you know, I'm so— That's very poised, by the way. Yes, and I'm so – because so much of what I've heard in that context is the paint your bald spot, clearly from the same show or the same format. What's the radio show that pranked him with the paint your bald spot tape we heard earlier?

Pranked him? Oh, did they do that? Was it Don and Mike?

Yeah, I believe that was a Don and Mike producer or somebody. I could be wrong about that, but I'm pretty sure that tape we heard at the beginning, the paint your bald spot, I'm pretty sure that was Don and Mike. I think they set that up.

Oh, that's so funny. We're all learning today. Maybe, because now I'm second-guessing myself. Well, no, I know that the Don and Mike show's website for years was paintyourbaldspot.com. Oh, yeah, right. Or, like, the archive of their shows. I know that was a big thing on their show. I didn't know that it was a bit, potentially, also generated by them, but I wouldn't be surprised. That show was so great, by the way.

Because their website was named that, I'm not getting good SEO, if you will, on that. Like I can't figure out like I'm not getting like a very clear history of the paint your bald spot call. But anyway, my point is, you know, hearing somebody, you know, mess around with him with the paint your bald spot tape. I'm so geared up for that other kid, this journalism kid to be messing with him, too. But he's not. He's he's just trying to keep Larry on the show.

like but it's i know tracks i wonder whatever became of that caller because like imagine you call a national this show is on 500 stations you're trying to break into journalism you call larry king and then you're the one keeping like you said larry king on the tracks like you're going larry i'm worried for you i think you're tired my friend right right and then he's saying like and the club the club like you could just hear these little responses the kid were what Like the kid is mystified, you know, along with us, the listeners. But, yeah, he has the presence of mind or whatever, the I don't know what you'd call it, the confidence or something to to actually sort of like push back when Larry King is not making any sense or to like weigh in on what he thinks is going on with Larry King. That's like a pretty poised, I'm assuming, like 25 year old.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, you're right about my thoughts. Also went to where's that kid right now?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I guess that's sort of mostly what I wanted to say about about Larry King is that he was, you know, he was kind of a legend. And he got his he said that he developed his sort of interviewing skills, his ability to talk to anyone, because after once he sort of got established in Miami radio, he had a show, a morning show that was recorded every day or broadcast live from a restaurant called Pumpernick's in Miami Beach. And all he would do was interview customers at Pumpernick's. pumpernicks this was basically a paid advertisement for pumpernicks and he would just sit there doing his morning radio show from this restaurant interviewing people as they came into the restaurant which helped him develop the ability he said to talk to anybody about anything wow

that's great i mean that's very hard to do but first of all i just like god how much would i love pumpernicks by the way i know when i saw that name of that restaurant i was like that's got andrew yeah drag me away with scratch marks on the sidewalk pulling me away from pumpernicks hanging out with larry king um that that's that's an amazing story i like i'm so in my head about you know on the occasions that i'd go out to do like a you know person on the streets collecting you know comments from people on the very rare occasions i do that again it's you kind of gotta it's exhausting man i i gear myself up because i don't want to be the insecure person out there and your success is really based on your confidence level. When you're done doing something like that, you're just exhausted. And it would be really nice to get to a point where you can just kick it in a diner and just, like, confront every single person who comes in if they don't know who you are, especially. If you're already Larry King, well, then that's, you know, nine-tenths of the battle. But, like, just to be some stranger who's just comfortable talking to other strangers and recording them, that's a skill.

yeah and i also kind of i don't even think maybe aside from this thing we're doing right now where we have this very small loyal group of listeners who have decided for whatever reason they want to spend time with this but like i just don't think that could even you could even do that in radio anymore and be successful like i think we just we're not interested enough as a i mean the american public is not interested in hearing what somebody who's just come in to have some scrambled eggs thinks you might want to hear like a snippet of that from iowa when like the presidential candidates are are you know are are out there you know shaking hands and and trying to get votes maybe you'll hear some little you know snippets of so-called regular people but a whole show that's just five you know five days a week that'd be what we'd say 260 261 shows per year yeah um like i just don't know if there would even be an audience for that even

though i do kind of love that kind of shit all right i am digging into the comments of the paint your bald spot on youtube a little bit here because i like to get to the bottom of things somebody commented two years ago the caller on this call is not don and mike the caller is known as fruitcake who was a well-known miami crank caller back in the 80s to which the original poster a fella named neil rogers

Rogers says absolutely correct sir the caller is now living in Israel my sidekick John talked to him on the phone a few years ago and confirmed that the prank was his so it looks like Neil Rogers is either a Neil Rogers is clearly a radio guy he has a link to his like radio show website I'm unclear whether or not Neil Rogers has a connection to the Don and Mike show and maybe was a producer or is just one of those fellas who's like in love with all things radio and so therefore this was On his kind of radar

Okay So it was a prank though And it may or may not have been orchestrated by the Donna Mike show Or they might have just gotten obsessed with it because they thought it was funny Yeah It's kind of funny because it's like I guess you could say it's a prank but it's a weird prank Because it's not very Complicated It's like I'm just going to call Larry King and ask him if he paints his bold spot

