Muse

There is something about the soul of a cat. There is something intrinsically secretive about a cat. Almost touching on the borderline of being seductive.

Just like 16-year-old boys that try to go find dates, and that's what he's thinking about.

Loves to be held.

You know, sometimes I say about to people, you know, there's a stare about this cat, glassy stare. A lot of people get scared by that look. I love the way they look. They're very affectionate, and they're smaller than horses. The cat, when I lie down with it, I kind of have that fantasy that I'm lying down with the tiger or the lion. But for somebody else, it may be another thing.

T-B-T-L. Guess what day it is? Guess what day it is?

it's friday friday gotta get down on friday everybody's looking forward to the weekend actually you know what i can email you or you know you can email me at uh splat2 at splatnet.net splat1's my father i'll be set to see him go it'll be nice to get my hands on that handle

you know hi my name is alivia i live in woodbury minnesota and i really liked your show it helps me fall asleep but you say the effort too much can you stop y'all are joking are y'all kidding

with me i'm talking about duping you in charge of duplication yes sir show me how this duplicating

machine works i want to learn all about the process all right hello good morning welcome everyone to a friday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live micro my name is luke burbank i am your host brother who are you what are you doing coming to you From the Nest Broadcast Center High in the sky above Portland, Oregon Had a little hiccup there at the top of the show It's been a whole new world for me Not unlike Ariel from The Little Mermaid It's been a whole new world Wait, that's Jasmine from Aladdin I'm mixing up my Disney characters And songs that may or may not be about Having mommy and daddy times for the first time But anyway, not unlike Jasmine in Aladdin, it's been a whole new world for me because I have this little button here, you know, that I can mute my microphone with like I just did there. And it's just been great. I mean, honestly, I'd say it's improved my work experience by easily 70 percent. If you are working from home or if you're going into an office somehow, maybe you are listening to this in Wuhan where things have gone back to normal. and there's some little thing about your workspace, either your work from home space or whether it's the chair is uncomfortable or you get some kind of carpal tunnel thing, do what you need to do to fix it because those little adjustments make a big deal the only thing is you've got to remember to turn the microphone back on when it's time to start the podcast that you're the host of and that is what I had a little trouble with this morning, the good news is that is out of my system and now I am ready to just absolutely slay all day here on episode 3347 in a collector series let the fun begin um boy i saw a headline yesterday that that had me shook and that is that there is now a grape nuts shortage previously on cereal now a couple things on this one i actually have a box of grape nuts that i purchased So as I wrote on Twitter, I'm probably good for about 13 years or something. But also, this is something I experienced firsthand, the grape nuts shortage. This is actually, it's bad news, but it's good news for me because it means I'm not going crazy. So we will discuss the latest with that and when you can expect to have your grape nuts. Also, it's a Friday, so we're going to try another round of Friday motivation. Let's take on projects that we know we can't do and do them. Where we pump you up going into the weekend. Oh, and also, I had to sort of resort to the nuclear option when dealing with a major American corporation yesterday

that I just could not seem to get in touch with a human related to the issue I was having. And so I just, well, I did what I had to do.

So this is a serious message to everybody watching my update.

And I want to thank the tens of listeners for helping me as well in that endeavor. So we'll tell you what I went on with that. Oh, and I also have made a shocking discovery about this apartment that I'm in high in the sky above Portland, Oregon, that I didn't realize until yesterday. And it has me feeling extremely embarrassed.

We'll get into that, too. Plus music for your weekend, because it is a Fri-yay. And we will chat with this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, known for his drawings of tall ships. It's been kind of a weird week. It's gone by really fast. In fact, today in particular really snuck up on him.

Oh, no! It's Friday!

He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Now, listen, I've never seen the movie Aladdin, Luke. If you'd asked me Don't you dare close your eyes If you'd asked me where the song A Whole New World comes from I would have told you it's from The Mermaid one I looked it up though Obviously you're right This is an era of Disney films that you know well But Stop the Show That song is about Experiencing carnal love for the first time Is this a Luke Burbank original theory No it's not

Stop the Show It's an Aaron Dolan original theory that I doubted for years.

Who's Aaron Dolan?

He's my friend Joe Dolan's older brother.

Oh, right, of course. Sorry, I just looked him up on IMDb.

He is. I don't know if you had this experience based on your kind of friend group, just based on age, demographics, family structure, but the older siblings of my friends played a huge role in my development because while I'd be hanging out with my friend who was my age, their older sibling would also be Somewhere in the mix But they were just a little bit older A little bit cooler A little bit more hip to things than we were And oddly those are some of the interactions That I remember pretty vividly Like Aaron Dolan We were Joe and I were juniors in high school And Aaron had gone off He was a freshman at Claremont McKenna College Sort of outside of LA And he came back And he was very into Morrissey And I had never heard of Morrissey or the Smiths I probably had seen like a Smiths album Like poster At second time around Records in the U District And seen like Meet his murder And been terrified But he So he got us really into like I became a total Morrissey head And Smith's head From that He just was He just was like Up on cooler stuff than us And also told us that Oh yeah yeah The song A Whole New World From Aladdin That's definitely about Losing your virginity 100%

Unbelievable sights Indescribable feeling Soaring Tumbling Freewheeling Oh wait

Now that I think about it, that's definitely not what it felt like when I lost my virgin team.

It's like none of that checks out. There were some unbelievable sights, but I was responsible for that monstrosity. Nine months later. Oh, well, for you, yes, certainly.

Yeah, no, this is – I can show you the world. Yeah. I'm not doing – I don't have the lyrics in front of me. You do. But this is Aladdin is singing to Jasmine. And he's taking her on a magic carpet ride. And, you know, of course, I was stalling because I'm obligated to get on the magic carpet ride. I was obligated to play friend of the show, Kevin Calabro. And he's just describing that there's another undercurrent to this. And I don't know if my initial hesitation all those years ago is the hesitation I still have now, which is like, if you got a chance to write a song for Disney. My guess by the way is this is Is it like The guy that I feel like there's a writing team That writes a lot of these Disney songs And I don't remember who might have written A whole new world but If you got that shot Would you really waste it writing in some Sexual subtext And the thing I was about to say is There's also all kinds of rumors that some of the skyline Of the city they're in Is designed to be sort of phallic This is like you know this is like one subreddit over from the QAnon stuff is the secret sexualization of Disney films stuff which again my suspicion is you just wouldn't roll the dice that way if you were an animator working for Disney you would not draw one of these buildings in the city that Aladdin and Jasmine are and you would not draw it to look phallic because you would not want to

risk your job and also because you're not 11 years old like so this was these names don't mean a lot to me but when i say them together it might um remind you it looks like it was written by uh alan menken and tim rice were menken and rice say yes that's that's exactly who i was

thinking of by the way i think they they they teamed up on a lot of those a lot of those big

disney hits and i know that animators like i think there are from like back in the 1950s or 60s i think there are like legit like dirty drawings of like Looney Tunes scenarios that like those those animators you know did on the sly so I mean you hear about that stuff but I also think for like a huge set piece number the the and again I haven't seen it but I assume the song is kind of the um the pinnacle of of the movie it's certainly as somebody who's never seen the movie I know that song.

I just find it hard to believe that they're like, hey, let's make it about sex. That just doesn't seem to be where those writers are in their development as human beings, right?

I do find the line, just the tip, when Aladdin sings, I find that suspicious. I find that to be, that's the one part of the song, though, that does make me go, huh.

Have you ever had somebody quit on you in the middle of a show? Has Jen ever just walked out? For real, has anybody ever walked out on you in the middle of a TVTO? I have not.

I mean, I've walked out many times. I've quit on myself and the show. But I don't think – I mean, really, it would come down to, like, you, Jen, or Sean, I guess, would be the three full-time employees of this program over the years. And amazingly, I don't think that's happened. I mean, it's been justified. It would have been reasonable many times.

You just came real close with that innuendo, and I will say, you want to pull that near the end of the show, Luke, because if I walk out now, we haven't even gotten to the first break. That's a long haul for you.

Well, more to the point, I want to pull it after you've posted the show because I have no earthly idea how to get this thing on to the internet.

That's a good point.

Really, even the end of the show is too early. at any point what i need to do is once i check uh itunes in my phone or stitcher and i see that today's show is posted then i call you and i make a joke that makes you want to quit and then you

make me insert it back in which is really just like taking my taking honestly that's like mike

mccarthy having to go to mar-a-lago and take a picture with trump after he said trump was responsible for january 6th i mean that's just i've just absolutely broken uh you as a person at that point when I make you reinsert the bad joke.

