Muse

Hey, now don't you tell me you don't remember me, because I sure as heck fire remember you. Not a chance. Ned! Ryerson! Needlenose Ned, Ned the head, come on, buddy, Case Western High! Ned Ryerson, I did the whistling belly button trick at the high school talent show, bing! Ned Ryerson, got the shingles real bad, senior year almost didn't graduate, bing, again! Ned Ryerson, I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple times till you told me not to anymore.

Well? Ned Ryerson? Bang! TBTL!

Do you believe I got Happy New Year'd today? It's February. I once got Happy New Year'd in March. This is disgusting.

It's pathetic. First day seemed like a week. And the second day seemed like five days And the third day seemed like a week again

The comedy factor speaks for itself It's just painfully obvious It's an unfulfilled prophecy It just has to be played out

Watch out for that first step, it's a doozy

Well alright, hello, good morning And welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Excuse me, America, do you mind? My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You're still doing a podcast? Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center. High in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where the weather is really having a hard time making up its mind. it was actually beautiful this morning blue skies a few wispy clouds perfect weather for getting out there and shaking a leg which is my plan but i had an appointment involving the management of this apartment company and them finally doing right by me their tenant who pays their rent on time. And then of course they let me down. Come on! Per uge. More of my first world petty complaining coming up in just a moment here on episode 3,350 in a collector's series. Let the fun begin. Minnesota now has its own mystery monolith. Oh la la! I know that was a lot of M's, dude. And we will check in with our guy on the street, our boy Stu, the StuBot, the blogger emeritus of the program will tell us his thoughts on Minnesota's monolith. Also, revenge, bedtime, procrastination is a real thing. Please go the f*** to sleep. If you find yourself exhausted but still lying in bed or on the couch scrolling through your phone or doing other things, even though you almost can't keep your eyes open. That is called Revenge Bedtime Procrastination, and there is some interesting science behind it, which we will share with you. Coming up in just a few, plus emails and V-mails. And this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, known for his drawings of tall ships. I told him I'm having another run-in with the apartment management company, and he seriously had my back. You see what happens, Larry? You see what happens when you free a sturgeon with an axe? He is Andrew Walsh, and he is joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. You know, nobody refers to themselves as a tenant who pays their rent on time and then goes on to say how great their landlords have been treating them. You know, I had a feeling I knew where that sentence was going. Yeah.

Yeah, I am a tenant who has never been late with a rent payment and loves the way that they run this apartment building. This is not how that ever goes.

Oh, man. So what's going on over there? We got a slightly later dial up today because you had some good news coming your way. Some folks were going to be there fixing up your apartment, right?

That's right. I want to tell the listeners I've already made far too large of a mountain out of this molehill. And the only way this ends is with disappointment on the part of the listeners But anyway, yeah, the dishwasher has never worked here since I moved in And it's been, it's just me here So it's not like that many dishes But it's also like, Andrew, have I mentioned I'm a tenant who pays their rent on time Do you pay it on time? I do pay it on time And that's why I appreciate their prompt and quick responses to my various queries No, I mean, the history of me living in this place is The actual...

apartment itself and the building generally, the facilities here, I'm very happy with. Everything's great. But anytime I've had some kind of an issue, the answer has never been, hey, yeah, we'd love to take care of it. The answer has been, we can't do that because of COVID or we can't do that because of a Fair Housing Act, which I'm all for fair housing and equal access for everyone. There seems to have been some times where it's like, I don't know if the thing I'd asked them to do and what their the Fair Housing Act is a logical reason for them not help me out so it's just been kind of a bit frustrating but anyway can I interrupt for one second I want I

definitely want to hear this story but just one thing related to that uh when Genevieve and I were um driving to the Grand Canyon our very first stop was in I think it was rural southern Oregon somewhere I can't remember exactly where it doesn't matter we were staying in a pretty crappy I mean, not terrible, but very, very inexpensive. Yeah, we'll go with crappy motel. I believe it was a, what does your boy Bodette work for? Not to get you in trouble here. Motel 6. It was a Motel 6. And we go in, and there's a guy behind the desk, the only employee there. No mask at all. Just no mask. And then we ask for a second key card. I don't know why. There's two of us. We weren't going anywhere, but there are two of us. We want to, can't. Yeah. COVID. He couldn't give us a card because of COVID. He's not wearing a goddamn mask.

You know, I think there's an opening at the Yard Apartment building in Portland, Oregon. Yeah, he should apply. I think this guy would fit in great. Anyway. Do you know the difference between a motel and a hotel?

Motel is you access your door from the outside.

Yeah, motor. You motor up to the motel. So it's been a little bit frustrating for me. Also, I'm just a kind of – I'm a nudge. I'm the kind of person that if something's not working for me, I don't suffer in silence. I don't – I'm not the kind of person who just says, eh, you know, I'll just make the best of it or I don't want to be a bother. I have absolutely no problem being a bother. So me being just a kind of a nudge by nature and then this place being a place that has a lot of rules that the people that work in the building have absolutely no problem carefully following. the rules that's a tough combination all right so i have you know filed various work orders about this dishwasher they did send out an electrician who wasn't able to fix it uh who was nice but of course did also leave some of the paneling unattached down at the base of the dishwasher which once have been where they were like trying to get under there and see what was going on so i finally get a call yes yesterday from a maintenance person here at this building And they said, I'm calling about the dishwasher. And I said, yeah. They said, we have the appliance ambulance coming tomorrow. I said, oh, okay. He goes, from 9 to 10. The appliance ambulance will be here from 9 to 10. And my first thought was, did you want to ask me before you made the appointment? Like the way that's supposed to work is, hey, we have been able to get an appliance repair person to come out. What's a time that works for you? tenant who pays your rent on time like that's how that works you don't call you do not call me and tell me when the person will be here because have you heard wfh work from home now maybe if it was the before times i would could kind of understand an assumption that that apartment might be unoccupied at that time because maybe i'm at my office job but we are in a moment where almost everyone is working from home so even it's even more uh uh sort of logical that you would call ask hey when's the time that works for you and then uh and then relay that back to the folks doing the fixing he goes the guy is going to be here from nine to ten i said that's not a great time for me i have a conference call each day at that time i don't like to try to explain what this is to anyone because it's no good comes from that so i said i have a conference call at that time and then just like a long silence and the guy's like well that's the time he's going to be here and I said is that the only time he can do it and I heard another long silence and what I should have known was he just didn't feel like calling the guy back and trying to reschedule it because he sort of did that like kind of guilty pause and he goes yeah yeah that's the only time he can do it and I was like okay and so then what did I do Andrew I said let me get back to you then i called you and asked you if it would be okay if we push the show back

which it was uh can i interject one other thing here too that's irritating me that's very small but are they picking up the dishwasher taking it somewhere else to fix it and then bringing it back if so that's an appliance uh uh ambulance ambulance it's not an ambulance if it's a house call then it's a It's like Little House on the Prairie, and if you want to make the medical comparison, you're having a house call from the doctor unless they're picking up the ambulance, turning on the siren, and racing it somewhere.

That's a really good point, and if I ever actually cross paths with this person who's going to be fixing the dishwasher, hopefully, I will mention that and see if we can get a quick name change. But you're absolutely right. Like, if you call an ambulance, they don't come and then administer care to you over the course of four to five hours and then leave and then maybe come back later and check up on you. That would be home health care.