You want to do that to McConaughey right now

Well I mean Yeah although I can tell you it's not we're not dealing with bald spot painting I know from a variety of research projects on the topic this is definitely McConaughey my guess would be I don't want to get sued a lot of people like Rudy Giuliani just got sued for like a billion dollars from Dominion so I don't want to get sued by

McConaughey but let me just say

whatever McConaughey is doing it looks amazing I'm jealous and also it goes way above and beyond painting his bald spot. Did McConaughey's hair

steal the election though um i don't even have a response okay sorry that was not even set up very well as a joke i do want to just say some other people are saying that like it would appear that don and mike fell in love with this prank as you suggested luke and um and and it became associated with them i i was uh under the impression which i believe i'm wrong now that

they had orchestrated it um i was very charmed by this interview that rachel hampton did for Slate magazine with a woman named Jen Ellis who lives in Essex Junction Vermont she is the woman who made the mittens that Bernie Sanders is wearing in that now very famous photo of him at the inauguration and there was so much to like about this woman Jen Ellis one she teaches second graders when this whole thing was happening when everybody was freaking out about Bernie Sanders and when it was getting meme-ified, she had no idea because she is still teaching her second grade class. She teaches it remotely. She goes to the school where she sits in her empty classroom and teaches her students virtually. And she says she doesn't have her phone on or anything when she's doing that because she just needs to be totally focused on what she's doing. She wants to really, like, give her students all of her attention. So she didn't really know what was going on, although this one time, I guess, this was like the one time when her phone was she had left it somehow on to the degree that she was getting she could feel there were some buzzes she was a little bit worried something was up with her parents but she had no idea that her mittens were making national news and so it wasn't until she got home that her partner said you got to turn on we got to turn on the tv you got to see what's going on then she goes on to explain that they don't even really this is if if these people weren't so vermont this would maybe seem a little bit extra but she points out that like there. Here's what she says. She says, I walked in the door. My partner was like, you're not going to believe this. She says, we don't watch TV. We're intentionally a non-TV family, but we had taken the TV out of the closet so that our daughter could watch the inauguration. We found the bunny ears. We found a local station that would allow us to watch the inauguration. People had sent me multiple pictures of Bernie Sanders sitting there in his chair, looking a little grumpy. Then the camera zoomed right in on him. And I was like, there he is. He's wearing my mittens. I was completely surprised and delighted and flattered by the whole thing the interviewer for slate magazine says do you wish you would have looked less grumpy in this photo with your mittens it's now gone viral she says I don't think he was grumpy I bet he was really excited to be there even though it was bittersweet right because he wanted to be in Biden's shoes but I'm sure he recognized the importance of that day and this whole change of power in America and I bet he was glad to be here he is who he is and not everyone has resting pleasant face which I guess is the way that you would describe people who just naturally look happy when they don't know that they're being photographed resting pleasant face

i agree with her assessment by the way i was when that thing first started going viral i was kind of unsure exactly what the message was i wasn't sure if it was being like spread specifically by bernie supporters who were upset that he wasn't getting inaugurated that day and it was like a statement on that and i i think i learned that that wasn't really what the driving principle behind that was but yeah i think that it was just it was just a moment you know like i mean yeah You could I never if you if you just happen to catch me in the background of a photo, I look grumpy as hell. Yeah, I don't think he was mad at all. I think first of all, I think it was probably kind of cold.

This weekend, I heard an interesting take on that whole thing, which was.

not to politicize it but basically somebody was saying that like they really appreciated this photo of Bernie Sanders because it it showed where his priorities are you know like in that he's just wearing very normcore clothes he's not in some flashy outfit he's not part of the performative aspect of politics I'm not trying to Bernie bro out here but I hadn't thought of it this way he's just wearing a very like he's just wearing that blue medical grade mask that a lot of people are wearing he's just wearing these very sensible shoes he's got this kind of un flashy unflattering coat on and these mittens that were made by a you know a constituent essentially that and that that sort of like it stands in contrast no I'm not saying anything about you know for instance this was a this was a historic first for a lot of reasons particularly that relate to Kamala Harris so you know to the degree that Kamala Harrison and other people wanted to really have a moment and there were going to be photos of this i don't i don't think the idea is that somebody should be judged for for wanting to you know you know really memorialize this in the way they wanted to from a sort of image standpoint that being said there's something kind of charming about bernie sanders just being like this a this isn't about me b i'm just gonna

be wearing sensible clothes and trying to stay warm absolutely also just like all rules are out you know i know that people were you know some of the people were dressed stunningly and and were making statements with their apparel as is often the case in this but doesn't it just feel like all bets are off or all expectations are off during this covet era anyway like if you were to go to somebody attend somebody's virtual wedding like you might put on a tie but you also kind of wouldn't have to we're all just trying to get through this shit yeah completely