It's the equivalent of just like grabbing my forearms and then hitting myself in the face with my own hands and telling me to stop hitting myself.

I don't want to break the spirit of the listeners, Andrew. I want to pump them up. I want to build the excitement, the optimism, the sense of possibility with a thing that we debuted last week we're calling The Friday Motivation. I think we can all use any kind of inspiration that we can find anywhere. And I noticed some on the back of all of the packets of Splenda in this box of individually sealed 100 individually sealed Splenda packets, Andrew. So I take my coffee with one packet of Splenda in it. It's probably terrible for me. Everybody, just know that I know that Splenda is probably not great, but whatever. It's my system. What they have started doing, though, now, is they have started to put motivational statements on the back of the Splenda packets.

Yeah, like Hall's Cough Drops. They do that, too.

But of the more you got this variety. So what I thought I could do here on a Friday is just I'm going to reach into this box, and I'm going to just pull some out at random, and I'm going to read them over the air and I'm going to hope that it inspires the listeners and you, Andrew. I mean, honestly, I feel like you've been dragging a little bit lately and I'm hoping that this puts some pep in your step.

I was doing fine until you made things super dirty.

My hope is that 70% of the listeners didn't get that joke and the 30% who did are chortling along in their cars or on their jog or whatever they're doing. And all of that will be forgotten once we get everybody super motivated on this Friday. Okay, so are you ready? Here we go. Oh, you know what? I'm going to try to do two different things here. I'm going to reach into my thing of Splenda, and I'm also going to play the drum roll. And I'm going to turn this up, too. The best way to get there, Andrew, is to start.

Oh, that's good. Where am I going, though?

That's a future Andrew problem. Just start Today on this Friday morning I want to tell you and the listeners that the best way to get there Is to start Okay Here we go Make it splendalicious Oh that's That's a little Too focused on the brand Yes it is I don't think that's a thing Nobody's at the gym just absolutely blasting their delts, telling themselves in their mind, I'm making this Splendilicious.

Speaking of gyms, did you see that the governor did somewhat relax or change the goalposts a tiny bit as far as reopenings here in King County, meaning that...

Restaurants and gyms will be opening at 25% capacity again this coming Monday. I'm not going to because I realize it's not responsible, but I almost went and made sure that my membership at 24 Hour Fitness was still in good standing. I will wait until I have both of my shots or at least my first shot, but man, I just want to go to the gym. I never thought I'd say that.

I'm going to continue being part of the 75% of people not attending the gym. under this legal framework. Also, I was sad for you, Andrew, because they specifically singled out something that was the specific thing you were hoping for. Bars that do not serve food are not part of the reopening, meaning...

Well, I want to... Don't say any names here, because I don't want to get anybody in trouble, but that should apply to a place that I'm very interested in because of their license and their partnership

with other food food distributors that you can eat food you can eat food in this particular place so it's going to be it'll be covered under the uh you know you can eat outside and a small amount

of people can be inside it should be because it did last time during the last like phase reopening that's one thing boy i'm really taking us away from motivation i was trying to do the math in my head though when when we were shut down the first time in march and then it seemed like we shut down forever and then slowly things reopened a tiny bit at the beginning of june that seemed like forever but we've gone way further in the second shutdown do you remember when things kind of shut down again the second time was that in august maybe or september i want to say september

but yeah it's a blur and you're right it's been it's been a minute sorry sam sanders um but every every time you say it's been a minute you have to actually donate ten dollars to sam you have to

show i caught part of that this weekend it's good it's a good show it's really good honestly everybody's been saying that forever but i never listened because i'm jealous of other people's

popular podcast me too it's really good deeply so in fact one of the things i'm really jealous about is they have a great segment at the end of the show where people call in and leave voicemail messages that's not it's not a new invention but they just do it really well they get good messages they put it together it's often a kind of a touching moment a fun moment a human moment It really does exactly what you hope that segment would do And I resent them deeply for it

I heard it this week And I thought they'd do the same thing every week Maybe they were just doing it this week But the theme this past week was Call in and tell us something good that happened to you this week And I thought they said that's what they do every week Maybe I'm wrong But it was a little story core Because it definitely Almost all of them were kind of tear jerky in one way or another And some of them were bittersweet But I was listening in the car And it definitely it definitely got to my emotions.

I'm wondering if this is going off of some hazy memories, but I definitely that's what they do now. I wonder if it maybe started off more general and then they just figured when the pandemic started or maybe it's always been that. But anyway, it's always been something that I really enjoy listening to. Sam is great. He's the right amount of being relaxed on the air, but but but being professional like we have the relaxed part down.

Wait, you want me to talk about stocks now?

I'm going to explain short selling. You know, if there was a week, though, that I feel we were on actually for once on the cusp of something, it was this week.

Yeah, no, you actually and we even got a note from a very popular national broadcaster saying you did a good job of explaining. Was it Sam Sanders? No, no, not that popular. But yeah, I remember in the week you said, do you know what short selling is? And I was like, yeah, I mean, I have a vague. Why don't you just explain it? Not one of my best, not one of my most NPR moments right there.

Well, let's continue on if we can. Oh, yeah, sorry. I need some motivation. I just got down on myself. I'm glad to hear that you'll be able to go unwind a bit in the place that you're excited to unwind. Maybe.

We'll see. All right.

Which is the corner of a 24-hour fitness. Yes. You sitting there with a Coors Light. Yes.

And food. You have to have food.

Yes, you've got to have food at that 24-hour fitness in order for it to be open. All right, here we go. Back to motivating the listeners. Be the energy you want to attract.

Oh, I kind of like that kind of 90s ambivalent kind of Daria energy. Is that going to work for the show? That's exactly what you're attracting.

I know. um you know that's like this is printed on the back of a packet of imitation sugar which may be worse for me than real sugar in fact i would say probably is and yet i think be the energy you want to attract is not the worst i mean that's just a updated version of or a sort of a

a version of what you know is attributed i think maybe to gandhi although that's probably incorrectly so but you know be the change you want to see it's like hey if you want to like you want things to be different be part of things being different or if you want to be around people who are generally you know present and happy or at least you know optimistic or whatever it is you're looking for or if you want to hang out with daria's i mean that's always dress like the

energy you want to work for. A, B, D. Always be Daria. Yes.

But you know what I like about this also is it's non-judgmental. Like you were, I think, half joking but I think that you're I mean you've pointed out something that's kind of good here which is be the energy you want to attract is not saying you gotta be upbeat all the time. You have to just be like a picture of positivity. Maybe the energy you want to attract is those two guys that lived in that apartment in San Francisco and would yell shut up little man. Shut up little

man maybe that's the energy you want and that's okay you get to want the energy you want that's right or maybe you just do want more of a gee maybe it's not like all uh you know too much too big of smiles and energy and jumping around maybe it's more of a sam sanders just know when to when to relax and and uh just go with the flow maybe that's the kind of energy that you're looking for. Shut up, little man! Nobody asked you to say anything. Sorry, I was stumbling around while

I looked for a job for that change. Do you think we could get away with, could we get away with pitching a show, a public radio show called Shut Up, Little Man?

I think that's a good idea. Where it's recorded

through a wall, it's you and me, just on each other's last nerves. Oh my god, and it's always

recorded from the other side of the wall. Yeah, right, of course. You use the recording of me, I use the recording of you.

Could we, yeah, all right, okay, good. This is good. I'm feeling motivated, and I think we're getting some really good ideas for our next radio project, since Lord knows this TBTL thing is probably on life support. Okay, here we go. Another one. Oh, this one's good. Andrew, leave a little sparkle wherever you go.

It uses my name?

Yes. That's the weirdly specific part.

That's so weird. Yeah.

Andrew, leave a little sparkle wherever you go. Okay.

Sorry, I'm picturing like a unicorn with a leaking problem. I think that you – and you assume that like if you cut a unicorn open, its blood is just glitter, right? Well, that's dark. I was just talking like incontinence, and now we're murdering unicorns.

Well, I'm saying anything that comes out, let's say it has an accident.

Yeah, yeah. It's glitter, right? Like everything. If it blows its nose.

