Muse

We tear all the wood out. We want to get rid of anything that seems natural, authentic.

Get rid of the espresso machine, get rid of that, that, all goes, that, all goes.

Anything rustic is gone. Anything authentic, anything organic, anything permanent. Also, this is a vape store. Yeah. So we want a carpeting that's going to absorb, and I don't mean mask, but literally just absorb the odor so that when people come in here, they're just overwhelmed.

Okay, you want it to be pungent. Jaundice. Sickly, vomitous. A piece of vial. You want it to smell like old bubble gum.

Yeah, have you ever huffed an airwick? The lighting is too warm in here.

This is too, I'm feeling too good about this. You know, I want to see my own zits. Like an old thrift store or something, maybe. No, that's even too descriptive.

That's too kitschy.

It should just be like part of an airport that you ignore.

Think of hanging out inside a vending machine.

A cell phone store. Mm-hmm.

Batteries Plus.

Make sure your bathroom really has got a toilet that's way too high and kind of big. Also, two plungers.

Two plungers says it all. TBTL.

One more bodily. functions in the news this morning the next time you pass gas make sure no police are around that's science these are facts i'm just i'm kind of flabbergasted when you say things like that it's weird thank you not a compliment so maybe this isn't exactly the most polished radio broadcast you've ever heard no you're you're going to tell a story i don't believe that i can bear

to listen to another one of your stories right now

all right hello good morning and welcome to a wednesday edition of tbtl the show that just

might be too beautiful to live this is a disaster i mean this is something that should not happen

my name is luke burbank i am your host no no no no coming to you from the nest broadcast center high in the sky above portland oregon where it is it has stopped raining for just a hot minute noise uh long enough for it to be pretty dry outside i was um i was ruminating on yesterday's episode of the show where i took a moment to talk about how much i find uh the weather channel boring thinking like who would ever uh you know listen to someone or watch someone just talking about the weather in some place and at the time i did in that moment i did mention that i talked about the weather too much here but i don't think i fully uh fully comprehended how much of tbtl is about the weather in portland oregon these days and how sort of you know not helpful that is to the listeners so this is the last day i will ever tell you what's going on in portland oregon just know that it was a uh sort of cloudy day in february the 3rd 2021 in the year of our lord uh so that's uh the update on that here's the update on three thousand three five one episode let the fun begin oh man i talked about this yesterday or at least i promoted it yesterday it didn't get to it the um idea of revenge bedtime procrastination is a real thing and man i was suffering from it last night just that thing when you want to go to sleep you're tired you're so sleepy but you you won't for some reason for reasons that make no sense to even your own brain i'm just sitting there on my ipod we'll get into the science of that uh and also So we'll talk about the Wendy's in Washington, D.C. that has finally been, they've used eminent domain to get rid of a Wendy's that was causing so much traffic. It was my favorite Wendy's in Washington, D.C., for the record, when I was living there. So we'll update you on that. Plus, emails and V-mails. And this guy, the longest-running co-bro of the show, known for his drawings of tall ships, their grace, their majesty, he is. Oh, hey, y'all said my name. Andrew Walsh, and he's joining us right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. I am sorry for the late dial-up.

That's okay. I have something that I want to say. And at first, I was concerned that it was going to come off too much as a commercial message, like a free commercial for a product. Now, I'm doubly concerned that it's also going to lead to a conversation about international politics, which I'm unprepared to have. One of my favorite topics. but all I wanted to say in a very Twin Peaks-y fashion is I am drinking a damn good cup of coffee here, Luke. I was sitting here doing my work this morning. I was sitting here on my iPod, and, you know, you make a pot of coffee and you drink it, you do it every morning. You don't, I don't know, maybe not everybody's like this, but I'm not thinking.

tons about the coffee it's just part of the the routine and i'm sipping it it's just kind of like the grease that you insert into the machinery that is your life yeah and i am just so you know i'm i

just i don't have literally like good taste you know what i mean in like food and beverage like i don't i would debate that by the way well i don't know if i have very much discerning taste there are certain things i have strong feelings on but anyway i'm sipping this coffee all of a sudden And I'm just thinking, I realize in the back of my head, I'm thinking, boy, Andrew, you did a good job making this pot of coffee today. So that's where it started, by the way. Good job, Andrew. You really mixed the water and bean combination correctly. Then suddenly I take another sip. I'm like, no, this is really different than what I usually drink. And I look down. This was a bag of coffee from our favorite coffee shop, of course, Broadcast Coffee. Shout out to Broadcast Berry. and I looked at the bag and it's a kind I'd never had before and I had just opened it this morning but I didn't really think about it again I'm just in the fog of sleep or whatever and this is where politics come in I'm like well what is this stuff called and it's Myanmar coffee and so this is where I hand things over to you Luke and have you explain everything that's going on with the coup there Aung San Suu Kyi yes and the charges against her and then also how you feel about her turning a blind eye to the genocide of the muslim popular well as we say on this show often um

should be complicated yeah and i would not say i would not i would not try to elevate or sort of frame on sun so chi as a perfect person but i would also say the fact that the military has now executed a coup in that country i would say it's not good do you like though how So I just went from sipping my coffee and thinking it was good. You took a delicious sip of coffee and turned it into me trying to weigh in on the overall life arc of Aung San Suu.