the way by the way that jen ellis makes these mittens uh the outer layers made of discarded wool sweaters. So wool sweaters that have moth holes or someone sent them through a washing machine or they were ripped or whatever. I cut them up and I pieced them together with other sweaters with complimentary colors. And I use the cuffs of the sweater to be the cuffs of the mitten. Then I lined them with fleece, which is also a recycled material made out of plastic bottles, shredded plastic. I bought some thread at thrift stores. I use all the thread for my grandmother's old sewing baskets after she died. I find recyclable thread or reusable thread, But usually I buy the thread and and then that's how she puts together these mittens, which clearly are pretty warm. I think Bernie Sanders is I want to say it might be his sister or maybe it's his daughter in law. Somebody in his family lives or works in this town where this woman, Liz Ellis, also works and teaches and in fact runs a daycare where that where she and her partner have been taking their their daughter since their daughter was really young. And when Bernie Sanders, I think, maybe was not successful in his last attempt to to become the nominee, she made an extra pair of these mittens and gave them to this member of Bernie Sanders's family and said, hey, you know, maybe these will take the edge off. And apparently they gave them to Bernie Because he's been wearing them like crazy Which also is kind of weirdly charming And feels very Vermont-y to me Like, how much crap I mean, I don't think these mittens are crap But how much stuff must get pushed In the direction of a United States senator Like, we do this podcast And we get stuff Like, that people will send us Which is so nice and sweet But it's like, I can only imagine if you're Bernie Sanders And yet he was like, good mittens That's my impression of Larry David at doing his impression of Bernie Sanders. Give me your vacuum pennies. Like, I love that Bernie Sanders saw these mittens and thought, these look like some good warm mittens, and I'm just going to start wearing them now, and now they're his mittens.

How do you feel about mittens, Luke? As a hand cover? Yeah, I don't see you as a mittens guy. I can see you maybe slipping on a pair of fashionable gloves. I would be fine with mittens.

I wouldn't go, for me, that print is a little, that's a little rustic for me. Yeah, me too. Um, but it wouldn't match probably any clothing I have, but I'm not anti mittens at all. There's just a, there's a functionality thing.

Yeah.

Like, um, because I am unlike this woman, Liz Ellis, I am obsessed with my phone and on it all the time. And so mittens, I think would make it hard for me to see how my fire tweets are doing.

Yeah.

Um, but so that's really a practical consideration, but other than that, I don't have a problem with them. I think they're actually kind of cool.

And also your fire tweets keep you warm. I mean, that's the beauty of that's it being. That's what they say.

They say Twitter warms you twice. First, when you chop it down and then when you get to watch the fire tweets, the other thing, the real reason I want to talk about this, though, was because I find this woman's perspective on life to be so incredibly I'm sorry, Jen Ellis. I think I've been calling her Liz Ellis. I find Jen Ellis's perspective on her moment of fame to be incredibly smart because people have been reaching out. She stopped making these mittens.

a while ago she said because it just well it's funny she actually takes the opportunity to talk about how the government taxes small crafters like people who are just doing kind of crafts at home and selling them how basically they how they overtax them which is not necessarily the not what I was expecting her position to be but I mean I think she just feels like look if you're gonna like if you're gonna tax somebody go tax like the gap or something maybe you don't tax like me making these upcycled mittens at my house you know in vermont but anyway she said she'd stopped making the mittens as a business because it was just not really worth it to her but now all these people are coming at her like trying to get her they want to license the mittens they want to like fund a business for her they want to get it vertically integrated they want to do all this stuff um and she says that uh um i've had to turn everything off so i can focus on what my real life is she goes honestly i think that my slice of media is so limited because people are making these as we speak, and I'm teaching reading lessons from a little rural Vermont school with the snow gently falling. This is a really lovely flash in the pan, but I know that it's not going to last. I need to keep my day job. People have sent me legitimate offers. I've only seen a few of them, but people have been like, oh, I own a factory, or I'm a designer, I'm a business person, I could publicize your new business. I can see that if I wanted to drop everything and pursue that path, I could do it, but who knows how long that would last the path that i'm already on brings me a tremendous amount of joy and i think that's the greatest symbol of success right this little blip of fame is sweet and it'll pass and then my regular life will be just what it already is which is kind of nice

that's so new england man that's the most new england thing i love it i i do too i mean i

that just feels like the opposite of how we are now taught we have to respond if we find ourselves unexpectedly um having our moment online and it's a positive moment right you have to strike now you have to strike now yeah exactly you have to monetize this and you could like if you play your cards right if you get set up with the right uh you know a company they can mass produce these bernie mitts and then you know you could like you could make a bunch of money and then maybe you know you can leverage that into other things and like you could have a whole new life and she's like i'm teaching school in vermont snow is falling gently outside you know i i'm happy with my life i don't need to change my life up i do not think that i would have the discipline uh i mean obviously i wouldn't i'm talking into a microphone to you andrew there's no way i would have the discipline if i had a sort of normal life and suddenly everybody was freaking out about something i had made and there was an opportunity for me to reinvent my life i don't think i would have the the wisdom to say yeah no that's not for me so I salute this person yeah I am I you and I