Yes. I mean, I guess I have seen some instances where they stop and help people on the street. But now it's just getting – it's not where the conversation should be.

The idea of the ambulance is the thing that's hurting is put in the ambulance and taken to the hospital. Right. Exactly. So maybe that's what's going to happen here. I don't know. again it may be years before i ever see the whites of the eyes of the person who is here to fix the thing anyway um so that was i was kind of i just was like five percent annoyed that the process had gone down in a way where i had to move my job so that somebody could come in and look at the at the appliance but whatever so what i before i actually uh agreed to the nine to ten appointment and called you Andrew I said to the guy I go is he really going to be here at 9 because I said I can move this call but I can move it to 10 o'clock but I need to know that he'll be here at 9 and the guy goes oh yeah they're actually usually early so I was like okay so now you know this Andrew because this is a way I think you and I are similar so the cool part was I was able to move our show but then I was also able to be stressed out starting at 7 a.m. yeah right that the guy Was going to call at any moment Oh they're usually early does early mean 8 Does it mean 830 does it mean 845 I don't know but I better be like Sitting here you know Fully dressed The apartment not a disaster etc You know what I mean like so But I would take it I was like I'd rather that this Guy show up at 8am and then we're

In the clear get your nude time In front of the window out of the way early So you can get dressed afterwards

I can't even tell you how many machinations i'm now going through i mean the easiest thing would be to just close the shades but i'm like i'm like leaning out of there's a bathroom that's attached to my bedroom and i will now lean out of the bathroom and reach across the room to my bed because it's a pretty small bedroom and grab my clothes off the bed so it's like the upper half of me is exposed to the world but the lower half of me um is is is out of sight and so this is now how it goes in this apartment you know

what you could do i know we're solving a different problem here but you could put a really big bright light source behind you so that you are in between the you're a silhouette and because now i'm picturing you kind of like daintily reach out from behind the shower curtain there's you know there's a sensualness there i think you can leave your hat on definitely some kind of

Some kind of Tom Jones and or Sexy Sacks music playing

We're not always on the same page But that's exactly the vibe I was talking about

Anyway, as the listeners have already deduced And become bored with 9 o'clock comes And no sign of the person 9.20 comes No sign of the person And I will also mention that it's Or I guess I will re-mention that it's it was beautiful outside today was supposed to be kind of a rainy day in portland but when i got up this morning the sky was clear it was like perfect weather to be out there jogging and i had sort of toyed with the idea that you know i also don't really want to be in the apartment with a stranger any longer than i have to be so my thought was uh let the person in kind of show them here's the dishwasher and then i'm gonna go on a little jog you can let yourself out or do what you need to do i had a kind of a plan in my mind uh but of course the person was nowhere to be found so then i called the downstairs and i say hey someone's supposed to be coming over i also have no phone number to contact anyone like i don't i don't have the phone number for the people coming to fix it i don't have the phone number for the maintenance person i call the front office whatever leasing office and they said well let's we'll look into it uh i'll call you back five minutes go by they call me back and she says it's a window from nine to noon rage building and i was like i i just like i let out the most defeated sigh and i was like um i i won't use the the woman's real name for whatever reason i mean there's no point in being coy now but i just said Tanya, I want to preface this by saying I understand none of this was your doing, but can I just take you?

on a little journey called me living in this apartment building you know i move in the dishwasher has never worked i've never been able to get anyone out here to do any meaningful repair on it yesterday somebody called me and told me that the appointment was from nine to ten i can't wait from nine to noon this is a thing i shouldn't have said i said because i do a radio show from up here which if there was any chance of them not hearing about this on the wind me completely busting myself out as doing some sort of broadcast from up here uh it's probably put it on their radar which we've talked about it in the past it's like look i stand by everything i'm saying here in fact maybe this would be a um maybe it'd be like me going on twitter and tweeting at lift maybe this would be the the best way for me to get some help but um i i said you know i can't wait for i can't be sitting here from nine to noon i do a radio show which i already moved back by an hour um because i was told it was going to be from nine to ten long pause and then she just says yeah it's really hard to get people out here i believe that but that's to the side of what we're talking about right now and she said i know i just need you to know that if you cancel the appointment it's going to be maybe weeks before they can come back out here tanya you're not in the room are you wait is this thomas doing a higher voice what's going on here like um oh yeah

is tanya right in the whole operation right right um this is in this is just the management company

sucks from the head andrew i believe that's the um that's the common euphemism or or idiom or phrase um yeah it was uh i was pretty frustrated and i and again i said to the the the woman that i was speaking to i said and let me please just reiterate well first i said look well they just have to come whenever they can come i said i can't sit here from nine to noon waiting for them so i guess it is what it is and then she must have just sensed some something broke inside me and she said well what if i could get them to come out later today and i was like that would be great in fact i didn't say this but i was like in fact that would have been a great conversation to have yesterday you know it'd be a perfect time for a repair person to come out here when all my jobs are done like how about three that would be awesome so where it stands now is they are i'm also as i'm talking to you i'm looking uh in my voicemail to see if i don't i don't have a call from them so i'm not holding out hope that someone will be here later this afternoon but where we stand now is dishwasher unattended to and appointment tbd you pay your rent on time right I'm a tenant, Andrew. Yeah, you're a tenant who pays your rent.

I mean, like, honestly, like, when you sign a lease, you're purchasing. Like, I mean, I'm so full of rage right now. Like, I'm serious. This is the kind of thing that just, like, they take all the power away from you. They treat you like you're insubordinate or a child in some way when you are paying them. And, like, have they taken – you said, yes, I want this apartment with all these amenities. And then they say, okay, well, one of these amenities for the first – how long have you been there? four months now three months maybe maybe three months maybe three months this isn't going to be available to you for three months well then that should be reflected in what i'm paying for right if i pay for a car but the the headlights don't work for the first three months it should be a

cheaper car i agree and i mean normally i would be i mean there's a couple of things that are luckily that are kind of you know making this a little bit less uh bad for me one is there there is a pandemic on and so i i understand everything is not going to operate completely normally and i i get that i don't think it's probably the easiest thing to get repair work done right now so i recognize that also i it's just me so i i really don't like do i need a dishwasher am i going to run the dishwasher six times a week probably not but to your point i am paying for the things that are in this apartment and if one of them has never worked i mean what frustrates me is the way that so many things they are able to use now the pandemic as the excuse for yeah that's i just

that's kind of frustrating to me there might be a bit of a of a slowdown because of supply chain issues or just um you know it's not supply chain we're talking about person power but like there it might be contributing somewhat but i don't i don't buy it like when we had our major plumbing issues here which of course i didn't have to deal with but like it was an emergency plumbing issue there were workers here the next day digging up and breaking up the sidewalk like it's been months like i swear we had well we had dishwasher issues but our landlord took care of it uh himself but but he you know he came in here he wore a mask we wore masks like there are people who are continuing to do their jobs in fact i think you know i feel bad for them if they have to expose Thank you. themselves but i'm sure a lot of people are happy to still be employed during all of this because dishwashers are still breaking sinks are still clogging like things are still breaking and there are people who are coming to fix these things this is your management company this is and and they are and i'm not somebody who i don't feel i'm as as i don't know i don't feel as strongly as you do and some of the things like saying hey we're going to um use environmentalism as a cover for cheapening our service in hotel rooms or whatever. This kind of fits into that kind of theory. I don't know if I feel that stuff quite as strongly as you, but in this case, it is so clear. They're just terrible at managing a building. They are. They don't care about you. I'm so mad.