And I didn't cheat. I didn't, you know what I mean? I just tossed it to you. You just think you're doing a TBTL. You want to talk about, I don't know, farts or something. And now I just tee you up.

Wow, that's what you think I come into each episode with. You're right. I had so much to say on farts.

Well, I thought you'd expect me to take it to farts and for you to finish it off. But instead, I dropped you off right.

you know what like a story seriously what i thought of when i saw that story was it and this is a kind of i guess a like oblique political statement about america which is when i saw that i thought freaking a i'm so appreciative that our our sort of uh institutions held up luke because

yes yep sorry i didn't need to cut you off i but i actually thought of you this is a weird thing this sorry I'm in a strange over talking mood today but when I I think this news broke maybe Sunday night uh maybe maybe Saturday night but I think it was Sunday night and I saw that you know that looked like an apparent coup and I saw the headline read the first couple of graphs and I thought of you because my brain said this coup stuff hit different now and that's not a phrase i ever use but i think i've heard you use it before and i remember thinking why did i just use that phrase luke is incepting me um and i was thinking could be hitting different yes but i did i thought of you i was like that's weird i'm thinking like luke talks um but i was like yeah like these coups they always just seem so far away and unrelatable and now you read these stories and they are so much more relatable and in i don't know if scary is the right word but you know in in the context of of our own democracy it just changes the way i look at these things

absolutely like there have been many coups that have gone on all over the world for years and i've never thought like i've just never paid much attention to them i mean i should have but i i've just kind of thought like well that sounds like those people didn't do it right it's sort of like the equivalent of like when you see an old person you think wow why'd you let that happen you know and and then but now it's like when when you hear about a place where the the the junta actually managed to wrest power from the i mean i again i don't know enough about miyamar's politics but i'm assuming ansan suchi was uh was elected in a way that was at least vaguely democratic when you hear about the military junta wresting power away from the democratically elected leader of a country now i'm thinking i'm sorry shush we missed that by like 40 000 votes right right yeah you know like if it i mean this is a thing that our friend chris hay says often on twitter which is that like if it had gone differently like by 40 000 votes or at least if there was

If the recent presidential election had come down to one state, let's say it was Pennsylvania, if it came down to like 10,000, 40,000 votes in Pennsylvania, I think we're in a Myanmar situation here. And that's something that kind of rests in my head now. I guess I hope permanently in that it makes me really appreciative of how this country works and how it did work in this one situation. But, yeah, that's a thought I would never have had before, and I had the same thought that you had.

Yeah, and not to get too deep into it, but I do think that the difference is, and the thing that I can't get my head around is, I think the difference is not just the vote counts, but also the role of the military. I mean, thank God we never were in a situation where it seemed like there were significant military leaders who were saying—

Well, thank God the military probably, like, low-key hated bone spurs Trump the whole time. Right, right, yes, yeah, sure. Right. Like he wasn't he didn't even had he just been like a Wesley Clark or somebody who had put in some time and sort of had the affection of the military. Who knows. Right. But yeah. I'm sorry what you were saying. Oh, no, no. That's it. But yeah. So thankfully, this guy was so patently a fraud. Yeah. To the military that there was pretty like limited danger of them doing his bidding. But, yeah, like, let's please not get the more competent version of Donald Trump doing his thing. Right. Because then, whoa.

Now, what about farts? No, not what about farts. What's going on with your apartment? That is actually something I'm legit interested in hearing about. Any good news?

I want to read the email that I sent to them sort of late last night, and I want to get your thoughts on it. And because I feel like I may have – this was one of these things where I had like five drafts of it.

I thought you were going to say you had five glasses of wine before you wrote it.

I had five glasses of wine and four farts before I farted this off. No, like I really went around and around with sort of wondering do I want to just – it's the last part of the email that I kind of am wondering if it was the right call or not. Let me read this to you, if you don't mind. Hey there. This is Luke Burbank in apartment number redacted.

You can just see me from the outside of the building. Just go outside. Look up. I'll wave at you.

Our friend Kat, who once lived in this building, emailed me or texted me last night and was like, It is so sort of fun to hear somebody who is also living in this building just talk about how kind of weirdly low-key frustrating the staffing or the whatever it is, the way that the leasing office helps or doesn't help the people who live here. And yet I am somehow for some reason being kind of vague about my actual unit number, not that anybody can get up here and mess with me, But, okay, this is Luke Burbank from Unit Number Redacted. I wanted to follow up on the issue with my dishwasher and see how we might resolve things. This is where I thought I was really channeling you, Andrew. Sorry for the lengthy email, but I just wanted to lay out the timeline. I had written the whole email and reviewed it like four to five times, and I thought, this is a pretty long email. What if I say sorry for the lengthy email so as to let them know that I'm a friend? bullet point number one. I moved into this apartment building on November 12th. On November 19th, the first time I tried to use the dishwasher, it wouldn't turn on. So I emailed and asked to have it looked at. And I was told, quote, because of COVID, repairs might not be happening. This was surprising to me because it wouldn't be a safety hazard for someone to come into my apartment, my empty apartment, I should say, and look at an appliance. But I figured it would be worked out eventually End of email