Yeah, all of it. Anything that's coming out of the unicorn's body is probably glitter. um also i think you do leave a little sparkle wherever you go like you're you know i don't think you think of yourself as an overly chipper person or you don't go in for like really performative chipperness but i think you are a person who when we're in a meeting you're very friendly to our co-workers when when you and i go places when we you know have traveled the country and even the world i think you've left a little sparkle

everywhere i well if that's if that if that is something you feel earnestly then i appreciate and i take it i don't always feel that way please don't make me read the disclaimer the legal the legal language i felt it earnestly and i didn't know now i have to what's their address by the way um uh that's nice this is unrelated but And as a way of using this motivation segment to maybe I have there are like about 96 more packets of Splenda.

So let's just, you know, clear out your power through.

I was going to say, you know, I was thinking yesterday and I don't remember exactly what was what sparked it. Maybe it was this idea of, oh, maybe we're starting to see a very slow reopening here in Washington state. And yeah, I don't know what it was. But Genevieve and I were reminiscing about our early days in Concord, New Hampshire, when we were young adults. Of course, we just saw ourselves as adults at the time and looking back, that's one thing about age as I look back at, you know, 22-year-old Andrew and Genevieve and what kids they were and how they were still working things out. But at the time, you just feel like this is it. We got salaried jobs. We're adults. And one thing that we just did constantly, every memory we had was linked back to, like, being in some restaurant somewhere with a huge table full of friends. Like all a huge part of my 20s was trying to, you know, finagle big tables at restaurants because we were always rolling in your favorite thing. Right. But now the thought of that sounds like hell. And back in the day, it was like, yeah, that's what we did. And they're all such fond memories. And I just and I think that I had this earnest thought. Read the legal. I had this earnest thought that like when things get back to normal.

I need to I need to make more of an effort like I'm getting I am I have been holing up so much. It's getting it's gotten so hard to get me out of this house for anything other than a drink at Teddy's that I think I need to. I think I need to embrace a little bit more more communal communal times, more friend times. I think I've abdicated that for a long time and everybody's been very gracious with me. But I'm going to start making a real effort to be a better friend to only in groups of 10, though.

Well, it's, you know, I think people don't realize in their 20s, I certainly didn't, what an kind of amazing moment of your life it is, you know, if you're lucky enough to have friends, because often you're not, you know, you don't have young children yet, and you're right. It's a lot of hanging out with your friends and it's a lot of doing things. And then you get into later life and either because of having children or just because of how life changes or getting into, you know, serious relationships or whatever. It's like suddenly like, yeah, it used to be the regular occurrence that at a minimum of one night a week, me and my friends, like a large group of friends would go on some kind, you know, do something social. That was just the default setting. And now that might be once a year. And then the other thought I had was when you said that was for people in the pandemic, for people who are, let's say, I mean, my daughter, she's about to be 27. She's now lost a year of this great decade of her life. Or like I was texting with our friend Nora McInerney, and she was talking about her kids and how her youngest, this has been like a quarter of his life has been this. and like not going to school you know not getting to go to an entire year of school that's a that's a 12th of your overall experience you know of that in other words it's like there are a lot of people who are who are uh you know being deprived of a of a various elements of life that i was very lucky to have you know like i didn't realize it at my time at the time how just kind of like cool and a limited time offer that was gonna be to just be able to like call up a bunch of friends and none of us had email i don't even think we really texted that much then not that that's that relevant but i mean it was like there was an even bigger barrier to hanging out because we didn't just like send a group text somehow we coordinated to get me and jessica and the mummy and sky and andy and lungi and you know nicola and the list goes on and camaro Eventually and John you know and we all Just would get together it was just It just happened and it felt totally Natural and I didn't realize at the time how Special that all was yeah I'm gonna

Take this like that's a great place to wrap Up this conversation but I want to take into a place that

I have slightly weirder six more Splendid You ain't wrapping up shit

But I do this is gonna be a weird Thing for me to say and it's gonna be a tough Thing for me to articulate so Your typical TV TL I guess I do when I look back at those what felt like heady times of my early 20s now keep in mind at the time I wanted to be living in a big city I felt a little even stuck in New Hampshire a smaller town than I expected to be living for my first foray out of out of Ohio but but there was an element of everything like work work was my identity being a public radio full-time producer was my identity and so much of my socializing also was somehow tied into my work either through literally socializing with all of the people kind of of my generation who i was working with uh at the radio station or all of the newspaper people in town um or or what have you and i feel like there was a when i picture myself sitting around those big ass tables um in like the the basement of a of a mexican restaurant there in concord um i also remember this feeling of striving sort of of of these people around me i want to impress them in some way either because they are more accomplished than me in work or because they just all seem really smart i'm a dumb kid from ohio and while i definitely still feel like a dumb kid you know from ohio i do think there's something maybe complacent in my 40s that maybe goes along with that we're talking about energy that's how we got here right like there was something about that like i'm young and i'm just getting started in this world and these are the people who are going there with me and look how amazing they are and then you get to be like just 44 and you're just like what happened to my diamond pickaxe in minecraft of course i don't know if i really ended on a universal sentiment there but you know what i mean like i feel like whatever whatever hunger i had for life is maybe slightly dimmer wow what well why did i recharge I'm about to recharge that right now. I'm cutting all that out. Bingo.

I'm pulling another Splendout.

It says, be happy. It drives other people crazy. I don't want that to happen to people. Mental illness is a serious issue.

All right, fine. Let me get another one. Jeez.

I got to be sad to keep everybody sane.

Wear your best smile. You'd be a lot prettier.

I added that last part. That sounds like an ad for a dental company. Do you ever notice, have we talked about this on the show? i noticed a huge thing in dental advertising um they don't talk about teeth anymore they only talk

about smiles interesting do you think that's just because that's uh we don't want to shame people about that or because they just decided that that's a more like you know uh like a company is like weight watchers they're not called weight watchers anymore i think they're called like ww now yeah which is you know let's ww dot explain that but also they don't talk about i don't think that they talk about losing pounds they talk about being quote-unquote healthy yeah yeah yeah so do you think that the talking about your smile get your best smile is uh is a way of doing that or it's just branding and they just realize it works better as a way to motivate people to buy their

product i lean more toward towards the latter there three quick bullet points number one i guess my sample size is small i'm mostly talking about probably the same radio copy i've been hearing for years on like an am radio station number two i think that smile is just a a nicer thing to say than teeth teeth are clinical teeth are not fun but everybody wants their outside bones well they're outside bones everybody wants a smile and then three i think it also sneaks in this idea of a little bit of vanity it's not just about health but it's about like also how you you know these are ads that are coming in between boner pill commercials and hair loss commercials or commercials that prevent for things that prevent hair loss supposedly you should have seen my amazon order

the other day andrew oh no it was what just absolutely it was the saddest vanity pack you've ever seen i clearly must have just had a low moment also i just needed to resupply on things but this is what was in the order there was topic hair powder there was polar teeth whitening gel refills there was this um it's i guess it's called like a mattifier it's a thing it's it's basically just like it's not quite makeup but it's a lotion that you just can rub onto your you know forehead face areas before you're going to be on camera so that you're not quite so shiny we don't have a makeup person when i'm doing a cbs shoot uh on unless it's in new york where we're at the headquarters and they have a whole bunch of people but one of the producers when i was in texas dustin handed me something he's like just use this because your forehead's getting pretty shiny and it was this mattifier thing it just kind of takes the shine off of stuff and i loved it and so i i bought a tube of it and i'm already halfway through the tube so i had to buy another one of those can i ask you a question about that do you apply it directly to the head

directly to the forehead head on apply directly to the forehead head on apply directly to the forehead head on available at walgreens have you ever seen that in the wild i can't even remember

anymore i think i did i think back you know in the in the olden days maybe it was what like the early 2000s or something i feel like i remember seeing that on you know cnn late at night or

something yeah no supposedly it's supposed to help your headaches it's like a glue stick looking thing called head on head on apply directly to the forehead they just repeat it four times that's it

that's your 15 seconds kind of genius though don't you think yeah whoa hold on andrew you know what i did i just pulled sorry i just pulled my entire microphone out of its little stand this is the

best part of the song by the way if you want to swell for a minute we have some fire guitar

that's how fully torqued i am man just friggin ripped the mic out there was like by the way i'm forgetting there were like two other things in that amazon order that were related to my extremely pathetic attempts to hang on to the last bits of what is i don't know what my look oh there's a hummingbird just levitating right outside my window andrew and that because it

heard it heard you're a hottie so yeah it's flying in high okay i know that you and the

listeners want this to be over but let's just do like one last one let's see here um replace i wish with i will hmm i wish it had just said wish in one hand shit the other

yeah are you feeling in any way more motivated now to go into the week no i'm super embarrassed about i started talking about something that i said was a minefield and then i just ended up saying that i've lost all my vigor for life and i'm super embarrassed about that part of the show

but i was playing the music so loud you could have just cut you could have cut around it probably

or something i don't know wait so that had the opposite effect uh no i i think i had i i think That I my negativity Overpowers all of the positivity of 96 packets of Splenda unfortunately You just came up against it

About 12 and also I think You know what it just A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step And what's going to happen Andrew Is today when the newsletter is out By the way everybody please go to tbtl.net Subscribe to the newsletter when the newsletter is out in the world

I think it's going to be a good one today by the way I just came up with the show title Since we've been talking I think we're going to call it Stock or my mom will shoot You know what you've just done Andrew

You've just made the day a little more Splendilicious

I just left some sparkles

Yes you did But later today When the show is posted And when the newsletter is done And when you're entering Weekend mode You're just going to reflect back and you're going to think You know what Looking good never tasted so sweet You're just going to reflect Some of these things that you're initially kind of – it'll be like a song that the first time you listen to the song, you're like, I'm not really into this. But then for some reason, either you hear it in a different context or whatever, you revisit it at some point, and then you give it a few more listens. And by like the fifth or sixth listen, you're like, oh, my God, I love this song so much. That is you with these Splenda motivational packets.