It's weird because they're all very nice, of course, when you bump into them in the elevator or the mailroom. Everybody is very chipper and very nice, but it has a sort of a, I don't know, like one of those movies where everybody is outwardly really nice but but inwardly there's some kind of like you know fiendish robot yeah this has you know jordan peele feel to it something where it's yeah it's just kind of like uh because again everybody's very pleasant when when you when you bump into them or even if i were to call down no one's like outwardly rude you know who the best person in this whole building is the guy who is the sort of security slash quasi parking kind of helper outer his name is john he probably makes my guess would be the least amount of money of anybody who works in this building he is super helpful he's out there sweeping up doing his thing if i ever have a question i go down to his little parking stand he's there he knows what's going on we could all he needs to write a management book and then we need to force everybody else who works at this building to please read it because he is that seems to be the only reliable and i don't think he even works for the building because now we're getting really in the weeds andrew but he they subcontract out the parking and you know what this is this this kind of i think supports the notion or the contention that this is just a poorly run operation the parking the people that do the parking here it's a totally different company and they are so on it it's a totally different company called ace parking the guy who's like in charge of residential parking i assume for a whole bunch of buildings if i send him an email he responds within one minute and i know he gets a lot of email there was a little quirk with what they were charging me based on well the first thing was i couldn't get my parking pass so i was paying to park and i'd racked up all these bills or these you know tickets that had cost me money and he said yeah just send those in and i'll just prorate all of your parking because you live there and you should have had a parking space i was like thank you so much and i was like i can't find one of the receipts he was like why don't you screen cap your credit card send it to me and then he the rate they were going to charge me was different than because of the particular unit i'm in i told you this was going to be pretty sexy um so make sure kids aren't listening when i start talking about the parking proration based on your particular unit but anyway the uh he said okay here's what it's going to be i said oh actually they told me it was going to be this because of the kind of apartment i'm renting he said oh yeah totally got it changed and then i was like how do i do the direct deposit you know he sends me the form it has been the lowest hassle thing the parking in this building has been exemplary because the company that company is run well by and you know who john works for the guy who is in this building and kind of a sort of quasi custodial role he works for that guy who responds to emails

within one minute you gotta you gotta move into the parking garage man i mean i'm highly considering it i want to have my life managed by ace parking of portland oregon because they have their shit

together and this is one of those examples i can already hear like emails from property managers or whatever, saying that I'm dismissing the COVID impacts. And I don't mean to do that. Like, I think that there are real considerations, and I know people are struggling. But it's just so clear when a company has good service and not. And even if John, you know, your garage hero, is that a video game?

Is that a video game or a band from the 70s?

But your garage hero, John, even if he couldn't have solved, I mean, it sounds like he did just solve all of your problems that you had even if he couldn't if he got to a place where he's like oh man i'm sorry i i can't because of our record keeping i can't do this particular aspect of the proration or whatever it is he had built up enough goodwill with you by showing that he cares that you would accept that it's not that you always have to get your way on everything like we live in a society i understand that and there are considerations out there but it's just time after time after time you have a bunch of young hipsters running this place and they're gonna They're going to say nice things. They're going to put the pet of the week up in the elevator as if that's going to comb over.

the fact that they are terrible at running this business and they just don't give a shit

because they don't have to you know the irony andrew first of all i've never felt more seen by you and i appreciate it i really do the irony or an interesting dynamic is they also all live in the building i think that's probably that's probably related to a couple of things uh one my guess would be uh they get a discount um and the other would be i bet you because of the pandemic there's a sort of fairly high vacancy rate or at least higher than normal i just don't think people are moving around as much or moving into apartment buildings at the same rate anyway they all live here and i see them in the building all the time and you would think that would cause them to be better at their jobs because they live amongst us the hoi polloi of the yard apartments

But no. And again, I've said this before. My guess is Thomas's dishwasher works fine. Yeah. Right. That's my guess. Yeah. And then he can say, like, this is when I'm available. I mean, that this all just started from a terrible place, just like pretending like you don't have any agency about when they come over and just telling you. and then you know i i agree with you probably lying and just saying yeah there's no flexibility and even if all of that is just like that's the way we operate and sorry you're gonna have to deal with it because you that's the way everybody deals with it in this building they were wrong they told you between nine and ten and it wasn't the fact like it's just it's just terrible well

i andrew i really do appreciate you getting my back on this um and uh you know next time they

Don't pick up my garbage. I'm going to take my garbage over to your apartment building and deposit no.

That's another thing they seem to be pretty on it. The garbage people, and I don't mean people who are garbage. I mean there's a different fellow who I see wandering around kind of helping coordinate the garbage and the recycling, and he seems really on it too. It's funny because it would appear that the kind of lower down the food chain you go here, the more competent the people are who are doing their thing, which I just – you know what I chalk it up to, Andrew? It's Groundhog Day And the fine fine people at the yard Management office wanted to Celebrate that by making this Like every other day that I live here Where I wake up in the morning I hear Sonny and Cher I hit the alarm and then I'm disappointed by their Assistance

Can I ask you a quick question about Groundhog Day You texted me last night and reminded me that today's Groundhog Day Is it always February 2nd Or is it always the second Tuesday of February What is it

I am thinking it's probably always the second tuesday of february okay uh because i don't think it's ever on a saturday it's always a weekday um in my memory um and so that would make me think it has to be a fixed day of the week as opposed to a date because i would imagine sometimes february 2nd could fall on a sunday that's a good or a monday or rather a saturday so i think it's always um and i i heard today They on the radio, they said that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow.

Yeah, that's what I'm reading here. So that means that one means what it means. There will be six additional weeks of winter, according to this groundhog.

Somehow the my TV here is set to like the channel that it's on is the weather channel. And you know how that thing we need to take a break, obviously, and check in with our guy, Stu, about this Minnesota. monolith but we also sort of tap dancing because he has to drop piper off at school because yeah of course anytime we need stew services piper also requests and requires his uh attention which means beef back on yeah that was the that was the shortest truce in the history of but um you know that thing the way we all watch tv now at least most of us is there's whatever actual channel the tv is on but that is just like background noise that's what that's digital wallpaper because really what you do is you turn on your television and then you start poking around in the on-demand functions and the apps and the such you know like it's i don't really watch maybe it's different how you and veves watch tv just maybe this is just me but basically i am just watching all the shows that i watch on demand whenever it is i'm watching them so i don't really change the channel on the tv very much for like the last three days it's just been on the weather channel for some reason i don't know how it got on there but what it means is also if i pause something for too long like if i'm watching i was watching more of the lady in the dale last night which really picks up steam in the second episode by the way so if anybody took my recommendation to watch the first episode and was like this is interesting but not captivating watch the second episode it really really gets going but anyway it keeps defaulting to the Weather Channel and of course they're in like breaking news wall-to-wall coverage because of the snowstorms that are happening but I was also just thinking like I don't understand, I mean, I'm sure people are like, they don't understand how I can watch as much HGTV as I do. I don't understand people watching the Weather Channel, like, all day long. Like, it just feels like there's only so much weather-related news you need. And also, if it's weather that's not happening where you live, there are people who really, really are fascinated with weather. I'm sure we have listeners who are fascinated with it. I'd find weather, unless it's happening to me, probably the most boring topic that could ever exist. Yeah, ironically, I start the show each day by reporting what the weather is here in Portland, Oregon.