are different in that way it's hard for me to imagine what that would be like for me like I do enjoy having money like no joke so I think it for me like the fame thing I could see myself being like uh no that's that's not I don't feel like writing this or whatever like especially if it feels like a flash in the pan like there is something we kind of alluded to my weird personality earlier in the show like i i'd rather never be known than than be known as the guy who like really tried to take advantage of his 15 minutes like way too hardcore like 15 years ago and is now just kind of a joke like i i the the fear like that would that would repel me enough um but i would feel like i'd be beating myself up if i was kind of like well i could have done something where i could just have gained a chunk of money that i could have like quietly invested and it made my future more comfortable i feel like i but i also feel like i would blow that like i don't i would totally blow it i just think it's just really and i'm i'm sure that there are

lots and lots of people in america that are like this and certainly in the world it's just that i don't interact with them that often because of the kind of work that we do and because of the the parts of the internet that i hang out on and the the self-promotion that a lot of people have to do you know to some degree us included although we've largely opted out of that much to the chagrin of our bosses at APM but like the idea that somebody would just say yeah that's okay I'm good with this like I like my life I don't need to like try to I don't need to try to capitalize on this moment more than to just say oh it's kind of fun that people are talking about these mittens that I made like that's just that's so refreshing and it's just the opposite of the circles that we now well I don't want to speak for you but it's just the opposite of the circles that I run in and I like it it's very um it's it's it's it's charming and it's a good perspective to have and maybe something that I um that I should think about more but I do think this is also a good time for me to announce that I'm launching my mitten line feel the mix I feel because what I I sense that there's an opportunity here and it's not being taken by Jen Ellis and so Let's go.

You know, nature abhors a vacuum. And so I'm going to slide right in. What was your favorite? You ended up going with mitten names, mitten store names for the newsletter this week. What was your favorite that you came up with? Me mitten you, you mitten the floor. Thank you for sending me up for that. Yeah, I know.

Surprisingly violent for my friend Andrew. But I got to say of the list, which was, you know, fine. I would say that one when I got to that in the list, I made myself. That feeling when you're sitting behind your computer a little bit dreary, a little bit, I would say, bleary-eyed on a Friday, and you're making yourself laugh, that's the one.

Where's that from, by the way? Where's my phone? Like, me hitting you, you hitting the floor, me hitting you, you hitting – is that a line in a movie? You know, that's fine.

I didn't think it was a specific – maybe it is. You know what? I think it's from the Don and Mike show. No, it never occurred to me that that would be a specific line. I mean, I always thought it was just like the type of dumb thing that tough guys say. But maybe it does have its origin or maybe it got popularized in a movie. Did you discover something?

I'm laughing at these are good. I don't want to give the milk away. I want people to go and subscribe to them. It's too late now. That newsletter is already out. No, but people could still. Oh, I see. So in other words, even if they subscribe now, they won't get this one. Yeah. I mean, come on. Once mitten, twice shy. That's a pretty good one. It's Mitten the Mark, I like. FOMO, Fear of Mitten Out.

Yeah, that's an okay one.

Mitten on the Dock of the Bay.

Mitten Impossible, I believe, was one. Or it should have been. I meant to put that in there.

So it is Mitten, so shall it be done?

Oh, yeah, I like that one, too. Yeah, a little biblical.

Yeah. Isn't that from, I always heard that one as.

Actually, it's not biblical, is it?

Isn't it from the So Let It Be Written, So Let It Be Done? Isn't that like Yul Brynner playing Pharaoh or something in the Ten Commandments, the Heston movie? Let me see here. I don't know. Or was it David Duchovny?

By the way, I have Duck and Kovny as the show title until we come up with something better. I'm looking up the origin. Okay. Origin. During the 1950s, the Cold War was underway. Across the globe, there was an ideological battle between religion and capitalism.

Come on. I have it here. You got it?

So let it be written, so let it be done. Oh, yeah, The Ten Commandments from the 1956 film, The Ten Commandments. Yeah.

So that would be Yul Brynner. Okay.

By Ramses II.

Well, right. Oh, so he wasn't playing Pharaoh. When you say Pharaoh, does that just mean Ramses II, I guess? I don't know. I'm very, very bad with any of that kind of genealogy of those. Like, any of the genealogy with, like, the British royals, if you go back, it's like, you know what I mean, like, Richard the something or Mary of wherever.

Did you ever watch The Robe, by the way, speaking of these, this era biblical movies?

No, but I think my mom and dad might have had their first date at the movie The Robe. Wow. in like eureka california it was either the ten commandments or it was the robe it was a it was a biblical like one of these you know biblical epics um and my mom was crying my mom tells the story she was crying throughout the movie it was so dramatic it is so you're my dad who's a little my dad who's a little more reserved i think was probably like what have i gotten into

but i love that it's a religious movie though that's awesome here i go once again with the

Female. Every week. I hope that it's from a female. No, man. It's not from a female.