Oh, well, that's nice Okay, good Weird, I mean, it's a cliffhanger

Yeah, that's I just wanted to bring them over to the next episode

Bullet point numero Numero dos

Later, I was told to file a work ticket through the FPS I was almost going to not say FPS As if that would help somebody get up to this apartment building Like if a listener was like Oh, they use the FPS management

Now we can really Now we know where he is

Later I was told to file a work Ticket through the FPS website which I did Eventually an electrician Came out, Ryder And I didn't That's not parenthetically I just wanted to say that

Oh yeah and by the way can I interject

Here for one second you really liked Ryder When Ryder came out

right didn't i was vibing with rider yeah see we got an email from someone who's like a property manager and heard our conversation yesterday and said i'm sorry that your building's managers aren't you know doing you right but please lay off the you know be kinder to the repair people in these situations like have we said one bad thing about the repair people in these situations

we have not i believe that i've said i think i may have described rider as somebody who i'm

ride or die with that's right you loved rider and that's the only person i'm heavily pro rider

i don't like thomas yeah uh yeah i'm i'm very i'm i'm anyway so here we go by kind of resetting rubbing my hands together because of how i really am wondering if you're gonna think i was being a jerk in this email andrew or if you think this is okay uh okay i emailed and asked to have it looked at i was told because of covid Repairs might not be happening. This was surprising to me because it wouldn't be a safety hazard for someone to come into my empty apartment and look at an appliance, but I figured it would be worked out eventually. Next bullet point. Later, I was told to file a work ticket through the FPS website, which I did. Eventually, an electrician came out. I couldn't fix it. Yada, yada. But this was followed by two months of radio silence from your management company. Next bullet point. Finally, I get a call from your maintenance company telling me, not asking me, this is parenthetical, not asking me when would be a good time, but telling me that the appointment is set for today at 9 a.m. I asked if that was the only time since I have an early work Zoom every day at 9 a.m. I'm still staying with this notion that what we do is a Zoom, Andrew. I hope that's okay with you. I was told that this was the only time. So I asked, or that this was the time they would be here. So I asked, quote, will they be here right at 9? And I was told, yes. In fact, they are usually early. I put this in quotes so they would understand that this was exactly what had been told to me. Yes, that's not a paraphrase. Right. I'm not being kind of like fat. I'm not remembering this months later. This is, like, actually what was said. So I moved my meeting. But this is a meeting, by the way, Andrew. Hope that adds a certain number. Oh, yes. I'm sorry.

Should we put our oars in the water? Wait, was that a joke between you and I? Do you even know what I'm talking about?

I do know what that is, but I don't know if that's a joke between you and I.

Yeah, you know what? That was when I worked at New Hampshire Public Radio. I think that was something that Mike Arnold, our program director, always did. to start meetings by the oars system right hold on hold on no meeting slang oars let's see if uh

let me try to guess when you like once you have it can i try to guess what yeah um oars is yeah if i can i mean i know that like the idea of rowing in the same direction or let's all try to pull you know like in the same direction that's a kind of a businessy thing but i've never heard oars kind of described or or you know what i mean like i've never heard oars as something that stood

for something yes i'm seeing it referenced but i'm not getting a good definition of it here you keep reading your article we'll see if we can come back to this later in the show oars only

Always Only always Really Really Something Only always Really Seriously

The S might be superfluous Not that it stands for superfluous Not that the O-R-A is great It might just be the O-A-R Okay I'll figure this out I'll get back to you

This was followed by two months of radio silence from this management company. Finally, I get a call from maintenance yesterday telling me, not asking me when would be a good time, but telling me that the appointment is set for today at 9 a.m. I asked if that was the only time since I have a work Zoom every day at 9 a.m. I was told that it would be the only time, so I asked, will they be there right at 9 a.m.? And I was told, yes, in fact, they're usually early. So I moved my meeting and waited, and at 9.30, no one had shown up. Would you say showed up or shown up?

Nobody showed up. In that case, nobody showed up, I think. Dang it.

I had it that way originally.

What did you say, nobody shown up?

Nobody had shown.

Oh, no, I think that's fine. I don't know. I think that's fine.

That was one of the things that I actually, like, in my many revisions to this email, I went back and...

uh changed it because i felt like if i'm grammatically incorrect that just like loses me even more cred with this company no i think you're good there at at 9 30 no one had shown up so i called your company only to be informed they needed quote a three-hour window which didn't work because i had moved my meeting to 10 a.m and couldn't move it again by the way that is the longest graph in the email and i i really went back and forth as to the efficacy of this like how many sort of petulant emails do you think this management company gets a day from this building that has i would assume like 100 or 200 units in it maybe not enough i just was like they're gonna tune out like i tune out from emails that you send that They are one to three sentences. And this graph alone, this bullet point alone is pretty long.

I was going to say, if anything, my only concern so far is you might be abusing the bullet point structure. But I mean, you know, you take that with you to get.