Right. And I just need to be very careful throwing boring stones in my glass castle of boringness.

I 100% understand that the Weather Channel is more interesting than what I'm doing here. I want to just acknowledge that.

I've only watched it like in hotel rooms if you're traveling and you need to figure out if you can get out before a snowstorm or in waiting rooms. I feel like waiting rooms and I think the show title today is going to be nudgy by nature unless something better comes along

but yeah like I guess my relationship with knowing with sort of meteorology is I'm curious if it's going to be rainy today so I need to bring an umbrella or wear a hat and or is it going to be 100 degrees or is it going to be snowing like the extremes I'm curious but you know I have that app that's built into my phone And I look at it and it tells me what's going on And then that's pretty much the That's as much info as I need on that topic It's interesting to think

Don't forget East Coasters Like that's when I watched a lot of it was hurricane coverage

Right By the way I'm getting a call From A 503 number Andrew Which makes me think That there has been an update in the dishwasher situation Okay let's take a break Which maybe what we can do is take a break And then come back and I'll let you know what I found out Okay Sounds good All right Quick break Here on TBTL

Thank you baby All right

Let's thank some donors Of the day These are the people Making the show possible They donate to TBTL Even though sometimes Andrew Going into the break I really build up The expectations And say Oh I think I got a call About the dishwasher Which is from the 503 And then I answer it and it has nothing to do with the dishwasher. Sorry. So the good news, though, is that now we can carry this whole plot line over until tomorrow. Oh, good. Everybody has to listen tomorrow to find out the end of the story. Hold on a second.

Let's just wait for the applause to die down.

Okay, go ahead. Betty Lee Mincler of Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Betty Lee. We really appreciate the donation. Thank you also for having an awesome name. Brooke Latsky Davis Is in Portland, Oregon Hey Brooke, can I borrow your dishwasher? I was going to say, yeah I'll just, you know, be over Actually, if you could just have a window of time Between 2 and 5 today Where you could just kind of stand by And then I'll bring the dishes over Whenever it's convenient for me That would be great Also, Kirk Eldred is in Woodinville, Washington Kirk, thank you for supporting the show Susan Goodwin is in Seattle. Oh, I thought we were going to have a clean sweep of keeping it in the Northwest. But there's a little exception at the end, which we'll get to in a moment. First, though, we have to say thank you to Felicia Isaacs, who's in Medina, Washington. Not to be confused with the Medina that was near where you grew up, right?

Yeah, Medina County is the county I grew up in. And also I lived in a township called Medina County. Or Medina Township, I believe, for a little bit. And then one time I got into a bit of a, when I was in my teens, got into a bit of a road rage situation where somebody was following me off the highway and then eventually cornered me. And I had to pretend like I didn't know how to pronounce Medina for some reason. I don't remember exactly or I can't get into exactly why that was me playing dumb was supposed to save me there. But it was my equivalent of like curling up like a wildlife animal curling up and pretending it's dead.

Right, because they had followed you into like a gas station parking lot and kind of blocked you, right? Yeah, it was my fault.

I was tailgating them for a while. This is a long time ago. This is like 25 years ago. But, yeah, I was really angry at them. I was tailgating them for a long time, and then I decided to get off the highway, and then somehow they circled back around and ended up trapping me because I was kind of harassing them. It's a really bad look all over.

Well, I don't – I mean – It was bad. My knowing of you, Andrew, maybe you were a more rageful man in your youth, but you usually describe your actions as being – you're pretty hard on yourself. My guess is that it wasn't your final – moment but also if someone's tailgating me and then they exit the freeway that's the end of the

story no see that's why i really appreciate all the cover i don't even want to talk it's so embarrassing i think about it i was tailgating this person because i was angered by them and then i followed them off the highway at an exit that i didn't even need to get off at because was it in medina and that's where i got off a little bit early so i could kind of harass them a little bit further which is a terrible terrible thing and then I'm like he goes and he turns around in a parking lot and I'm like okay I'll turn around this parking lot too and this is the end of the game I've harassed enough but then as I turn around in the parking lot and then go to pull out into traffic I can't traffic it's like seven lanes of super busy rush hour traffic I can't pull out so I'm trapped he pulls up behind me and now suddenly the aggressor is being confronted this was 100% me being a really bad and aggressive driver and an anger person I was being a bad anger person and I was probably about 17 years old or

18 if it's any consolation remember I also followed somebody for I don't know how many miles on Aurora Avenue completely in the opposite direction I was trying to go because they had rolled down their window and said something snide to me and they were in a Prius and I think I felt emboldened and what i was trying to create was a dynamic between the the two men that were in the car so that one of them my guess is that they were a couple so that the one was mad at the driver for having gotten them into the situation i know that feeling i wanted to sow seeds of enmity between these two people because what had happened was there was a red light by the way thank you felicia Isaacs of Medina, Washington, and also Oliver Pospishil of Woodland Hills, California, P-O-S-P-I-S-C-H-I-L,

Pospishil. Also, by the way, I don't think you see this, no joke, but I have in my notes that I updated that person's location upon their request. There's a chance that Oliver was a Pacific northwest person and totally messed up our um our little distribution there we're not mad at you

oliver we forgive you and we thank you for the donation but if you could just move back to washington state or northwest oregon that would be really appreciated yeah that i i've told this story before but i was driving through uh i was driving down by um like where the stadiums are in Seattle. And there's a very confusing and kind of non-intuitive light that is sort of near where Lumen Field is. And I just didn't, I just got confused. And I was not, in fact, on my phone, which I have been guilty of before, but this wasn't one of those cases. I just, I got confused and I guess I maybe went through it or I paused too long. Somehow I did the wrong thing. And then we end up at another light and a guy this guy pulls up next to me in the prius and he rolls down his window and he says get off your phone and andrew my brain exploded with fury because that's not what i was doing and i made it my mission to i mean this is by the way not how you respond to that the way that one should respond to that is to just think well that guy was under informed on what happened there and let me just continue on with my life instead i was going to go straight i was driving south instead he went he went right i illegally moved over to behind him and then followed him at the highest and closest speed you could it was very dangerous for them and for me and was just wanting his the other person in the car to be mad at him that was my whole goal I want him to be saying, why did you do that? Why did you make this our life now? And if I just knew that was happening, I was happy. I felt I had been somehow vengeance had been mine.