All right. You got an email or V-mail that you like before we get out of here? A couple of voicemails I wouldn't mind playing, or at least one of them. We're really blowing through nap time, too. I just looked down and didn't realize we've been doing this for over an hour, almost an hour and a half at this point. You see, you keep us apart for a weekend. We got a lot of shit to talk about on Monday. Yeah, we do. Plus, I probably woke up somewhere about a half hour ago, so I'm just getting started here. So we had set up our voicemail line as a petty complaints department a while back. I just remember some talk of petty officers and people having petty complaints. Obviously, it's something close to my heart. And so we received this voicemail over the weekend.

Hi, Luke and Andrew. I'm not sure if we can still call in for the petty law situation, but I feel real petty right now. I work at a store, and we have arrows on the floor. so that people can just, you know, go in one direction down the smaller aisle, which apparently is too much to ask of grown adults, which is a separate issue from my petty law issue. But side note, please just walk down the correct aisle. But anyway, so I was working today, and I needed to stock some shelves.

And I had this really big cart that I was pushing. And so it wasn't possible for me to follow the arrows, even though we try to follow them to set an example for the customers. But anyway, I was like, I need to just stop this. I'm going to go backwards down the aisle, even though you're not really supposed to do that. But I just needed to get it done. And this woman came right up to me, walked straight up to me and said, excuse me, miss. Why can't you follow the arrows if you're going to expect us to? and I said to her I'm really sorry like we asked that customers please follow the arrows and I just needed to get this done and it wasn't possible for me to fit the cart through the other way and she was like well I don't know why I have to do it if you don't have to do it and I just smiled and said like that's okay I'm sorry I will try to follow the arrows from now on but oh my god I'm working during a pandemic so that you ma'am can buy your candles or whatever Ugh, okay. Anyway, I love the show. QBTL makes my day so much better. That's my petty law call is. Love you guys. Bye.

That's a great voicemail, man. Oh, my gosh. That was strong on a Monday morning.

Makes me so mad because here's the thing. That is not a good faith piece of criticism from the person. My sense is that person is probably very dubious about masks and doesn't think the arrows matter. it's not that I don't get the sense, and you might disagree with me on this, Andrew, I'm not sure, I don't get the sense that that person who was contradicting or correcting our caller was doing so because they wanted more adherence to the rules. I think it's because they don't like the rules and they were just looking for any reason to create chaos and to question the whole thing.

That is a possibility. My gut goes the other direction, but there's no way for us to know what lies in the hearts of shoppers. But I will say that because I would like to actually explore this journey a little bit if we have the time to do it, because my relationship with these arrows, especially in grocery store, sounds like this was not a grocery store, but in grocery store aisles, you know, this is something that started to be done during the pandemic. Like, I wasn't completely sold and necessary on the efficacy of an arrow system in grocery stores, but I am a rule follower, as we know. And so what I would do is I would follow the arrows, and then I would glower or glare at people who were not following the rules, and I would just judge them in my head. And so by the time I was done and this is like, you know, my worst quality, I really work on this stuff. But like, you know, by the time I'm halfway through the grocery store, I've kind of got this head of steam and I've already like kind of I've already marked the people that I keep passing who keep, you know, walking down the aisles in the wrong way. And I could see this person as somebody who like I don't like this arrow rule, but I'm following it. And so other people should follow it, too, because that's kind of how I was.

yeah i guess i just i mean i guess when when the when the caller said that the person said if you're not even going to follow it why should we yeah that's true that sounds to me like somebody who doesn't want to follow it no that's true like because i feel like if i was very committed to the arrows i would say hey these arrows are really important and they even apply to you to me that would be the statement from somebody who believes in the process if you're not going to do it why should we do it sounds like a person who doesn't believe in the process but i don't know yeah and

a couple so either i could see that going either way i think that's relative you know i think that's relatively believable um what you're saying there i um i will say this though because my journey with these arrows has kind of shifted and changed and i'm i'm confused a little bit where i am right now on them i will say this that i've never approached anybody and i don't think anybody's ever noticed me glaring at them over my mask i just look like grumpy bernie sanders all the time anyway so i've never like made a thing of it but you know like i say i can kind of get in my head and judge people quietly um however even in my quiet judginess i never nerver uh judge somebody who clearly worked there including the people like you see a lot of people who are shopping now that are clearly people who either work for the store or work for for some other service who are doing shopping for other people and they're kind of going down the aisles like instacart people yeah and they have their big bins and they're going down and they're not going the the proper way with the arrows it's like yeah because they're on the clock and they're doing something that is like necessary for this time we're living in like also these people might have gotten laid off from another job i know a lot of people who are working in grocery stores right now um were working other jobs uh but then lost the job because of the pandemic and and grocery stores are hiring um I told you the other day off the air, Luke, that I am constantly having fantasies about what it would be like to work in a grocery store and what roles I might be able to play. I'm almost to the point where I'm like ready to give the cashier my. my resume as we're going through but yeah never judge the people who work there and also I'm confused with the arrows because the store I go to the Safeway that I'm loyal to it seems like they peeled up some of the arrows but not all of them and then some of them are like kind of half peeled up and I can't tell if that's from wear or tear but then I went to my old QFC don't tell the new Safeway but I went to my old QFC yesterday because I happen to be in the Wallingford neighborhood and they were super strict with all kinds of signage about one-way aisles that's all gone now in this strict qfc and i wonder if we're all just like oh yeah the one-way rule didn't really do shit like if i see this in a store now is it just like a remnant of early early pandemic