No, you're totally right. What I what my thinking was, was I will break this up into bullet points so it will not seem like an epic screed. Right. Yes.

No, I like the bullet. But you're right.

Each bullet point is a paragraph. Yeah. And so I have then defeated my own sort of attempt.

I do think that that is a thing. Like, I am more likely to read something as bullet points, even if those bullet points are essentially paragraphs. So, like, there is something psychological about that.

This time, baby, I'll use bullet points. That was LaRue's follow-up song. Okay. I called you only to be informed They needed a two hour window Oh I tried to depersonalize this by the way Like I really tried to Not ever use Terminology that would make The reader of it feel like I was saying They are a bad person Even though some of them are bad people

Thomas

Yeah For some reason me whispering it Made it feel less directly hurtful to thomas but yes yes i had this bad person okay um uh they informed me they needed a window which didn't work uh for me because i had moved my meeting to 10 a.m and couldn't move it again next bullet point we're about halfway through this now now i'm being told the next time this particular repair company can come out is february 19th that will mean more than three months which is a quarter of my entire release wherein the dishwasher won't be operational now it's like three months and two days was i being excessive by saying more than three months i mean it is technically true it is more than three months no if it's true it's true okay i'll allow it i'll allow it gilding it gilding it a slight bit because like three months and seven days but seven days is a week so there you go um next bullet point this is where i feel like i got a little snippy if the particular appliance company that you work with only has appointments every three months i would advise finding another company yeah all right i have friends in portland who live in apartments and have not had similar issues in terms of getting repair slash maintenance in a timely fashion. That's 100% true, by the way. Yeah, I mean, it's just, and again, to the,

you know, I do realize that there might be some slowdowns. We said this yesterday, but just to underscore it for those who didn't process it, like, there might be slowdowns in the system, and people are, you know, risking their health by being, you know, a kind of Frontline worker by you know being Right maybe an essential worker is really What I mean here so not to Diminish that role at all but I mean This is not an issue with those folks This is an issue with the management Company their communication style their management Style and their disregard for your time

Right yeah there Are other people that are living in this City who I know who have had Literally a friend of mine had Her dishwasher That's not true it was her garbage disposal But still, that's in the family.

It's even scarier.

Even more essential. Or even less essential. Actually, even less essential. Because it's like, could you get by without the disposal? Probably let's throw the food waste out in a different receptacle. She had her disposal not working. They came up the next day, much like the StewBots management company in St. Paul. They came up the next day. They assessed.

The disposal was broken, and they put a new disposal in. That all happened probably one mile from here during the pandemic. Next bullet point in this epically long email. If I were to not pay part of my rent, that would be a breach. This is also when I feel like I got a little. I deleted, by the way, I deleted an entire bullet point from this. Like after reading it, sending it to myself, rereading it, I took out a whole bullet point that I felt seemed a little aggressive. This is what sort of remained. If I were to not pay part of my rent, that would be a breach of my lease. But your management company not doing what it needs to do to make sure the appliances are operational in my unit is also a breach of my contract. I would like to discuss a rent proration for the months that I have not had a functioning dishwasher as promised in my apartment. Full stop. But then I signed it appreciatively L.

I think that's good. I don't think there's a problem with the ending. I do think, and I could be wrong about this. Of course, we also kind of meandered and I interrupted a bunch. I almost wonder if we could have just gotten to that end part sooner just say it's been three and a half months my dishwasher hasn't been working you know I think this should be prorated and then like just light the fire underneath them I get why you wrote all of that and I would have as well but I do wonder if like if I was going to edit that that might have been what I would have

yeah no it should see previous comments between you and I like yeah this is like an email that they probably get some version of all the time being the managers of this building and i can't imagine they read all the way through it would have probably been faster for everyone if i just went hey it's luke burbank i wanted to follow up on the issue with my dishwasher i've been trying to get y'all to fix this for three months um either fix it or give me some rent right i can i i i think i got caught up in the idea of like arguing my case i I wanted them to know I wasn't an insane person, but in writing a four-page email, I became an insane person to them. Yeah, that's the thing.

You think in the moment, especially when you're all worked up, that let me be as clear as possible here. And by being clear, and I—

Sorry for the lengthy email. I just wanted to lay out the timeline.

Right. And this is something that, like, even in a non-angry situation, when I just want to be really clear about something, And that's something I kind of pride myself on is just like clear communication, you know, when it needs to happen, like via email. But I do end up writing too much. And this is my biggest struggle all the time. Like I want this to be often it'll be a bullet pointed thing. I'm trying to think of an example with my volunteer group explaining a process to a new person is sometimes like this. Or if I'm working on a project for TBTL and I need to link in different departments at APM, and I don't know who a lot of the people are at the other side of some of these emails because we're working together for the first time, I will want to be very clear. So I write down everything, but sometimes I feel like writing down everything might actually work against me, maybe like trim it down even more than circle back to fill in the rest later. I'm not sure about that, but I understand where you're coming from.