Yes, yes. No, I can. That's totally relatable. I will say in all seriousness, though, I don't really I don't drive as much as I used to. Like, you know, I do think when you have a commute where you're in the car for long periods of time, although I even think in L.A. I was much more chill. I think also, well, whatever, I think I calmed down as time went on. But also even just like recounting that Medina story, I didn't even recount it there. I did a hatchet job on it because I'm now so embarrassed about it. There was a time when I even thought that was kind of funny, like, ha, ha, ha, road rage. And look at this pickle I got myself into. But like I am so embarrassed by the amount of rage that would take over me and feeling like I have to show this person a lesson. I have to plant. The reason I was following this person and getting off the highway is because I wanted to put a little nugget of fear in their brain. like wait this person is now following me off the highway where does this end the thing is i am a big wuss head like you know like i'm not gonna really do anything i'm just being a rageful driver and now this person approaches me like i'm could not have been more in the wrong there and it's just so so embarrassing that I would be overcome by this rage where I'd want to like again like you wanted to break up these people's relationship

you know I wanted this person that's all I just wanted their life to fall apart right yeah I know I have to say I mean that was five years ago maybe I don't think I would do that now like I don't think I've been that triggered or angry maybe since then I might be forgetting an incident or two but like and i don't think you would do that either like i don't even feel like it's i mean one i recognize intellectually that it's like a really bad way to be in the world two i just honestly think my my t levels are too low now i need to call dr arakaki like i just don't think i have as much testosterone as i used to like i just don't get as mad about stuff i'm not kidding i even with my apartment building i'm not happy with them but i'm just not like that i'm not as

mad as i would have been five years ago i think for me the rage might still be there and it just comes out in different ways no um i think i really had to work on it and i you know it's something that you and i talked about i think a lot more back in my early days of tbtl because that was like i i think i don't know for some reason road rage stories came up and um i think it does have to do with the fact that i when i'm living my life normally i try to be a conscientious person And I'm nice to the people around me And I want people to be nice to me So then when people do something rude Just like me getting all worked up About your apartment building That wasn't false rage That kind of action towards other human beings That attitude Really triggers something in me That probably has to do with number one Maybe being bullied a lot as a kid And number two, just this sort of impotent rage I have against people treating people The way they should Dr. Arakaki can talk about that It's just misplaced anger. It's really embarrassing. Again, I think there's a time when I found these way more funny, and now I'm just so embarrassed of those stories.

You know, it's interesting because we definitely – I think you're right. I hadn't even thought about this, but I think we talk about incidents like that much less on the show now because they happen much less, certainly for me.

This is not about the road stuff, you mean, or just like –

Just being super mad at people or having run-ins. i just and this is not a roundabout way of me trying to pat myself on the back i guess i'm just observing how like you and i are both just like growing old and documenting it five days a week like again you're talking about for you you did a lot of work around it which is which is good and i mean i've been in therapy as well so maybe some of it is me making better decisions but it's just i hadn't really thought of that until you mentioned it but yeah it used to be a really big topic on the show it used to be a frequent topic on the show some kind of a situation and I just it's been a while since I think you know I mean today started with me saying I'm annoyed by the apartment building but that's very different than I followed someone on Aurora and you know wanted to terrorize them because they insulted me or I you know got in a bar fight and yelled you bleed for me like it helps all the bars are closed so that keeps the yeah you know bar fights

to a sort of a min but you but randy the roomba have you said that to randy the roomba around 2 a.m

yet i'll tell you what my little nephew little luke came over yesterday as did my my sister sarah and her husband josh we were very masked up i'm talking n95s baby um but um and even little luke had his mask on it was so cute um like he was and then he was like i gave him uh some sparkling uh cider and he looked at my sister and her husband like am i allowed to take the mask down to have a sip of this sparkling cider uh but anyway he loves the rumba he and randy are best friends i started randy up randy was going on he could not have been more enthralled with that thing and then at the end i said to my sister sarah hey if um if you ever need me to watch the little guy I'd love that. It'd be really fun for me. And she said, what do you think, Luke? And he can be a little shy at times. She said, what do you think, Luke? Would you want to come hang out with your uncle, Luke? And he goes, can we do it tomorrow?

Oh, that's what you want to hear. I was like, yeah, got him.

Most favorite uncle status unlocked.

Nice.

So, yeah. So, you know what? That's a very good thing. And on balance, when compared to my dishwasher not working, I'll take being my nephew's, clearly my nephew's favorite uncle. hello and welcome to top story all right our top story is a mysterious monolith has shown up in minnesota uh not terribly dissimilar to the one that was in utah that's some uh

some real, I thought, real jerks took down. So we thought we would get an update on what's going on with this by talking to the person who actually hipped me to it. Ahoy, ahoy. Our friend, the Stewbot. Welcome to the internet. Who, I saw this on his Twitter feed. Stew, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me back, guys.

What do we know about this monolith? Where is it at in Minnesota? Are there any theories about who might have put it up?

Well, it's in an interesting spot, Luke, and I'm very glad you asked. It's in Cedar Lake, which is in the western...

It's the most professional you've ever sounded on the program already.

Well, I'm about to drop a very adult-themed reference, so I wanted to come off a little more professional.

Buy some credibility before you make Andrew upset with some kind of racist state.

Before I go to Cinemax after hours on the bit, yeah. Cedar Lake, western side of Minneapolis, closing in on a suburb of Golden Valley. And Cedar Lake used to be known as Hidden Beach because it was the only nude beach in the Minneapolis area. So it has a knotty history attached to it.

I know that you're saying this isn't the first long, rigid thing that's been erected. Okay. All right. All right. All right. In this particular part of Minnesota.

You picked up what I was throwing down, Luke. Thank you.

See, I just thought I was like I was going to scold you. I was going to say, well, obviously there's nothing dirty or lewd about the human body, Stu. We should celebrate our human form. But then I see. Now you were – it was a double entendre about sexuality the whole time, and I was just too innocent to pick up on it.

Ah, you sweet, sad child, Andrew. Yes. And here's the funny – there's a funny part as well. In Theodore Wirth Park, which is about, I'd say, about a mile north of Cedar Lake, there's another monolith.

What?

It is a frozen caveman art installation. The caveman is named Zug Zug, and it's hidden somewhere in Theodore Wirth Park by some, like, pranksters, like, you know, artsy-fartsy types. So there's more than one monolith. One is a caveman. One is a structure, both on the west side of Minneapolis. Did I just blow your mind, guys?

Yes. In fact, I have just the unicorn mind being blown wallpaper sticker that I will send both of you later to indicate how blown my mind is.

I'm confused, though, and I apologize. I'm not playing dumb here. I'm just really dumb. You said the second monolith is actually a caveman. Isn't that more of a statue then?

Yes. Yes. It is not mysterious. There is someone who's taken credit for the caveman. whose name again is Zug-Zug, Z-U-G, space, Z-U-G. Just wanted to make sure you got the headline there.

On the subject of cavemen named Zug-Zug, when we lived in the small maritime village of Port Townsend, Washington, that bar rescue show where John Tafford just screams at people. Actually, you know what? I don't know if it was bar rescue. It might have been the one with the really buff New Zealand guy. who comes out in a black T-shirt and more gently yells at you and tries to fix your bar or restaurant. Anyway, there was a place called, I think it was called Zug's Caveman Barbecue, and they came out and shot there, and they did the rescue, and they redid the whole thing, and we went and ate there after it had been rescued, and then it went out of business like four days later. There was like four days between the rescue and when they were still financially not viable.

There's a little there's a little diner, Luke, a Greek diner that's by the North Lake Tavern here in Seattle. Wasn't that like kind of bar rescued or something? Only like who's the restaurant rescuer who goes around where they like try to fix your restaurant. And I feel like all they did was jack up the prices.