days right they were trying to the whole idea was to try to move everyone in such a way that It minimized the, you know, like walking right past someone and possibly having a vectoring situation. But to your point, Andrew, OK, I think that I think it's let's at least try. Like, let's say that there's a 10. It improves things by 10 percent. Let's just do it because that's still 10 percent improvement. But it doesn't mean that if an employee of the store who's working there needs to go down the aisle the wrong way, everyone in the store has covid now. Right. Like that's not how it works. Like, we're doing a thing so that for all the customers in the store, everyone who comes into that store on a daily basis, we try to behave in a way that lowers the chance, however small, of transmitting COVID. But it doesn't mean that if anyone who works there has to somehow go against the arrow that it means nothing or it's a total, you know, it makes it all pointless. It doesn't. That's not how any of this works.

Yeah. And for me, I mean, I've had friends who also listen to the show who've reached out to me and be like, dude, you just need to relax and let people do their own thing. Like you're going to kill yourself with all your nosy Parker ness, which is maybe fair to a degree. The reason it triggers me, though, for what it's worth is because it is a small thing and it's not hard to do. And if you're not following that rule, it's just to me, and I'm not saying this is necessarily right, but like I will immediately sum you up as somebody who thinks the rules don't apply to me. I'm better than other people like I can park my SUV directly in front of the 7-Eleven doors and block everybody else because it doesn't matter. because, you know, the person in the passenger seat is just going to run in and grab some yoo-hoo. Why I went with yoo-hoo, I don't know. But, you know, like, I just sort of, people who wander through the world just thinking, like, whatever is, like, just shaves a little bit of time, or I'm not even thinking about shaving time. It's just like, I need this, therefore I'm going to park myself there or I'm going to walk the direction I want to walk or I'm not going to wear a mask or whatever these things are. It's because I can't be inconvenienced. I just automatically, like, you know, spin out on the whole selfish selfish nature of humanity and didn't we talk about that thing that was going around online um a couple of months ago kind of resurfaced the idea of like do you return your grocery carts because that really speaks to what kind of person you are like there's no law saying you have to return your grocery cart in the parking lot you can leave it in the middle of the parking lot nobody's going to do anything to you but we all inherently know that the right thing to do is to return a grocery cart and not just leave it in the middle of the parking lot whether or not you do that says a lot about how you kind of wander this world that's one of the

few ones that i am very very very very good about like as far i mean you know there's a couple of them one i would never park in a disabled a parking spot that was designated for someone who had a a placard i i just feel like that's just that's what separates us from the common animals of the field is that we we we try to look out for people and we try to make everyone's experience a little bit more doable and that involves i am lucky enough to be you know able-bodied and so if i need to park a little further away from the front of the store that's fine so that's one that i'm really hard on hardcore on and oddly returning the grocery cart is another one where it's just like i never want to do it i'm never in the mood but i'm also like this is what this is just what you do as part of a society so because of the two ones that i really am careful about i judge people that don't do those ones deeply right right those are the ones now i on the other hand you it's very possible andrew that if we didn't know each other and you saw me in a store you might hate me because i am sure that i have been in stores where there were arrows and i didn't realize there were arrows yeah i mean that's the thing i would have needed to just look down i guess but where i am sure that I have violated the directions of a store more than once not because I saw the arrows and chose to ignore them but because it did not occur to me there were arrows which is still probably a

version of what you're talking about yeah and again and I and I realize a big chunk of this is me being ridiculous and like I should I should just mind my own business and not get in my head about whether or not some people because me glaring at somebody or even just not glaring at them, but internally getting mad about it.

is not going to change their behavior and it's not going to make the world a better place so i realize that i'm very much the broken one here um myself and and it kind of gets back when i was struggling more with like kind of road ragey things like i would tell you that it really like if somebody's if some young white guy uh cuts me off in his sports car and basically just runs me off the road because he just can take what he wants i feel very different if somebody cuts me off in traffic but it's a beater car and it's an old latina you know like i'm gonna feel so much different about that because of me summing up who these people are and what their life journey is um which i don't know any of that you know and so and so the same with the with the um arrows in the grocery store like sometimes i'll be like you know and again i think i've calmed down about this i'm painting the most extreme version of myself here but like if i'm really in judgy mode like i might see some people walk in the wrong way but then be like oh they might not even they seem like they don't even speak english like maybe you know they're not kind of they don't speak arrow they well that's the other thing too like yeah arrows i've had that thought in my head too like arrows are an international language but it's just like i'm making up these rules as i go is my point here kind of painting myself in the worst light that like i'm creating narratives that probably aren't even there and it's just like maybe i should just generally relax i really the the safe way though It's really a conundrum for me because there's like they have this sort of half arrow situation now. And so I've started dipping my toe into ignoring the arrows because I think they're just vestiges, but I'm not sure. And it feels very weird. And then I feel guilty. And then I just started going back my old route with the arrows.