I told, I guess only two, but still, I told two people the knock-knock joke that I learned from Maddie yesterday.

That was a Mary, actually. But you could be forgiven for confusing their names. They do sound similar. And the update from my sister Hannah was that the girls had a great time listening. I'm actually just reading to you verbatim because you know what, Andrew? While my Splenda packets may have failed to have the impact on you that I was going for, this little text from my sister which of course is hard to find because some weirdness between my laptop text messages and my phone please please hold please bear with me this is worth it you're going to be happy to hear this um did i delete a message from my beloved sister hannah that would be really really messed up i don't consciously but i can't i can't find the text year i'm gonna have to paraphrase or i'm just um i'm oh you know what this is what what happened hannah sent the text via hawk squad i thought it was a direct communique but no no um this was on hawk squad hannah said the girls and i had fun listening to their letters uh being read aloud on tbtl andrew's sincere laugh to the knock knock joke made their day great no that joke made my day

i'm not joking i got off the air i texted it to one friend um and it's hard to do a knock knock joke via text but we managed yeah um and then i told genevieve she got a good guffaw out of it

it's a solid joke yeah that's uh that's uh marion for you marion nelson of shelton washington anyway let's uh take a quick break there and then we come back i'd like marion and maddie to stop listening to the show please because when we come back i'm gonna tell you about something related to my apartment andrew uh that's of a somewhat adult nature um and um and a very embarrassing nature for me coming up in just a moment here on TBTL. Let's thank some donors of the day. I hope that these wonderful, generous people continued listening and are now going to hear us recognizing and appreciating them. Rebecca Butler is in the 215 philadelphia pennsylvania uh and donating to the show keeping things going thank you rebecca appreciate it zachary this is a big one zachary haas right now the reason i pause i know who zachary is he's in san francisco california he is for all intents and purposes your brother-in-law

Indeed, yes He's Genevieve's brother

Does he say his last name the way his sister Genevieve says her last name? I don't believe so Even though they have the same last name I don't think so That's why I paused

I don't want to speak on That's why you haused Terrible joke I haused for effect Sorry Marianne, I'll do better Oh wait, they're not listening anymore

No, they better not be Hannah, please turn off the radio And then go over and turn off the iPod, because this isn't even on the radio.

I pronounced Genevieve's last name Has. I was told that it was pronounced Has. At a certain point, though, Zachary said that his last name is pronounced Haas. Maybe Haas with a softer S. I'm not exactly sure how he came to that decision. Yas, Queen. Or if he learned something about his family, or if he just liked it. I don't know. All I know is, at a certain point, I started realizing that I pronounce his name differently than Genevieve.

I wonder how common that is in families on a sort of, I'm going to try something here, internecine level, where you have different members of the same family that have the same last name but who choose to pronounce it differently.

Yeah, I'll bet you there are plenty of occurrences of that.

There's also plenty of occurrences of Zachary's generosity. I've observed it in my own life, and I'm now observing it here as he's donating to the show. Thanks, man. We really appreciate you. Hopefully, maybe, fingers crossed, this summer we can all take in a ballgame together. That'd be amazing. Legally. Mary Halcombe is in Muckle Teo, Washington, famously home of the Muckleshoot Casino. And Sarah Hernandez is right here in Portland, Oregon. I wonder if I can see Sarah's house from my front porch. You were joking about the Muckleteo because I got that wrong yesterday, right? I mean, you got it not right, but it wasn't such a gaffe that I was trying to roast you. It just came up again. I just want to make sure that I didn't misremember that.

So the joke there, though, is that it's not home to the Muckleshoot Casino. It's not.

It's actually – no, it's – the Muckleshoot Casino is down in the, like, I don't know, Kent area. Yes. Okay, gotcha.

I really just had a moment where I thought my brain was broken.

Right when I said it, I regretted it because I know those are the kind of – I mean you didn't even make the mistake. You asked the question yesterday. You said, is that where that casino is, which is exactly how you get in – how one gets information, right? So it wasn't like you didn't like brashly and confidently say, oh, I remember going to the Muckleshoot Casino in Muckle T.O. Washington. Like you didn't even get it wrong, but I know that anything like that is – for whatever reason, that's the stuff that kind of sticks in your own personal craw about yourself. So right when I said it, I regretted it.

Oh, well, in this case, it wasn't about feeling bad. It really was just confusion on my part because I'm really bad with geography here in my home state of Washington, which is sad.

Now I'm making myself feel bad. I've got to pull out another Splendip. What do you got? Good. You got this. Be your best today.

Nice. Yeah.

Sweet. Feeling better now. And I feel like I'm ready to, again, thank Sarah Hernandez, who's here in Portland, and Rebecca Ormsby, who's in Plano, Texas. And where would we be on this episode 3,347 without the donation and the support of Jennifer Buehrman of Jersey City, New Jersey? Thank you, Jennifer. We really appreciate it. I was watching one of my American Greed shows. And, I mean, of course this is the case. There are fancy neighborhoods anywhere and everywhere. And New Jersey is a place that has a lot of very expensive real estate and a lot of very fancy, tony neighborhoods. But somebody had been running some kind of scam, and they were using the money to fund a very lavish lifestyle. And the, I don't know, like FBI person or someone they were interviewing said, yeah, they ran that scam because they just wanted to live that Jersey lifestyle. And I was like, I don't know if I ever heard that used that way before. So, Jennifer, I don't know if you're living that Jersey lifestyle or not, but I know that you're doing that TBTL donation thing, and we would not be here without you. So thank you so much, and thanks to all of our donors of the day for making this possible. Hello, and welcome to Top Story. All right, I just got to quickly get through these two things that I have been mentioning off and on throughout the show. One is that I got into a Lyft yesterday, Andrew, to go to the TV story that I was doing. How long did it drive, and were you nervous? I wasn't nervous because the guy had my car is in the shop right now. It's having some weird – some kind of weird wheel issue that they're fixing over at the old dealership. So I had to take a lift, and I didn't feel scared because there was a big, like, plastic, I don't know, plexiglass? Like, there was a whole shield between the driver and me. It was like a New York City taxi cab of old. And, you know, it was very masked up. They were very masked up. Everything seemed okay that way. But what was scary to me or what was embarrassing was.

It just so happened that the route that this guy took took me basically down the street. I've already given out way too many specifics. I mean, were there a dedicated listener who wanted to track this down, they could figure it out. But I'm going to be vague now because I don't want to encourage it. but what i realized sitting in the back of this lift looking up at this apartment building is that you can absolutely see right into my bedroom and my closet which also has huge windows for some reason and this is an area of this apartment where i have been unclothed all the time because i guess i just thought it's far away from the ground maybe the windows are tinted uh people are driving who i mean this is what there's just no way anyone this is going to register yeah i'm not

going to say it again because you you specifically said that you're not going to but you've said on the show before what floor you're on your way up there this is i'm finding this surprising i can't

even i can't even picture i can't picture that what what happened was i looked up and my eye immediately went to a specific item i'm being vague here too because i don't think anyone's gonna go stand on the corner but basically a specific item that's in my bedroom i just immediately identified it i could pick out i could see the print on the bedspread on my bed in my bedroom like i could see i also have pretty good eyesight but i could see very very very specific details in this room the the the sort of thing that indicated to me that were there a six foot tall you know semi-portly nude man in that window it would register to my eyeballs as i was looking at things that were smaller and more detailed than that were you

looking at this yesterday at nighttime and a light was left on in there so it was like being in the

show nope middle of the day which means it's even worse at night like it's a it's a immersive experience at night for people it is a full-on like it is oculus rift it is like you are here with me you are living in that bedroom because yeah with the lights on which the good news is It gets dark at four. So basically from four, if I were ever to be, I mean, the only thing going for me is that it's a pandemic, so I haven't had a ton of occasions to like be showering at five o'clock and getting dressed and getting ready to go out like that's just not a thing that happens where at normal times there would have been already hundreds of events where I would be standing completely unclothed in a basically picture window on display overlooking couple of the busier streets in Portland.