Gordon Ramsay. I'm on the Port Townsend leader. Zug's closing March 26th and moving to Squim. Zug's Caveman Cookin' in Port Hadlock closed its doors Tuesday, March 26th after losing its property lease. Interestingly enough, though, that Zug, because you said it's called Zug Zug, the cave, the Sasquatch, or is it a caveman or a Sasquatch in Minnesota? It's a caveman, Luke. This is, you would think that's just what they call caveman. Apparently, the guy who owned this place, his name was Brett Zug Forsberg. Hence, this place being called Zug's. amazing yeah anyway uh we've brought you we've brought you on the show stew to talk about various restaurants that are now out of business in the northwest is this your wheelhouse

Yeah. Now, the question I have about this monolith is because they basically got a statement from somebody in the local government who said you basically need a permit to put art up in, you know, in a public place like that. Do you think are they going to go take it down? How does this or what's the Minnesota kind of response to something like this, to some outsider art, to somebody putting up a monolith?

Well, let's see. People will call it interesting, which means they hate it. And then there'll be some sort of passive aggression about taking the installation down. And then I think at the end point, someone will like mention Prince and see.

Any chance they'll move it to the Walker Art Center and put it like next to that giant spoon with a cherry in it?

Oh, or the giant blue rooster. Yeah, that might be a place for it to go. You're thinking outside the box here, Burbank. I like this.

Now, that's funny. So this is actually useful because if and when we're allowed to travel freely and go back to the home office there in St. Paul, I don't know if I knew this. So if somebody says, like if one of our colleagues back there says that something's interesting, like an idea that Andrew and I have for the show, interesting is actually bad in Minnesota speak.

Yes, it's the opposite of interesting. They hate it, and they actually hate you for being born. It's very, yeah, it's super passive-aggressive.

That explains so much about our last off-site, Andrew.

You know, it turns out they might not have liked Macmillan Men as much as I thought.

Yeah, they said it was the most interesting show they'd ever heard.

They just kept saying, it's so interesting. Stop being so interesting with your Patriot podcast.

um how's everything else going in minnesota stew you're it's been now what a a year two years

since you and mandy and piper uh relocated to the to the big city yeah uh labor day of 2019 is celia there with you as well still um she she lives down here but she actually is off on her own she's going to college down here and has like a full-time job as well she's very cool

And is it everything you all hoped and dreamed it would be, you know, being kind of more centrally located and not being out in the hinterlands? I would imagine that being in the hinterlands during this last presidential election might have just broke you.

Yeah, but, you know, we moved down here so we could be closer to everything, all the cool restaurants and venues for sporting events and concerts. And then there was a global pandemic that shut everything down. so that that part really didn't fall into place for us so that's been kind of a bummer of course

you probably have better like you probably have better takeout options it's still probably a lot better be living out a pandemic in saint paul than the hinterlands it's true but the hinterlands you

know we had a house in the hinterlands whereas here we have like a thousand square foot apartment with three people in it yeah and a dog that needs attention because she thinks you're home for her instead of a big disease going around.

You better hope your dishwasher doesn't break, Stu, because more on that, by the way, when you listen back to this and you hear the first 45 minutes of the show. Is the management company there at your place in St. Paul, are they fairly responsive? Because maybe they could do some kind of a master class with the people that run this building I'm in.

Oh, yeah, they've been very responsive. We had our bathroom sink was clogged. They came right up and fixed it. Oh, my gosh. The little gun on our sink where you wash the dishes with, the one you don't put in the dishwasher. Oh, we do. And the water pressure was low. They came up and fixed that. I tell you, that's like a 24-hour turnaround. I mean, you can't argue with that. Oh, my gosh.

No, you can't. I'm moving to St. Paul. That's it. And also, just quickly, Stu, you mentioned things being closed down. Where are you guys at in, I guess I would say, in the Twin Cities? I mean, outside dining, I would assume, is not really an option for people. So are all the restaurants closed? Are they at 25% capacity? What's the story in Minnesota?

Restaurants are actually at 50% capacity. Yeah, that was about three, four weeks ago that went into place.

So you can go inside a restaurant with your mask on and have a beer and a Juicy Lucy as long as they're at 50%?

Yes, I have not done that yet. We actually, in order to see Celia, we hadn't seen her since the holidays last weekend. We had some outside nachos on Saturday afternoon at a place in Edina, Minnesota. Oh, no.

I knew I said it wrong. I was saying.

edina right like the e is small like it's like an e-commerce site small e capital d

um i'm just i'm just going to change the pronunciation every time we talk just but we ate outside and it was just us and another couple with a doctor and her husband and then like everyone else was inside and they were at full 50 capacity and And it just, man, I don't have it in me at the Eden side. I don't know about you guys, but it's just not. I'm still playing it pretty by the book as far as these.

I mean, are the nachos, was it sub-zero? It was out and it's five degrees. I mean, are they basically frozen upon arrival?

Well, you know, they had the heat lamp there, the kind that, you know, the smokers stand under. We weren't smoking just for the record. But it was fine. It was like 30, 35 degrees on Saturday. So it was like, we hadn't seen Celia since Christmas. So we masked up and met at a central location and, uh, did our best to, you know, say hi to our kid. And it's, you know, it's weird. And yes, the nachos get pretty cold after like the third minute, you're going to want to get most of the good stuff off of the chips because by then the cheese starts to coagulate. Sorry. I'm sorry for bringing up Andrew and using the word coagulate right afterwards. Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry.

Yeah, this is, I mean, we invite you on our show. I was talking to somebody this weekend who owns a couple of restaurants here in Portland, not my sister Sarah, although I am excited to say that their restaurant, Pollo Bravo, is moving over to Killingsworth. And if you're here in Portland this July, they'll be in a new spot and they'll have outdoor dining. And yes, I am just shamelessly promoting my sister's business. But I was talking to somebody else who has a restaurant and they have some outside seating. And I said, here's how you need to promote during a pandemic. If you're in a colder climate like Minnesota or even Oregon, you need to be the place that has the warmest outside seating. I don't care how much propane you have to burn. Like that's a niche because, you know, anybody who's trying to eat outside to be safe or if it's a place like in Oregon, you literally can't eat inside. The places will say, well, we've got heated dining and you show up and there's like one heater and it's like two tables over. So you're effectively just sitting out in the cold and the clock starts ticking pretty fast on that. I just think that should be that's the new flex. If you're a restaurant in the like I said, any kind of cold climate is we are the restaurant where you're going to be outside, but you're going to be the warmest that you can be outside. That's where I'm going. I don't even care what kind of food they serve.

Oh, yeah, that's like where we're we're whenever we look to, like, do anything. It's finding the heated patio with like some ventilation because there's like some that'll just have like a tent. And then there's, like, you're just basically eating inside in a tent, breathing out of the people's air and, like, getting COVID for two weeks. So I don't have any interest in that at all.

What are you doing for exercise? You were really into your gym routine right before this all, you know, this all happened and everything shut down.

Oh, God. Well, I mean, it's one of those things. You pull up a YouTube thing and, like, oh, there's, like, some Romanian deadlifts or some pylometrics or some freaking thing. Because you can't walk the dog when it's this cold. She doesn't like her paws getting in the ice and the slush like that. And she's 11 years old. She's getting a little up there. So you can tell if you take her out after six, eight blocks. She's like, yeah, this sucks. Let's go home. So you really can't go on nice long dog walks in this weather. So just trying to manage some sort of exercise. And, yes, I have gained all the weight that I lost at the start of the pandemic. So that's kind of a bummer.

Well, I wasn't trying to make you feel bad. Also, existential dread burns a ton of calories. It really does. Talk about that. Just sitting around sort of terrified. It's a real calorie burner. That's been one of the tools I've pulled out of the toolbox in the last couple of months. I'm thinking starting smoking, honestly. Yeah.