Are you going to the Safeway that's in the university district?

No. As a matter of fact, that one just that was always like a real bombed out kind of grocery store. But that officially has closed now, I believe.

Oh, how interesting to. Yeah, I was I had occasion to dip into the there's a Safeway here on Hawthorne for those who know Portland. And I was thinking Safeway has gone again. Don't I don't want McConaughey to sue me. I don't want Safeway to sue me. But like when I was a child growing up in Seattle, I speak like a child and I shopped like a child. And no, Safeway seemed fine I mean, Safeway was just kind of a standard grocery store There was some decision at some point And it must have had to do with some acquisition of Safeway Where they basically decided We're no longer interested in making sure Safeways are nice Or not sketchy Or maybe I've just visited Like that one that was in the U District was That was really bad Really an adventure Anytime you'd go in there This one that I went in

You literally wouldn't want to touch any I've only been there a couple of times. That was probably the worst grocery store I've been in.

I have been most of the Safeways that I have had to go to now. There's another one that's not far from here, not the Hawthorne one, which was okay, I guess. But there's another one that's maybe a mile from where I live that I have gone to. That is the same thing. It's just run down. It's where the guy who had found the mushroom on the floor was.

Oh, yeah, right.

Yeah, like every Safeway that I've been in for in the last five years has been a terrible experience. And I don't think that's a coincidence. I think it has to do with whatever company owns them just saying these are no longer a priority for us. We're no longer going to like spend the money to have. Also, they don't have like they generally don't have the best products or like if you happen to go in there like wine section or something. I remember going to a Safeway in D.C., which was pre-pandemic, because I wanted to—what was it? I remember what I wanted, but just being like, wow, has this always been this sketchy? I just feel like there's something that's going on with that brand, and it's—I don't know. It wasn't like that when I was a kid. It was just a normal grocery store, and all of a sudden, it's always sketchy now.

Well, not to be defensive, but you wouldn't have that experience in this one, and I wouldn't go there if it was sketchy and weird. In fact, they just remodeled a big chunk of their store, too. And they're owned by Albertsons, too, which I can't remember if it was a Safeway or an Albertsons that was right by my house in L.A. And they went through a big remodel, too. So I do want to say that it seems like that's probably a coincidence. Like, I did go to a Safeway a couple of weeks ago that was in a different part of town because I was down in Soto. And, you know, that was down in Soto, so it wasn't as nice as the one I go to. And again, the one I go to is not fancy, but it definitely is not like it's not off brand and it doesn't make you feel weird to be in there really at all. It's a pretty straightforward grocery store. They got a Starbucks in there, what have you.

Uh-huh. All right. Well, do you want to wait? You said you had a couple of voicemails, but since we're already at 95 minutes, should we wrap things up today and then we'll just get into some voicemails and other emails tomorrow?

Yeah, that's fine. That's good. I had an idea for a song to go out with since I mentioned Yul Brynner. Well, since your newsletter referenced a Yul Brynner line, so let it be written, so let it be done. Or I'm sorry, so let it be mitten, so let it be done. How about going out with JoJo's jacket by Malkmus, which starts with Yul Brynner talking about shaving his head?

That sounds good. I also wanted, though, to give a shout-out. I was going to go out with some Sonny and Cher. There's no need to. People can get Sonny and Cher elsewhere. But I want to give a shout out to somebody who tweets under the banner Music by Carl, who reminded me on Saturday amidst my cleaning frenzy, I cleaned the house top to bottom on Saturday. Genevieve went out for a walk.

I don't like you saying bottom that way, but okay.

Bottom. And I was listening to podcasts. I was actually listening to something weird. Actually, I might want to tell you about an audio journey I'm going on on tomorrow's show. But I had just finished one podcast and Music by Carl tweeted at me. It's happening that a radio station in Tennessee was just starting their broadcast of Dick Clark's Rock Roll and Remember. I dialed it up and sure as shit, they were playing what I believe to be a pretty early version of Dick Clark's Rock Roll and Remember. And it got me through the second part of my cleaning, which was absolutely great. So thank you to that listener who reminded me of it. And, yeah, if anybody else wants to check it out, I think Music by Carl might have just discovered it this weekend after me talking about Rock, Roll, and Remember, and it's definitely, you know, on the train now. Nice.

You'll get that show back on the air soon enough. That's right. I mean, I'd say if you get four or five more people to start sending letters and reaching out to their local radio stations, that could happen.

Yeah. Yeah. Although, or we just support the station that never let it go.

Yes. Actually, you know what? Yeah. You were able to listen to it online though

WQMV AM playing 30 years of rock and roll Was indeed playing Dick Clark's rock and roll And remember this Saturday

I don't think you should I don't think we should underappreciate the fact That the web streaming was working Yeah and I did it via an app actually

I'm pretty sure that I listened Like you know it was either radio.com or the other radio app, and they're plugged in. They're ready for the digital age.