Now, let me ask you this. Is there your eye was drawn to your window because we're humans and that's, you know, whether you were doing it on purpose or not, your eye was drawn to your own living space. But is there anything about your apartment in particular that seems less protected than the other apartments around? Because you mentioned before you said you made a huge mistake. I wasn't sure if you were thinking that like of all of the apartments in this building, why did I end up with this showcase of an apartment?

no it's it's um it's not there's nothing unique to to my place it's just i had been doing some kind of mental math that was off which was i'm far away from those cars there's no way they can see me up here and i you know like i don't know i just it just didn't for some reason i did a sort of cognitive uh disassociation or dissonance around the fact that if i can see people they can see me like of course that's how that works like i'm looking at these construction workers on this building that's uh going up a block or so away from here and i'm looking at right now they're looking at some blueprints that are on top of a stack of plywood that is covered in like some sort of tyvek i can see them doing that so like of course if they were to turn around if i was standing in this room unclothed standing in my window they would see it now is anybody going to do anything with that information no are they going to know it's me no um are they going to like you know nothing's going to happen a random middle-aged man would have been unclothed i guess if there were kids in the car that could be kind of upsetting um but i don't even know what the implications are other than my uh i was i was quite shocked when i realized just how vivid everything that's happening up here on this floor is to the people uh walking or in their cars down

on the street not to change the subject but really quickly i think the listeners are fine with that those blueprints are you sure this isn't a heist going on can you see what's on those blueprints are you sure that those are not the schematics for like a bank vault somewhere one of the guys

look a lot like matt damon uh-huh yep Can't he be naked in front of a window, right?

See, people would pay extra for that. Wait, people are paying? I didn't know there was a base fee. We have talked about this before, Andrew, and this is, I guess, part of my calculation before and maybe why I probably will continue to not draw the blinds. I am at that age in life where it's sort of like, eh, your funeral. I mean, as long as I'm not – obviously I don't want to be unclothed in a public space where kids could see it. That would be very scary for them But I mean like you do like when you're getting scanned At the airport now and they do that back scatter Which is effectively looking at you under your clothing Yep And it's like it's embarrassing but it's also like Hey you know what just Your funeral you know like I'm kind of at that Point with Like it's it's much worse for whoever has to see This without clothing on it You know I'm not I'm not embarrassed I mean I Probably should be more embarrassed for myself but it's more Just like you just kind of get over a lot of Probably explains why a lot of nudists are like older people you know they're just like hey this it is what it is um so so there's that as well but um but again it was just it was it was shocking to me uh to realize just how many people have observed me walking around without clothing on in portland considering i've only lived here a few

months we really have to work on your tinder profile because it right now it just says it is what it is it's your funeral and i just feel like can we get some splenda help to punch that

up a little bit because i totally small steps add up to big results that's actually not

completely uh unrelated um yeah no i i know what you mean about definitely getting to an age where you're just like well there a certain amount of shame and i'm still a man who walks around with a great great deal of shame um and i'm still uncomfortable taking you know if i were to be at a place where there was swimming going on or whatever i'd be very uncomfortable taking off my shirt i i've gotten to the point where i realized i guess that's just gonna be me for the rest of my life i always thought i'd get to i don't i mean i hope you i don't see that changing in the next

30 years like i don't although maybe maybe you'll have like a cocoon moment speaking of swimming pools maybe you'll get into a pool aliens will have laid their babies in it is that the plot of cocoon i don't know i'm just trying to figure out if i'm brimley or not older people become very Spry and Youthful from it Also Sorry I've completely hijacked your story but I have a feeling is Cocoon the movie where Wilford Brimley is like Shockingly not old

I think so I was about to look it up how old Was Wilford Brimley

I'll look it up you keep saying I'm sorry I interrupted you please keep going

Oh I don't know what was I saying You're a shameful guy and it's not going to change Yeah and generally but I still Know that feeling of like if I were 14 and I thought there was a chance that somebody saw me through a window, I think I would be – I think that would ruin my week, right? Yes, exactly. Whereas now you just be like, oh, sorry. You're going to have to live with that. Bleach your eyes. So I do understand that a little bit. I'm surprised, though. Did you explain why you're not now going to get blinds?

I have them. They're built in.

I mean, just use them. Like, you need to look out that badly at all times?

I mean, maybe, sadly. Yes, I think. Like they're these kind of – they're actually – it's a nice – one of the few nice features of this place is they have these built-in – like they're on a – there's like a sort of a chain loop that you pull down, and it brings down these shades that then when you put them back up, they go up into this little kind of metal box that contains them. They are installed on every window in the apartment. It's very doable. I just am that lazy, and I do like – I'll be honest with you. I like – you were sort of probably being half sarcastic and do I have to be looking out the window at all times? I will – I can track my sense of mental well-being very closely with am I staring out a window right now or am I not? Even when it's like I'm putting on some pants in the morning. I like doing that while staring out a window.

And I don't mean to be totally dismissive of that, especially given what your view must be like. I love, I mean, one of my favorite memories was, you know, we talk about it a lot, but our trip to Chicago several years back, we're doing a live show, but the day before the live show, I just sat in my hotel window, had a nice little cute little room, and I sat at a table with my computer at a window and just looked down at Chicago all night. Like, honestly, one of my favorite memories is looking out a window. So, you know, I definitely do dig that. And I didn't mean to be dismissive. But I still think that if I was changing my pants, I would just take a second to either walk away from that window or draw the blinds.

I think I am going to do more of the changing in the, like, bathroom that doesn't have any windows and is not. So I don't think I'm going to start using the shades more. But I'm going to stop I'm going to stop standing as close as I can to the window and beating my chest Good Fantastic

Hey, by the way, Wilford Brimley was 50 years old when Cocoon was filmed. Wilford Brimley was six years older than we are at this very moment when he was playing an elderly person who has his life changed by an alien in a swimming pool. Again, I don't know if that's the plot of Cocoon.

Hey, I have a question for you, and I'm just possibly connecting these dots now. I got an email from a listener who goes by the name of Book Lurbank at the Spotless account wanting to know how to get butt prints off of a window. That doesn't have anything to do with this discovery of yours, does it? Total coincidence. Okay.

I can see why you would be suspicious, but that's just one of those weird things, just a complete and total unrelated coincidence. Okay. I want to also just tell you that after I took that lift to the TV shoot with Bill Oakley, where we talked about fast food and junk food, and we taste-tested junk food, and then we also talked about steamed hams, which he wrote, One interesting deet from that Which maybe came up when we did the oral history of steamed hams But he basically said He wrote that bit And never heard anything about it for 20 years He literally just was like That's just a thing I wrote for the Simpsons One of millions and it was completely forgotten to history And in Australia For some reason it became a joke I think this might have come up again when we talked about The steamed hams meme But it became a bit in Australia to call this one Grocery store and order steamed hams