That's a smart move.

What do you think about Andrew's new plan to start buying packs of cigarettes for homeless people?

Wait, what?

Wait, wow. I didn't know he was doing that.

That's really nice. I think that's not exactly true to fact. If you don't mind, I want to pull away from your personal life for just a second here because nobody's more online, I think, than you or certainly not very many people I know. So what else is going on on Internet these days? You seemed really excited yesterday. You sent us an early morning text message saying that Donovan Jr. was making some Twitter headlines.

Yeah. It was like, well, somebody thought it was a picture of young Steve Buscemi in like 1992, like with his shirt wide open going into like Chuck E. Cheese. I don't know what they do in Hollywood. You know that. They do that. It was not Steve Buscemi, it was the son of Donovan, Donovan Jr., I guess, Donovan Leach, walking into that Chuck E. Cheese in Hollywood, looking very handsome for Steve Buscemi, honestly.

Yeah, very skinny, I saw that photo.

Yeah, and then I was reminded that his sister is Ione Skye, the actress from Say Anything.

Yes, and also Arrested Development, and Viola's mother.

yes that's right and what's the tbtl connection there fellas catch my disease catch my disease

by ben lee lee exactly have you been stew have you been tweeting about i sometimes can i hope you take this as a high compliment i will confuse you and david roth or i will in my mind i will i can't remember who tweeted what because i know you guys are internet friends and also you have a similar droll quality and you're both kind of like up on meme-y stuff before i am and so i'll see like i don't know if it was you or david roth who was tweeting some kind of jokes about there's like a new ghostbusters ghost that's oh yeah quite upsetting have you seen this and i don't know it's from i think it's from like a comp i don't know the whole backstory but all i know is i started seeing this ghost and then it was wearing a mets hat and then that was kind of a thing are you do you know what what does this ring any bells what i'm talking about oh it rings tons of bells i

just don't know the name of him i just know that he's like a pale blue lump they're trying to recapture that slimer magic from 1984 and i don't know that they succeeded with this particular creature whose name i cannot remember off the top of my head he's called muncher no oh god

come on it's from ghostbusters afterlife and their new slimer ghost is called muncher but the problem is he looks like roger ailes like he's crossed kind of an uncanny valley where it's it's not it doesn't he doesn't seem fun or fun he looks like a character from the movie seven the the brad pitt morgan freeman film so it's not because you know you see slimer and slimer's kind of kind of a little grotesque looking but generally non-threatening this muncher looks like how i imagine my insides look like muncher is the is the visualization of my self-loathing like inside i think i look like muncher and so that's like too serious for a ghostbusters movie

what's in the ghost what's in the ghost nobody asks me what's in my ghost wow you guys we have

a rare double rainbow which is to say two cars driving down a one-way street the wrong way at the same time. Oh, my gosh. You rarely see it.

They just changed the nature of that road. That road now goes the other way. They really have.

They have squatter's rights. Now this road goes the other direction. What is the critical mass on redirecting Cooch Street in Portland? Oh, my gosh.

We actually have the same issue by our building, Luke. They put in a bike lane, so now it's a one-way in front of our building, and every other day there's a guy driving the wrong way down the one-way. It's amazing.

Yeah, I don't ever want anyone to get hurt. But I find it endlessly entertaining. I don't know why I think what it's because I keep doing it on different streets. There's a lot of one way streets here in Portland. I'm not familiar with all of the rules. And clearly can't be bothered to look at the signs with which have arrows pointing in the direction you're allowed to go. And it makes me feel less bad about myself to see people doing the same thing. Anyway, well, Stu, listen, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today. I don't know if you're aware, but I had officially squashed the beef with Piper the other day, but the beef is back on because we just needed to talk to you for 10 minutes today. And it happened to be at the same time that you have to be ferrying Piper around, which honestly brings up a lot of old wounds for me.

Just the nostalgia, but also pain.

Yeah, exactly. I also feel like, but I know we're trying to let you go, but what's up with that? I feel like you're trying to create beef here because can't she walk to school? I thought that she's in a walking distance.

She can, but it's kind of cold today, so I figured I'd give her a drive. It's like six blocks away. Can't she go through the scary skyway that Andrew and I had to walk through where the three tufts were?

Just give her a knife and some bear spray.

There's just, I mean, there's nothing. I mean, everything's closed still in the skyway, so it's like just tumbleweeds are going through that thing.

Yeah, no, I mean, honestly, when things are, like, open, those skyways, some of them sketch me out, and that's pre-pandemic, so you made the right call. But you just do need to let Piper know that it's back on, just so she can.

Okay, I will absolutely do that.

All right, Stu, thanks for checking in, man. Stay safe out there, okay?

So thanks for calling, guys. And, Andrew, can you play Dust Kids by Andy Schaaf when we go out today?

Sure, Dust Kids.

Dust Kids, the name of the song, yeah.

You can count on it. All right, will do. Thanks, Stu. Thank you, man. Bye. Bye.

Bye.

just did a kevin and bean on him i cut him off as he was saying later i thought i was gonna be

i thought i was gonna be so clean there here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female oh man it's not from a female all right uh any uh emails or vmails

my friend yes um let me dial into one of these vmails that i got yesterday i believe this person left their name off of the tape probably for good reason hey luke and andrew uh this is chris

from seattle calling no it's chris from and it's been about 24 hours since this incident happened to me and it's been living rent-free in my head as you like to say and can you pause it out yeah

you did i don't think you did this intentionally andrew but you just really upped my interest level in this voicemail by thinking that Chris didn't leave his name because, you know, that makes me think we're about to hear something that does not reflect well on listener Chris, and I love it.

Well, I think that was me just fumbling around, trying to hang up on Stu while dialing up this audio at the same time and me just saying words, so don't read too much into it. Okay, sounds good, but yeah, but Chris is a terrible, terrible person, and what he does in this voicemail will shock you living rent-free in my head as you like to say

and i want it out and so i have to call and leave this voicemail um to hopefully get this instant out and i i apologize uh but i was uh driving down i5 yesterday and i'm we're approaching the 520 floating bridge exit and there's this car that's like pulled over on the on the right hand lane and for anyone that doesn't live in Seattle like that's like not a great place to pull over it's like really busy this is just like the heart of Seattle and on the interstate I'm like there's a ton of traffic and there's a ton of traffic this day and I'm in the right hand lane and I see this car pulled over up ahead of me and so I'm trying to figure out a way to get left to give them a lane of space but I can't really and so as I'm getting closer I see this uh person get out of the driver's door and dash around to the passenger side um right next to the cement wall and i'm getting closer and closer and they pull open the back rear passenger door and the passenger door and just as i'm passing i see them squat down right along the interstate and relieve themselves in a monstrous poop and oh my god i just can't stop thinking about that and i apologize for reading this voicemail but uh it was just awful i keep thinking about like what a bad day that person must have been having to have that moment and how many things must have gone wrong to get them to that moment okay it's like the opposite of like the the clean bathroom first use of the day story so i apologize um but hopefully i can now move on from thinking about this all the time this is a terrible sign off but power out i mean

chris needs help i'm glad he started by calling the voicemail line because that was necessary

he's still working some stuff out clearly yeah i did the i think that the only thing that could have made this worse would have been unbroken direct eye contact between listener chris and the person squatting off of i5 like that moment of just like human to human acknowledgement um is uh intense wow i mean all i can say is wow i have you know told many a story about stomach discomfort on this show and you know very famously on the show had uh you know a situation when i was a kid where uh i did not make it to the bathroom in time at the kingdom during a mariners baseball game what i've never done it for all of my stomach distress is i have never hit that point although i've considered it at times there's been a couple of times where i thought okay what is like what's the plan here if things escalate even one more click and it is basically do that but man oh man uh i i your your heart goes out to that person um because that's that's really kind of plan z well no plan z is just pooping your pants but that's like plan x you know and i5 it's not like you're on a country road right where you're you can go kind of in the in the the long the tall grass and let you do your stuff this is like this is like i mean that's that's Again, that is the act of a very desperate person, and your heart goes out to them. And your heart goes out to listener Chris. I mean, that's almost like.