I will tell you that a big part of us even being here right now, you and I talking down this line with Donors of the Day, being on episode 3,344, is because of Sean DeTorey and also because of a guy named James Botorff. And James Botorff was the—he was basically the web guy at Cairo when we started working there. And he was—I think he has a very important job now. i don't know if he's still in the company but he was eventually like the head of all digital or something he works for the parent company now he's like a real big wig yeah he's a big wheel down at the cracker factory down at the digital cracker factory and he what he did that was so appreciated was he realized that we absolutely needed to make sure that every episode of the show was available as a podcast that night so before sean would go home he would like encode all three hours of the show and upload it somewhere and if it ever didn't play I could email or call James Botter at any time of the day or night and be like hey I think the link is dead and he would fix it immediately and there was something about people being able to just get the show because for the longest time and maybe this is still the case so many radio stations if you go try to listen to one of their shows as a podcast like on their website it's like a dead link or it goes to the wrong place or nothing plays or like you know what I mean it's like and again you know you have you have iTunes and Stitcher and other places people get podcasts now but back in the early days just the fact that this thing always played when you clicked on it at the Cairo website I think that was massively important in people getting in the regular habit of listening to our

show well you set me up let me just tell you really quickly what I did this weekend regarding archived audio so I had I used to be a huge on the media listener the public radio show during the Trump years the past four years I have not listened as much the show kind of changed a bit and listeners of that show kind of know the evolution and it kind of tended not to be as much about the media lately and it was just more about the kind of the state of the world and digging into some issues that are important but just like I liked the media aspect of that show this weekend somebody tweeted about it I don't know why I was in between things in between podcasts while I was cleaning I'm like I'm gonna listen to the latest episode of on the media which was great by the way it did have a media focus again um and also the back half of the show was a celebration of on the media because it was their 20th anniversary luke and so bob garfield co-host of the show did this whole kind of retrospective of on the media turning 20 including tape from their first show after

After I finished listening to the latest episode of On the Media, I suddenly was struck with this urge to go back and listen to that full episode of On the Media that came out, I believe, on September 22nd, 2001, because, of course, they were right there in the disaster zone, so they weren't able to broadcast right away. And I went back and it started with an essay by Mike Peska, who was then the on the media producer at large. And it was fascinating. I mean, living in 2021 after everything we've just been through with the last administration and what we're going through right now with the pandemic and the state of the world and going back and listening to an actual, you know, radio show. i love that was from september 22nd 2001 was an incredible uh experience for me um i'll stop blabbing about it but it was a very weird feeling and to listen back to these old stories and i'm considering i had to like really dial back into their website i had to kind of figure out what the url was and keep going back in time to get that far and now i'm considering just staying there and listening and seeing how far i can catch up with on the medias and almost relive those like build up to a rock and those george w bush years and just it's a weird thing with so much media out there right now being created that i'm not listening to that i'm going to go back and listen to a bunch of 2001 era on the medias but it was it was quite a wild ride um it's unsurprising

because remember we started uh this email conversation or at least a minute ago we were talking about how you were being alerted on twitter about rock roll and remember being broadcast somewhere in Alabama on an AM radio station. So it's 100% on brand for you that you would also want to go back and re-listen to that on the media stuff. It's almost too modern. Let me know how it goes. I'll be listening to Larry King broadcasting live from the Pumpernickel. Yeah.

What was it? The Pumpernickel. The Pumpernickel, yes.

God.

All right. Well, that's going to do it for our show today. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in. And sorry, Andrew, that I scuttled your Sonny and Cher plans.

No, no, it's okay. I kind of just want to tell you that story, I think, and give a shout out to music by Carl.

I think it's kind of funny because this bit of Yul Brynner talking at the beginning of this song by Steve Malchemist is basically talking about how he was losing his hair and he was, you know, an actor, Yul Brynner was. He was in The King and I. He was, what, Ramses II in The Ten Commandments. He was in a lot of things. And it was only when he shaved his head As he mentions in this thing That one he said He got rid of a lot of stupid vanities really And that also his career kind of took off So we end the show where we started We started with somebody accusing Larry King Of painting his bald spot And we ended with Yul Brynner talking about How much better his career got When he finally just shaved his head So that's how we'll go out Thanks for listening everybody We'll be back here tomorrow With more Imaginary Radio for you Until then enjoy your Monday Stay safe, take care of yourselves Take care of each other And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

And in a funny way, the shaving of my head has been a liberation from a lot of stupid vanities really it has simplified everything for me it has opened a lot of doors maybe

i'm not what you think i am i'm the king of siam i've got a bald head my name is your brother and i am a famous movie star Perhaps you saw me in Westworld I acted like a robotic cowboy It was my best role I cannot deny I felt right home deep inside That electronic carcass You're such monumental slime Let the punishment fit the crime Power out.