Yeah, I really went back and forth on that because I wanted to avoid the whoever. And by the way, I CC'd everybody down there whose email I had. OK. So it's like, you know, Thomas is the head of the operation. But I guess I was thinking like, you know, let's let everyone else know down the chain that Thomas sucks. I want to blast him in front of his. colleagues but then but then i really went back and forth on the just like how verbose to be in this in this email again the reason i said sorry for the lengthy email i hope that that was sort of a little bit kind of nodding to the fact that i got i i understood that this was like too much too many words in this email but i felt like at the end of the day which is literally when i sent this at the c of the o of the b i thought it was better for me to indicate to them the details of this so as to indicate that i'm not a person that's just having a feeling because if you send an email that says hey uh it's luke perbank in this particular unit and uh my dishwasher is broken and wtf can you please like you've not fixed it yet all caps that doesn't seem like a person who necessarily has a case.

as a timeline, did file the repair request through the – like I erred on the side of sort of like backing up my bona fides. Do you say bona fides or bona fides?

It depends on the circumstance. I go back. I avoid the word, I actually think.

It depends on whatever the person said the last time I heard someone reference it.

Right, right, yeah.

So I guess the last person I heard say it said bona fides. But I just I guess I erred on the side of of trying to set my case, even if it made them think I was a crazy. I erred on the side of laying out the facts of the situation so as to show them that I'm not just a person who's having a moment. I'm a person who has done all of the steps they asked.

And you spelled this out in a way that it makes it seem like this, that you're laying something out. If you're not communicating this and they're not hearing you, then you are going to take some sort of other action. The fact that you end this with an action item like here's what I need is for some rent consideration here.

That's the part that I felt was actually the most – it's very funny how we change over the course of our life because I was very nervous to send the email with the last clause being I need to discuss proration with you. and i think it's because the people who work here also live in this building which is hilarious because we all have masks on and were i to not tell them hey i'm luke burbank i live in the unit i live in they would have no idea who i am you think so but there was interesting i wonder about

that you mean like if you get in an elevator with somebody who works there they don't they don't

maybe connect you to your i mean there's so many apartments in this building i would assume they don't they always try to pretend they do when i call them or email them they're like like if i call them they're like i'm like hey it's luke burbank in my unit and they're like oh hi it's so nice to hear from you i'm like you don't know this this you know mid-40s white guy who lives in this building which is to say most of the people here um but uh i i was yeah i was trying to establish with them that i am not just another crank who lives here and again our mutual friend who lived here was completely supporting me maybe she was just you know being a pal but she was completely supporting me in the sort of uh premise that the people who work here or at least the

management style of this building sucks yes and she was she was on this tip before things even got

um kind of as he did or as she bought low she bought game stock yeah like five dollars by the way down 80 did you see that oh no but i started to see you know that i tried to short game stock like two days ago really yeah i got on one time sponsor robin hood and because i still had some money bouncing around in there i mean not anything you know substantive but i got on robin hood and And I had my, like, 50 bucks or something that was in there. And I tried to short GameStop. And it turns out that you have to actually use a real brokerage company.

I was going to ask because I don't think I was going to say because there's a difference. Obviously, you know this. But, like, a lot of people were hopping on to buy GameStop. But to short it, that's that whole lending thing, right? Exactly. That sounds complicated.

My sense is that – or at least what I was told by the small print at Robinhood was you need to be going through some kind of brokerage that has whatever accreditation they need to essentially loan you money against a stock based on the idea that you think the stock will be – will plummet. and it's not a thing that they're and this wasn't because of rob i mean robin has been very central in the story of games gamestop and these uh other companies that have been part of this whole craziness but this wasn't an example of that from robin hood this was just they just don't have probably whatever kind of like special class that you need to do that so i wanted to i wanted to short gamestop on monday uh because i was like this is definitely gonna like the internet is gonna as it does the internet is going to become fascinated with something else and as soon as it becomes interested in something else this whole farce of gamestop is going to completely collapse

and i was not wrong i love that you're leaning into you just like the you're the evil side of this you know like and i haven't been following this closely but i just know that don't pass

line yeah i am a hundred percent listen i got i'm trying to make that money right and what i see in this is a reddit joke that got into the water so

supply i don't think i think the fundamentals of gamestop remain bad yeah yeah and so i was like yeah the internet will get distracted with something else and then this thing will collapse because it's a terrible idea to go drive to a strip mall and buy a or rent a video game like that's just not a thing that's happening enough for this business and i was like and all of these dinguses are getting in at you know three hundred dollars a share so let me short that but i was Told by Robin Hood that In fact I was at the wrong website and that Was where my interest in shorting GameStop

Ended I want to get to something Because I have an update for you I want to get to something before The break but if I can just extend the GameStop Story one click further Before we do that The Chewy Guy did he bail out Or is he still at the head of GameStop

Great question I don't know the answer

To that I heard that he made you know boatloads Of money but I don't know if he's still in the position Of you know Was it CEO or whatever A leadership position at the company itself He was added to the board of directors Because here's the deal Before all of this completely blew up If I'm remembering the original story well enough As you kind of laid it out on this show I believe his name is Ryan Cohen Okay And it started with him You know he's an e-commerce person Who saw some value in GameStop And is the person who was saying We can modernize GameStop I believe there still is a future there as, you know, we move to online video game shopping. So there was already a seed of an idea to take this legacy brand and modernize it. He wasn't trying to short sell it, I don't think. I think he was actually. So my thing is, if that is still the plan, GameStop is potentially set up to be successful in an already crowded space where you're already buying your video games directly on the Xbox to Microsoft. or you're using the Steam platform. Now, how does GameStop nudge its way into that market? Well, now – Nudge by nature? Yeah. Now – I don't even think I use nudge the right way, but just kind of shoulder its way in. Now, it's got this name recognition. Now, I think that from a marketing standpoint, they need to be careful with this, how they use it, but they need to figure out a way to leverage that.