like seeing somebody do that is is sort of like seeing two people engaged in in mommy and daddy time in real life it's breathtaking you know when you're not part of it i don't think i've ever actually seen that i mean i'm not i'm trying to get too personal here i don't think i have i know people though who have you know who have observed that sort of a thing not in the context of some kind of um arrangement you know mutually agreed upon adventure that is involving you know consenting adults but more just kind of like somehow seeing that and i have heard that it is a very very it kind of takes your breath away because you're just so not probably used to being around that if that makes sense i'm trying to be sort of delicate not gross and you know my nieces might be listening but anyway i don't think i've ever watched somebody have a number two incident like listener chris just described and i think that's also one of those things that really probably kind of shocks you to the point of taking your breath away yeah i saw it once but it was a very

different situation because it was in uh it was in la it was like near macarthur park luke and so you know that area there's somebody who's struggling pretty bad and you see a lot of people who are kind of struggling in that area and you know i think it was either middle of the sidewalk or maybe even middle of the street and i maybe had to veer around them i'm not exactly sure but it was just like that was just like you know really sad for a whole bunch of reasons when you're somebody who's like kind of driving on the highway i keep on thinking like because i kind of know that area and i just think that like like i haven't had a real bathroom emergency in a long time oddly the last couple i had that really got me thinking about contingency plans was um here in my own house because we only have one bathroom and it's funny because i even met you know one time like genevieve was like in the shower or maybe even i think she was drying her hair and i think i told you this story and you're like well just knock on the door and say i need to use the restroom now but there's some sort of like i don't know stubborn will i had where i'm just like i don't want to kick genevieve out of the bathroom so that i can do some so i can do my stuff like i just i don't know but it got it got really um bad and that's when i realized this is how you know it got bad because i'm doing the math in my head and i start saying why do we keep the only bucket in the house in the bathroom and i'm starting to think like after this we will start storing the bucket in a place that isn't the bathroom still in the bathroom by the way Because when you're not facing it head on, head on, apply directly to the forehead, head on, apply directly to the forehead. But, you know, when the moment passes and everything's OK again, you think it's silly to think we need to keep the bucket somewhere else because you forget immediately just how terrible that situation was.

Yeah, it's the kind of thing where it's all you can think about when it's happening. And it's just it's an absolutely terrible experience. And then once you have had relief because either it just went away or you were able to use the facilities, it immediately goes into the distant past of your mind because you're not feeling that direct pain anymore. I want to say, you know, Portland's got a lot of people who are dealing with a lot of mental health stuff and drug addiction and a lot of people who are, you know, unhoused. And I want to give a big thumbs down, though, to whoever took the time to bring a toilet that was clearly taken out of a boat. It was like a plastic toilet that had been—I used to have a toilet on the boat in Seattle, so I kind of know what they look like. Somebody had a toilet that was like a marine toilet. They had positioned it at the top of these stairs That go from the Burnside Bridge down to This path That runs along the river They had taken the time To bring that toilet there But then they had also, I would think it's the same people Taking the time to poop on about seven of the steps Going down And I wondered, why bring the toilet I mean, it would have been gross Because the toilet wasn't hooked up to plumbing It would have been pretty gross for it to be in the toilet But you know where it was more gross? On the steps Would have been more contained at least Yes exactly like again The toilet was not great But that would have been a more Logical place to do also more comfortable Than the steps Which These are not the same steps by the way Andrew when I first moved here that had a situation Those steps have finally Enough rain has fallen And no one else has decided to use them For going number two That those steps are now okay But these other steps are now not okay

I'm having a little bit of a freak out here Because I was juggling things And I already forgot to write down What Stu's song was And I have goldfish brain It was Dust Kit It was by Andy somebody Andy Schaaf was at it Yeah Dust Kit Andy Schaaf I'm going to text him what was that song Oh it is it's Dust Kids by Andy Schaaf there was Okay good

Dust One, it was basically about someone going missing in the military. What is that? I'm not getting the reference. That was what season two of Serial was called. Oh, yeah, right, right, right. Because Bo Bergdahl, when he sort of walked off his base, I believe that's called a Dust One for some reason. I forgot about that. That's some kind of military term. Gotcha, but I got to hear it. You and everyone except me and Bo Bergdahl, so believe me, Andrew, that's not on you. That one is definitely not on you

Okay I do have that song dialed up I'm sorry I just had a bit of a panic But did you want me to read one more email Or should we just go out with that song now

We should go out with the song Because you know what I have to do Andrew Is I have to learn how to jump rope In the next like 40 minutes Because we're having on for LiveWire We're talking to a married couple Of world champion jump ropers Who are leading all these jump rope classes online And they're going to talk about it And then I'm going to have to learn how to do jump rope tricks with a teeny tiny, the executive director of our show, who is the person who hipped us to this because she's been doing jump roping with this couple. She loaned me her jump rope, but she is about five to. That doesn't work. Oh, yeah. And this jump rope is for a person who is five to. And so it's going to and I'm going to have a like a microphone, like like a lavalier microphone attached to me and AirPods. And it's going to be a it's basically going to be a disaster. And so I have to get ready for that, meaning we should probably just go ahead and wrap up the show today.

Why don't you call down to the desk? I'm sure they might have a jump rope or something you can borrow. They seem like they're in the people.

By the way, still no call. Still no call. Oh, yeah.

And by the way, it's eleven forty five a.m. as we speak. So, oh, no, no. We're no longer in the nine to noon window.

But I'm saying they were they were looking into the idea of having the person come out later today. and it's just a just absolute non-response so anyway that's not to go out on a negative note I'm trying to I was given I was given a big speech to my sister and brother-in-law last night about how I really want to work on just if I encounter a setback just kind of going with it more being like hey it's going to be alright so I want to end the show by saying hey it's going to be alright thanks for listening everyone we're back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you Until then, enjoy your Tuesday Take care of yourself, mask up please And also please remember, no mountain too tall

And good luck to all

He says I was reading about these kids They're like two years old Recalling their past lives Could you imagine if that was your kid? Rose asks if we want another I say I'll take another life They say what happens in between He says some talk about heaven And watching from up above And I imagine sitting on that shelf Watching over you Just waiting to be someone else If I died and you died too Could we sit up in heaven And choose to live on together They say after you die You start drifting skyward And it reminds me of a dream I had Where I was short in a shopping mall I died and started rising Until I dove headfirst into the ground I woke up and told Judy She started laughing at me Just laughing in the morning light Power out