Oh that's kind of the origin of its resurgence

Of its like memification And the Australian grocery store Wisely they started playing along And I don't know if they started stocking Steamed hams or they started basically putting on their website We're sold out of steamed hams so we have this Kind of stuff we have these burgers Like they went with it and it sort of Became this thing But it's interesting to me to think that He wrote that And got zero feedback On it like it wasn't like it was some big hit Like the next day, all the all the trades were going steamed hams as is sweeping the nation as a joke. And and then to 20 years later, have it take on this second life and have it now become this kind of very memed and funny thing that I was legitimately excited to be talking to the person who invented the words steam. Yeah, but I'm after because I was maybe getting psyched for that. I managed to leave my cell phone in the lift. and so I did not have my cell phone and so I went to the Lyft website when I finally got home and it's one of those websites and we used to do ads for Lyft maybe we will again someday but it's one of those websites where they actively don't want you to talk to a human and it became pretty I can't decide if it was Kafkaesque or if it was out of the movie Brazil but it was one of those things where it kept telling me to use the app well the app is on my phone which is in banks oregon right now because i'm looking at the find my iphone thing and i can watch the phone and it would not let me get a hold of the person who who had the phone in their car unbeknownst to them by the way it wasn't like this person was trying to be less than helpful they didn't know the phone was in the back of their car i couldn't um get a hold of them because uh the the lift website kept saying go through the app and i kept saying i don't have the app and then i would say download the app here i would try to download the app it would text me a thing but it wouldn't be the app it would be a website like i could never get to whatever interface it was that they have set up in order to get your phone back does your texting even work i know you can text on your

computer as can I now but if I text via my computer I have to have my phone nearby it does

some wacky thing where it starts using like an iCloud account oh okay so you can't text so you can receive a text message from a company and it turns out by the way that my watch is a phone and is pretty effective I had to go most of yesterday sans phone using my Dick Tracy watch as a phone I called I called an Uber on it and the guy was a very nice and came and got me. I was able to have a production meeting with Livewire talking into my watch. I did all the things that I would have normally done with my phone with this watch until I was able to be reunited with the phone. But it was just like it was so crazy making because I just get I got caught in this loop where I could not get a human being to respond to me to just say, can you please just ping this dude i'm watching the phone travel around you know ex-urban portland right now and i i just and i know this guy he's a sweet guy i know that he is going to just like be like oh okay i'll bring the phone back when i'm in your neighborhood like i know that that's what's going to happen but he doesn't know the phone's there and i'm i'm making the phone make a sound i've got a message on there i'm doing my fear became a different passenger might get yes

Yes, yes. Now, my guess would be if you have the – and maybe this is an inaccurate – like I'm sort of equating having some amount of financial resources with some amount of morality. And if we've learned anything this week is that those things are not connected. But like I guess my thought is if you have a Lyft account and you're taking a Lyft from here to there, you're probably not going to steal someone's cell phone, which will immediately become sort of useless once they brick it. but that being said i just didn't want the thing riding around in the back of this car for ever and ever and so what i ended up finally having to do after like sending like 10 emails through the system and then just getting these automated responses we've received your request i was like i finally had to go on twitter which i i don't like to do but i will tell you that is the best way to get any company's attention and i would try to be polite about I just said, hey, at Lyft, are there some human beings over there I could talk to about getting my phone back? I said I left it in one of the cars, and now my eyeballs don't know what to look at. It's very scary. I tried to kind of make it funny and not be, like, raging because that's just not a good look. But I will tell you, Andrew Walsh, within one minute, Lyft help. Please DM us this information. Within one minute after that, I've got Carol helping me out on email. within 20 minutes after that my guy is calling me back saying oh yeah hey i've got your phone like it all the system worked great as soon as i went public with it which again i feel kind of ashamed of uh because i just don't like messy i'm not into messy twitter but and thanks to the tens who retweeted it because i probably also lit a slight fire i'm sure there's some kind of an indicator like oh no this guy rt'd six times we got to really this is like i do wonder about

Yeah, I wonder if they just have anybody who's – I wonder if they're going to be helpful for anybody who gets to that level of needing help and tweeting at them or if they see, oh, this is an account that has more pull. I really hope it's not the second. I hope it's not like how many followers does this person have?

And I don't have like a ton of followers compared to like a person who's a celebrity on Twitter, but I probably have slightly more followers than a person who doesn't work in the media, I guess. And I hope you're right. I hope it is not door number two, and it's part of why I try to be really, really, really careful about that because, like, I've done it with airlines before. Like, if I was – like, there's a layover, and they're, like, not going to let me get on the other flight. Once or twice in a very triggered moment, I've been like, hey, can you help me with this? Like, if you ever have that moment where your flight – something changes with your flight, and it's like you call the, like, helpline, and it's like your average expected wait is two hours. And then you look over at the customer service line and it's like stretching through the airport and it's just hopeless. I think I found myself in a moment like that, you know, tweeting at an airline being like, can you help me? And again, it worked. I mean, that's the that's the messed up part is that this seems to be very effective.

That was I mean, that's happened to me a couple of times where you just you're in some Kafka. That was your rental car. Yeah. And I was going to say, I mean, it definitely the Xfinity. I got caught in an Xfinity loop, which really sounds like a Marvel movie. But I got stuck in an Xfinity loop.

Elon Musk says he's two years out from completing his Xfinity loop.

And then when I finally tweeted out of frustration, this is the beginning of the pandemic, too. I think I heard from somebody. But then, yeah, Vives and I were waiting for a rental car. Like, well, we had, you know, reserved supposedly a rental car in Georgia on Christmas five years ago or whatever it was, four years ago. And then we showed up. And just like the Seinfeld skit, like, there was no car for us. And it's like, we know how to take a reservation. I don't think you do. That's a meditation of Jerry Seinfeld there. But anyway, I do remember getting customer service involved via Twitter, but still did not end up getting a car like it. So ours was not quite as successful. But that's the only way to get attention. People. You're right. And then you're like, OK, you have banks of people who are watching social media to respond to these things. I guess that's fewer people than you need just answering phone lines like you would back in the old days.

Right. It's like I guess what I would say to our listeners is give it a shot, you know, then I immediately then I deleted the tweet because to me that was just like, yeah, yeah, that was a thing I needed to do to get a human being to interact with me. And then once they did, I was like, there's no reason for this to be up there anymore. And it's not even like I'm not even blaming Lyft. I found it to generally be a decent company. Again, they were a one time advertiser, as was Uber. Shout out to Uber Jen, our dear friend of the program. But, yeah, I'm not trying to, like, drag them online. But, again, the problem is every time this works, it's like I'm a rat and I pushed a button and a pellet of cheese just fell down. And it's hard for me to not want to push the button more. I mean, again, I'm trying.

I try to be very, very, very, very, very – that's why I'm calling it the nuclear option. I really don't want to do that because it's all just a bad look. But if you are not a person who is working in the media and like if you are – if you have what I would say is an average amount of Twitter followers for just a civilian, go nuts. I would say definitely use this whenever possible or whenever necessary because it really seems to work.

As you were telling this story, I assume the end of the story is your driver just came and met you somewhere and you got your phone back.

He did, he met me, I was standing nude in the window waving What were you waving? What's that? Never mind And I went downstairs, no, he was in, he literally was like a different fare Brought him back through the neighborhood And I walked down and met him And kicked him a little tip through the app They also charge you, this is the other thing And I get this, this makes sense They charge you 15 bucks for someone to bring your phone back

Yeah, they have to have, you have to have some sort of financial thing in there Because it is costing I mean, and I hope the driver gets, you know, they spend so much money on gas.

I think the $15, allegedly it goes directly to the driver.

Yeah, I think that's fair. And that's totally fair. Because that's another trip for them, right? Yeah.

Yeah, I have absolutely no, I'm happy to do that. And then you can tip additionally, which I did because I appreciated this guy helping me out. So everything was fine. Everything turned out A-OK.

You know what I was thinking of, though? We don't have to get into the whole story again. I wish I had the show number and I would direct people to it. But I was, when I was on my road trip recently, we drove through East Las Vegas and I thought of you. Remember the time that you? I had that thought yesterday, too. That was pretty early on in the phone tracking software days, I believe. This is going back a while, right? And you had lost your phone in Vegas, but you were tracking it and ended up in somebody's house in East Vegas. And you had to, like, pound on their door. It got a little confrontational.

Yeah. Yeah, I had been wearing a suit because, you know, I was really trying to channel my inner Vince Vaughn and my iPhone slipped out of the pocket of my suit pants. And unfortunately, I did not have a helpful, morally upright driver like I did yesterday. The phone went missing and then I had my iPad with me in the hotel room so I was able to track it and I could see where it had gone. So I jump in a cab And I have the cab drive me And it was not a cheap cab ride But I have the cab drive me out to where the phone is And I go and I knock on the door I'm psyching myself up And a very tall man with a very big scar On the side of his head I said hi I'm here for my iPhone And he said what iPhone I said have a great day

Oh that's right so you did not You were steaming but you did not get it back

No I did not get it back And I mean there was nothing I could do To prove that it was there And this guy did not look like the kind of guy I wanted to mess with

Yeah, yeah

I think the large, what I perceive to be possibly knife scar on the side of his head Kind of said Call, we're going to take an L We're going to take an L on this one with the phone

This was the moment that you learned that head-butting people doesn't solve all the world's problems

I had the presence of mind to decide this was not going to be a good This was not a head-butting situation

This could not be fixed with a simple headbutt

Yes Hey, we should sort of wrap things up And get to some music for your weekend But we got an email from a listener That's so on the news this week That we thought we would sort of squeeze it in Before we do music And by the way, sorry we ran out of time for the Grape Nuts story But maybe we can get into that on Monday I think the shortage will still be happening But do you happen to have this email from listener Mike talking about his GameStop situation?