My friend was driving through Kaiser, Oregon, which is, I'm told, near Salem. And she said, this is like two days ago, and she said, there was a huge line to the In-N-Out burger, and next to it, there was a GameStop, and there was a bunch of people going into the GameStop. And those are people who are just like, hey, GameStop sounds like a thing. Yeah, yeah. So you're absolutely right. This is a moment for that company. And you're absolutely right. Ryan Cohn was not trying to short GameStop. He bought a bunch of stock in it because he thought there's something here for business fundamentals. But he then wrote an open letter saying, you guys aren't doing it right, and then was added to this expanded board of directors. But yeah, he was definitely like – he, who is a much smarter person than I am, and I'm sure every time he writes an email to his apartment management company, it's flawless. But he saw value in GameStop. So I assume there is maybe some value there. But I also am kind of mad that I didn't follow through with my shorting of GameStop theory on like Monday because I would have made, I don't know how much, but a lot of money because exactly what I thought was going to happen is now happening.

Yeah, yeah. And it was bound to happen.

I mean, that doesn't make me doesn't make me a real Michael Milken. It's just like this is one of the few times that I've actually observed the sort of horizon financially and have been right. Yes.

If you don't mind, Luke, can I do a hard left turn here and update you on the OARS thing? Because I couldn't find anything online. I thought, well, Mike will remember again, my old boss, Mike Arnold. But then I go to contact him, and I realize the only email I have for him was from an old job that he hasn't had for, like, a decade. And the text number I have for him is labeled as both him and his wife's name. That's how old this contact has been in my phone.

How do you feel that's just how it, like, shows up, or that's the email address?

Yeah, I don't think this is him sharing a text message with his wife or a phone number with his wife, I should say. I think this was just so long ago. I think that I probably entered it when I first met them or whatever. It's probably on me, but my point is –

My question to you – I'm sorry to interrupt what you're trying to say, but my question to you is how do you feel about the email addresses or social media accounts that are a sort of portmanteau of the –

couple yeah i'm not i'm not in into that you know i knew some people who had like joint facebook accounts with you know them and their spouse that always seemed i mean it seemed a bit odd to me but i also i think there was a time when i might be a harsher critic of that move but like sure but now i'm just like well who gives a shit i'm not even on there like it's gonna like do what you want to

do it feels to me like somebody in the relationship on some very very very subconscious level was kind

of like not trusting the other person oh i don't i don't think it's i think it's mostly an age thing i think it's a generational thing i think it's when no old people never trust each other i mean i could be wrong but in the instances that i saw talking specifically about an email address that is shared or specifically a facebook account that was shared like

bob and diane yeah like bob and diane at yahoo.com they were just getting on the internet for the

first time and we're doing it together as a because i don't think they knew the internet

that right they were like they because bob didn't know how much shadiness was out there and he he bought high on that joint that joint email account right but i to me you're probably right that like a lot of those a lot of those kind of shared social media things came from a time where we were still trying to understand what social media was um i definitely think at this at this moment that we're at in 2021 it's definitely like a flex where one person in the relationship is trying to make sure that everything that happens on social is run through both people in the relationship so you still see that i guess i just don't oh i see it i see it more so now like i'm with you that i think that the shared email address or shared facebook login or handle, if you will, from 10 years ago was probably just because it was like, well, now we have a Facebook. Yes, but what are you seeing now, though?

What's an example? I mean, you don't have to call somebody specifically out, but I can't picture what you're talking about.

Genevieve and Andrew. On Instagram? At Genevieve and Andrew on Twitter.

Yeah, but you're seeing people like on Twitter who are just like, and they're people our age or younger who are like, hey, this is our...

It certainly happened less, but it happens pretty infrequently now. Oh, okay.

I thought you were saying you were seeing a lot more of it.