Sure. I kind of forgot about this. I sent this to you yesterday because I said I want to get to this email this week because it's very relevant to all the news that's going on and continues to go on with all of the weird things going on with the stock market and the Redditors going after their favorite companies. Got this note from Mike who says, don't worry, I'm not writing in to explain how short selling works because I have absolutely no idea. But I do want to share my own GameStop stock story with you. Back in March of 2020, after the stock market crashed, I purchased $200 worth of GameStop stock. At the time, it cost $3.50 a share. Now, I'm not a big trader. In fact, GameStop was the first stock I ever bought, apart from the small amount of company stock I got from my employer. This was my first foray into the market. But GameStop seemed like a good bet. All retail locations had just closed thanks to the pandemic. And I was thinking that stock would rebound a little when the pandemic ended. Plus, Microsoft and Sony were both releasing new consoles at the end of the year. I figured if I was lucky, I could double my $200 by the end of the year. And I did.

Pretty smart. In fact, I tripled my money when I sold it in November of 2020 at about $11.50 per share for a total of $655. I was feeling so proud of myself, so smart, like a frigging Wall Street wizard. We just call it the street, Mike. Yesterday, GameStop stock ended trading at $347 per share. That means my original investment would have been worth almost $20,000, $19,977. So, yeah, I guess I'll hold off on my application for MacArthur Genius Grant for financial excellence. I also realize I should be happy that I made a little money on the deal, but I can't stop kicking myself for what I missed out on. So he buys a little stock. He dabbles, makes a little money, feeling good. But then this just completely unforeseen thing happens, this unprecedented and unforeseen thing happens, and he realizes he could be a 20,000-dare.

That is, like, that's almost, like, I didn't interact with this GameStop thing at all. And then this week when the news hit, I was like, well, now definitely I wouldn't mess with it because I just felt like once everyone starts talking about it outside of, like, you know, that particular subreddit, it's just going to like at some point this is going to this is going to explode because and go back down because i don't think anyone is trying to argue that the underlying fundamentals of game stop are particularly um encouraging as a business but what's crazy for listener mike is that he actually did the math on this like wisely like a long time ago and then pulled out because he i mean which is another thing i my guess would be i'm not a person to really trade stocks but one i mean one of the things is you probably have to you know set your boundaries and know your limits and if you make a decision that when something you know increases to a certain point that's when you're going to pull out and take your money you know he was just following his own internal logic which is actually a good thing because also there's a bunch of people that are getting into game stock this game stop this week that are going to lose their shirts i think i somewhat i don't know this person but they're a friend of a friend like yesterday put a thousand bucks in and i was like oh you're so dumb although i think when robin hood another former sponsor of our show when robin hood started allowing gamestop trading again it went up like it doubled again

overnight or some crazy oh they allowed it again i didn't know they opened it back up on some like

sort of limited basis i guess um i don't know all the specifics but anyway point is i would be more upset if i were mike about having had the smarts to get in on this thing and get out than me who didn't have the smarts to get in and is now continuing to just stay out yeah i mean you got

you got a little you got a little bit of something um before we do music for your weekend my coin

base is back up too so oh it is bitcoin what is bitcoin is back up to my one one millionth of bitcoin is back up to 128.93 oh nice nice that's like 23 bucks up or something just yeah just never

get rid of just let it ride forever until you know if i can just and now if i can just dump all of that into Sbarro stock is that another one are you just guessing it seems like one like an

old no I made a joke on Twitter yesterday that the Wall Street gatekeepers are mad because I acquired the Sbarro company for $78 it's like I mean Sbarro seems literally in the mall like you

would be right next door to the GameStop yep yep and that's actually yeah that's a pretty and that is one of those legacy I know that you're mostly just joking but it actually as they continue to target these kind of legacy companies of a certain era that does seem like one that I it almost it almost could be real have you looked have people been buying up sabara stock uh i you know what i

haven't actually uh i haven't looked into it i know that like amc was one of them bed bath and beyond was one and they just i don't know bed bath and beyond is an interesting one because i think again as a fan of that store i think overall that place seems it doesn't seem like it's as as sort of um cursed as game stop in terms of business models because yeah i guess you can go buy a you know those things that they sell you can buy them online but they sell a lot of stuff you kind of want to like look at it get your hands on it um yeah so i don't know why i don't understand they must have decided that bed bath and beyond was also being undervalued or being shorted but um yeah it's been a crazy week who'd have thunk that and again i keep going back to this i think i said this the other day but i also feel like this is what happens when you don't have A maniac in the White House Driving the news cycle This becomes the news cycle This becomes the news cycle You know what I mean This is what happens When you send The sociopath and president To Mar-a-Lago and cut off his Twitter feed You just all of a sudden have All of this freed up mental space media space that then gets filled with something else and this is what got what it got filled with

this week let me because you had mentioned that the other day i want to explore this just a little bit more and then we'll do music for your weekend um and i'm not going to argue with you because i don't know enough about it but i need some more clarity on what you're saying because i'm not entirely convinced do you think it is that this story um the media has the breathing space to cover this story therefore it has helped um push the story forward more or not push the story but this actually pushed what people are doing. People are doing it now because it's being paid attention to because the media has the space to cover the story.

I think it's like it was a small fire which got a lot of oxygen this week in terms of attention. And then I'm sure that the friend of my friend who put $1,000 into GameStop Yeah, here we go. Did so because they saw all the coverage and then started reading. Yesterday at the shoot Where we were waiting for Bill Oakley to come out Because he was inside actually working on his real job As a TV writer I was talking to the producer and the camera guy And the sound guy and all we were talking about was GameStop And everyone was kind of Trading their theories And so what I think is And I know it's not the same group of reporters It's not like You know Whomever at the It's not Mike Shear at the New York Times Has now been pulled off of the Trump beat And is being put on the Funky Stocks beat Although that would be a decent genre of music Funky Stocks beat

Drop that Funky Stock beat

I don't think that it's like I understand that like you know The reporters who are covering politics Are still covering politics They haven't been like moved over to covering GameStop I just think that there has been There's just a little bit more room On the website of the New York Times or The Washington Post to talk about things that are not just the president said this and then the five or six stories that are responses to that, and now Nancy Pelosi says this, and now people in diehard Trump country in West Virginia say this about this thing that all of the stuff that goes around it, the whole word cloud of coverage, I just think a little bit less of that literally creates more room in the newspaper or on the TV channel. I mean, Chris Hayes was covering this stock story this week, and I bet you anything that if Trump were still in the White House certainly trying to contest the election, I wonder if that – and it was the last segment, which I believe they called the Z segment or the Z block. It was the Zed block It was the last segment on his show And I bet you anything That it would have been pushed down And out of the show If there would have been more Trump craziness news But I can't prove that And maybe I'm misunderstanding things But that's just kind of how it feels It feels to me like Maybe this is just much more personal Is that I just am used to walking around With a certain amount of Internalized Anxiety around what will happen next and even though we're in a pandemic and even though there's a lot of things that are not great i don't feel that feeling this very moment and it's almost like

i don't know what to do with that either i've been i've been really enjoying the normalcy a great deal like i watched fauci i didn't watch the whole thing because i didn't know it was happening but we got done with tbtl i think it was on monday and i just turned on msnbc and just watched the fauci press conference live like maybe the back quarter of it or something and like is everybody's just like talking about solutions and what the federal government's role will be in helping distribute vaccines and it's just i'm you know i i was i was eating lunch yesterday i had a gyro in a bag of fritos for anybody who cares um and i was reading the i don't know it's the post or the Times, right? And I was reading the full articles, and I had a conscious thought that four weeks ago, I would not be able to get through these articles, I still had my usual lunch routine, which is, you know, usually in the morning, I focus more on the local stuff. And then at lunchtime, I'll eat something and, and read the national papers and just kind of the big headlines and get a view of what's going on. But for the past four years, the national stories literally would kind of make me feel sick while I was eating, right? Like, they were just so bad. It is an effective diet. Yeah, right? Well, unfortunately, I stopped reading, not eating. That was the mistake. You got this, Andrew. Be your best today. But, you know, I'd read the first couple of graphs. I'd just be like, you racist s***. Yeah. And now I got, like, I finished a couple of articles about, I don't know, the economy and the vaccine rollout or something. And I was like, oh, I haven't read the bottom of one of these articles in a really long time because I can make my way through it. And again, not that everybody has to agree on everything, but it's not just like...