No. What I am seeing, though, is on TikTok, a lot of people talking about if somebody gives you – this is kind of to the side of it. But if somebody gives you the code to their phone or somebody gives you access to their social, that is more than unprotected sex, more than buying a house, more than even having children together. Getting access to somebody's social media Or access to their phone Which will give you access to their social media That is the most Vulnerable you can be in a relationship In 2021

I see oh yeah sharing logins And that kind of information so that you can Yeah that okay we were talking about different things But yeah I've kind of heard wind of that as well

Well I see I see the shared Facebook account of 10 years ago As a kind of precursor to the thing that we were talking about i feel they are connected on some level it's like you're either in fact there's a thing there's a meme going around on tiktok that's like like you're a shady person like it's a rap song where someone says like you're a shady person but i'm also a shady person we can't both be the shady person and it's like i feel like the uh the the shared login and and previously the kind of shared actual like literal handle was one person being like you're the shady person and i need to kind of like i want to keep eyes on this but that's only my theory as a shady person interesting

um okay well here we are now are we ready for a break at 46 minutes into the show i have an old i think i started trying to do this at like 20 minutes but okay here so i'm gonna wrap this up here so uh i i reach out to this text number that i have saved that is both mike and his wife and i write well here let me um get some music here mike wow this is andrew walsh is this still your

number i apologize if i have the wrong number i hope i hope the dawn finds you well is this a Ashokan Farewell? Of course it is. That's all I got.

I heard back from Mike immediately. He writes, it is. How are you?

Classic Mike Arnold.

Great. I am good. I have a strange question. I'm recording TBTL now, and I just mentioned... Why didn't you tell him? ...Oars. Just tell him. Thomas' Zoom call.

I know. I really debated that.

I'm on a work Zoom at 9 a.m. That can't be moved.

I'm on a Zoom with Thomas. I'm recording TBTL now, and I just mentioned ORS. Wasn't that something you used to start meetings with? Do you remember what that stands for? I don't recall doing that. Sorry.

Oh, no. What?

Scene.

Ask him if he recalls doing Mick Jagger at that friggin bar

Are you kidding me? He's probably doing it right now

I don't remember doing that So that drives me crazy

Here's the deal I think that Because Mike is not like a Mr. Manager kind of guy I mean he was a manager and he was a good manager But he's not somebody who goes in for the business speak

Mr. Manager was my father Please call me my carnal

So I think that I think that somebody else in the company, somebody who is given a little bit more to that kind of like business lingo was using some sort of oars system. And I think that Mike sort of adopted it half kidding on the square, not not like totally disrespectful, but he would use it. But with a little bit of a wink and a nod because he's like us, he's like a Gen X sarcasmo kind of guy at his at his heart. So so I think that he doesn't remember it because it wasn't as it didn't loom as large in his life. He probably just did it a few times as a as a kind of a as kind of a kidding kind of a kidding situation. And he doesn't recall. So this leaves us nowhere.

Somebody will email us with whatever the oars system is it. It bothers me because, oh, I pulled a Stephen A. dropped the other day that i'm gonna play for you at some point but not to hurt your feeling just because it's so funny he was talking about um uh a basketball player who he who he thought was not good at basketball kwame brown and he was like he's terrible at basketball he has no skills uh you know and he said said like um he said something that he said like the three most dismissive Degrading things you can say about a basketball Player and then said like No offense Where it was just like you Have just rendered this person Completely useless in the context That you're describing them in And then you're saying like but you know no offense Yeah right right right if I play that for you at some Point please understand it's not me saying you're bad At basketball it's just because it made me laugh

I was wondering why you were saying Like why it would offend me you mean you could Use it as an introduction To me on the show

When I heard it I thought this is a funny Out of context thing to play to welcome Andrew to the show But it's also pretty dismissive But it's not based in any True story

Because I'm really good at basketball Obviously you're a known One of the best I think Maybe not all time but certainly one of the best living

You're a Mac McClung Type who recently transferred to Texas Tech And helped Texas Tech Have an insane comeback To beat the spread i was just watching this on tiktok i told you that like mostly what i follow on tiktok now are bad beats oh yeah they're just they're just you know feeds that are showing really unlikely gambling outcomes and again i don't bet on sports amazingly um but this was one of the ones where basically texas tech was favored i think by like six points five points and they were losing by four points with 30 seconds left and through a series of insane happenings they ended up covering like winning by the amount they needed to win by and just that amount um in the last 30 seconds it was like mac mcclung who was a kid that went to georgetown he's if can i please take this show to an even weirder place on this uh wednesday whenever anybody is like oh why do you know why do marginalized people tend to root for other marginalized people it's like because mac mcclung in other words what i am keenly aware of is white guys around the height of six feet who play in the nba because it's not typical and because i am a white guy around the height of six feet who at some point had dreams of playing in the nba when you see somebody who is kind of reminds you of yourself in a context where that person is not typically seen you immediately become a fan and know they transferred from georgetown to texas tech i know shit all about college basketball but what i know is that mac mcclung is now playing at texas tech

luke i have some big breaking news we're going to save it for after the break back to us on

The or situation.

No, Mike is no use. to us as we've proven, but the internet is. I was forgetting a letter in oars. After the break, I will reveal all.

Okay. 53 minutes and 8 seconds.

Thank you, baby.

But first, let's thank some donors of the day. These are the wonderful, generous people who are making the show possible, including friend of the program, Jake Rahr of Seattle, Washington. You know, Jake is the, along with a guy named Kevin Sir, Jake was the person who helped facilitate TVTL Live happening at the Columbia City Theater. Oh, he's like a super producer. He is, and he also was once involved in a business down here in Portland, Andrew, a food truck that sold fried egg sandwiches. Oh, that's a good idea. I know this sounds like a crazy thing. What do you think, what would you name a food truck that sold really high-end fried egg sandwiches?