chaos and just a bludgeoning of bad news and just bad ideas and and white supremacy

yeah I agree it's I am also enjoying even though I said I don't know exactly how to sort of what to do with myself sometimes it's just that feeling of like you've been tensed up you've been like tensing up everything for four years and then you it's like it's okay to relax but it feels kind of it almost you almost don't know what to do with yourself that being said I will absolutely take it it's so much better than the alternative than what we were living with for so long

and the caveat is there's always a lot of work to do too i'm not trying to make it sound like

yeah everything is okay if anybody needs me to send them any splenda packets with motivational statements on them uh so they can get to doing the work i'm happy to do that it's a service i provide or i'll just hold them up in the window of this apartment and you can read them from the street that apparently is also a thing that can happen unfortunately um okay let's do some music for your weekend what song would you like uh to play for the listeners andrew i'm gonna play a

song in fact we may have even played this on the show before i'm not sure but i had not heard of this band until i think about a year ago when we were in uh saint paul minnesota doing some shows there uh last january and um our buddy the stew bot joined us for a show and he brought his daughter piper who i know that you two have a somewhat rocky uh you know what it's all about unity right

It's all about unity in this country, and that is why I'm officially declaring that beef squashed with me and Piper. Nice. I love that.

And she had introduced us, or at least me at the time, to a singer-musician who goes by the name Biabadoobie, if I'm saying that name correctly. I don't know if you recall this, Luke. But I remember really liking the song that Piper played for us. And then every now and then I'd go back and kind of sample Biabadoobi, but I never really got into it until, again, I keep on referring to this road trip. I did one thing all year, and I went on a road trip. I'm sorry if I'm going to mention it a lot. But sometimes you just need your moment with a record, right? And there was one night where Genevieve kind of fell asleep early, and I was sitting in the hotel room, just sitting in my chair, playing some dumb video game on my iPad. And I just listened to this record several times through, and it's really good. I don't remember the name of the record off the top of my head, but the name of the song is Apple Cider. Let's take a listen. We both like apple cider. But you have me smelling like food punch. And I don't even like you that much. Wait, I do fuck. Call me at midnight. Let's give this thing a try You said you like my hair So go ahead and touch it You said you like the jumper I wore So I always wore it

It's really nice to talk to you

It's really nice to hold your hand It's really nice to talk to you It's really nice to hold your hand See, that's nice. That's a filthy song like The Whole New World. She's singing about holding hands. Yeah, it's nice, right? I think you'd like this record. This is actually even more of an upbeat song. A lot of them are like real chill I think you'd like this record

I dig it, I'm getting strong The Sundays

That's a good point

Now the thing is The song that I am going to suggest Is It also involves a singer A younger woman And maybe they're kind of close together In terms of Jean But I make no apologies This is this song by Do you know anything about Francis Forever? Have you been following Francis Forever at all? No, not at all. Francis Forever, she's a singer out of, I think it's Massachusetts, and has this band that's called Francis Forever, which is actually a reference to a Mitski song. I think the singer, Francis, that's her real name, but Francis Forever is the name of a song by Mitski, and that's now what the name of this band and musical project is. Who's Mitski? But Mitski is a different singer songwriter who is very popular as well among. Well, I don't want to say just young people, a lot of people.

But I mean, that answers my question. It's not some band from the 70s or something. It's a very new artist. Yes.

Yes, relatively new. If you heard me trying to head that off at the pass, it's only because I know next to nothing about Mitski. In fact, one of the things I know about Mitski is that she does a song called Francis Forever because today when I was looking up info on Francis Forever, that's what it said on Wikipedia. And then I went to a KEXP session, like live session of Mitski playing Francis Forever. Okay. So now I know that much about the singer Mitski. But this song is called Space Girl. I think it's like a year old. I love it. It's very catchy. I do think it has been embraced to some degree on TikTok, but that is not where I heard it. I knew about it already, so I just want to make that very clear. But anyway, take a listen to this. This is Francis Forever doing Space Girl.

You know the galaxies are my heart

Gold, are you a cancer? Cause you make me cry When we kiss our death In the sky We're dancing in the sky

Space girl, I saw a lunar eclipse Looked like how I feel but she lives

all right so that's uh france forever space girl what do you think oh i love it i love it yeah the guitar reminds me the guitar reminds me right yes and almost even a little bit this is a weird stretch but a little bit of like whatever inspired that polish band music oh music a lot not just like that that that type of guitar playing that kind of had a resurgence back maybe in the early 2000s yeah but I love this I love this I feel like there are a lot of you know

younger singers and bands that you know listen like the band that you played doing something that reminded me in a really good way of the band the Sundays and this one that guitar riff reminded me very much of like something from like you know I don't know Brimful of Asha by Corner Shop or whatever like I kind of like that it's being reinterpreted stuff that I was into in my early 20s is now being reinterpreted by people who are in their early 20s yes you know so it's great because it's new original cool music but it also really scratches an itch for me of that time

in my life yeah I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about that when that day came honestly because I think I thought about that as a young person who liked because I liked as a young person I loved music from the 60s and 70s right and I wasn't sure what it'd be like to have a 90s or even early 2000's a revival when I'm a middle-aged sad sack, as I proved earlier today. Hey, come on now. But anyway, but yeah, it turns out I love it. It doesn't make me feel bad. It makes me feel great. I love hearing younger generations kind of reinterpret the music and make it their own and add layers to it. Trying to find a Splenda packet for you to get you hyped here.

Make it Splendalicious. Do we do that one already? Turns out there's like 12 phrases on the back of these. Sweeten without guilt. No, guilt is a huge motivator for me. That's just basically promoting the product. I want you to... Okay, well, anyway. Let's play our listener submission. Now, here's the thing. I have not previewed this song, Andrew, because this just came in. In the words of George Brett talking about eating some questionable crab, I got to get these to you guys. These just came in.

I was thinking it still feels warm Like a worksheet that just came from the mimeograph machine in grade school. How about that for aging myself?

How about that? How about that? This just came in to the emails. But I'm excited because it makes me look cool, Andrew. And so anything that makes me look cool is going to move right to the top of the list. By the way, if you have a Music for Your Weekend suggestion, please do send them in to Luke at tbtl.net and write Music for Your Weekend in the subject line. This one is suggested by listener Joseph in Queens Joseph says, Dear Andrew and Luke A few days ago, Jensen McRae A songwriter I am not nearly cool enough to have heard of yet Got a bunch of love after posting the opening line

lines of a song with the following description in 2023 phoebe bridgers is going to drop her third album and the opening track will be about hooking up in the car while waiting in line to get vaccinated at dodger stadium and it's going to make me cry end quote phoebe bridgers herself reposted it earning more attention and praise now the reason this makes me look cool andrew is because jensen mccray is our musical guest on live wire this week oh nice cool um actually not this week next week sorry this week is going to be Jeff Tweedy but next week will be Jensen McCray we've already recorded it and I'm very stoked because I do think Jensen McCray is about to become a very well known at least in kind of cool music circles and she was just a delight to talk to and Phoebe Bridgers was the guest on wait wait when I was on last week that's a much less direct contact point although I found Phoebe Bridgers to just be absolutely winning she was just so smart and engaged and present and fun so anyway the fact that i have spoken to jensen mccray and listener joseph and queens is saying he is not nearly cool enough to have heard of jensen mccray that makes me feel good andrew and that's really what this segment is about that's

better that's that's better than a hundred splenda packets all at once put it in my veins

so that's what we're going to go out with this song Immune by Jensen McRae that's going to do it for this week of TBTL thank you so much everyone for spending the time with us and thanks for helping keep this whole thing going we are going to be right back here on Monday with more imaginary radio for you until then have a great weekend stay safe take care of yourselves please mask up and remember there is no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Dodger Stadium, I'm not scared if dogs are getting vaccinated. Lay the seat back, turn this place into a bed. Someone smoking in the Camry just ahead. Yeah, I know the irony would never be lost on me. You don't have to point it out again

What will we say to each other When the needle goes in What will we be to each other If the world doesn't end

Radio is static through the Taylor song Think a college football game is coming on God, you hate top 40 shit But as the sports preempted Your mouth in my ear, you hummed along

What will we say to each other When the needle goes in

Power out