Obviously, I'm going to go to puns, so I'm going to say... Yes, you should. I apologize for putting you on the spot. No, I like this game. It's just going to take me a while. I want to give a good answer and not phone it in. Exactly what you're looking for.

Fried egg, I'm in love. Oh, that's so much better. Well, they had a minute to think of. They weren't on a podcast. They were not being put on the spot on a podcast. But like fried, which is a going concern down here. Still there. Fried egg, I'm in love. A food truck that sold fried egg sandwiches. Fried egg, I'm in love.

And that's also really smart, especially probably in the era when that popped up, like that comfort food, like a food truck with comfort food that is like high end but reminds you of your youth.

Yes. So, Jake, thanks, buddy. Thanks for sticking with us. We really appreciate it. Christopher Sherrill is in Madison, Wisconsin. Thank you, Christopher, for keeping the show going as well. Paul Stannis is in Oakland, California. I wonder if Paul watched Game of Thrones Me saying something Stannis Baratheon Me saying something about someone's name Reminding them of a Fantasy pop culture Is really rich Considering my name is Luke And my whole life has been filled with people saying Luke I'm your father Etc But I don't know if Paul has watched Game of Thrones but we thank Paul for donating to the show

Can I interrupt for one second and just give Paul something here. This is a little special treat for Paul, okay?

Get ready, Paul.

Buckle up. Paul, I am your father. Okay, that's all. I just wanted to get that in the clear.

My guess is that's the first time that Paul, I mean, other than his actual father, my guess is it's the first time Paul has heard that, which is kind of fun for him. Like it's, you know, it's all fun when it's a dalliance, when it's just like a random time. If your name is Luke and people often say, Luke, I'm your father, as i've said before on the show it that doesn't it doesn't like upset me because it's like i like that people have what they think is a ready-made joke it's fun when people who probably aren't super jokey or super successful at jokes it's fun for me when they have something that they think is kind of like they got one you know what i mean like i i legitimately am fine with that like it's i like that my name is easily referenced um but also if i were paul stannis And I was hearing For the first time a joke around my name That particular joke I think it's more fun for Paul than it is for me With people saying Luke I am your father

Yeah but also like what can you even do with Stannis And I'm sorry that we're giving so much attention Game of Thrones have you heard of it? Yeah but I'm just saying like what is the phrase Because I'm trying to think like what's he known for I think like he had a pop culture Meme moment because I think in one episode He corrects somebody's grammar Somebody says less and he just says fewer I think that might have been Stannis. You're talking about Stannis Baratheon? Yeah, Stannis Baratheon. Really? I forgot that part, but that's great. It might have been Stannis who did that. It might have been somebody else. But, yeah, I'm just trying to think, like, what is the Luke? You're not just saying Luke Skywalker. You're incorporating it into, like, a phrase or something that seems, you know, just half a click more clever. But, like, I don't even know what to say to a Stannis. Like, Stannis, you had my smoke baby? Or, no, that's not right. I don't know. Anyway. Stannis. I'll figure it out.

steer clear of that lady she trouble yeah will you ever you think in your life re-watch game of

thrones you know i don't think so i think about this sometimes though because the early day of reading the books and watching the tv show and catching up with like kind of reading the books voraciously to catch up with the show and enjoying the world so so much and the way both of them have kind of ended the way the books have petered out and the way the show ended like that going back to that stuff doesn't seem very satisfying to me because i know what the ending is and it's not Very good.

I was, for LiveWire, we were interviewing the writer George Saunders, who, he wrote Lincoln and the Bardo, and he teaches writing at Syracuse. Syracuse University, it turns out, has this, like, incredible MFA program for writing. And he was describing, I didn't already talk about this, right? I talked, I think I talked about this in my real life and then maybe on LiveWire, but it all blends together. i'm not just repeating a story right i don't think so you and i were talking about him the

other day i knew you were having him on again but i think that was off air so he described

writing a story or telling a story i guess you could say as being like a juggler and at the beginning you throw a bunch of juggling pins up into the air that's like the first part of the story you just fire a bunch of stuff up and then the rest of the story is you as the writer or storyteller catching those pins and juggling them and it really that really um kind of resonated with me because we see so many examples of people who are really good at throwing the juggling pins up into the air catching them and keeping them going and then resolving them that's the work

yeah what's the dismount though what is a juggler's dismount i guess it's just catching all of them Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, this is the sound of someone catching. This is more catching like beanbags. Okay, gotcha. Because I don't know what juggling bowling pins sound like. But let's imagine, let's go back, everybody, and imagine that they're like, you know, bean-filled sacks. Which is, by the way, how a lot of people describe us on Reddit. So it's like, the catching of those things, I think, is the kind of resolution of it. And it happens, this is a bad example because you might, one could make the argument that they just let them all hit the floor, but I would say the end of The Sopranos, at least that's something that I consider on probably a monthly basis.

Oh, I love The Sopranos ending.

See, I hated it when it happened.

To me, that's like the bowling pins all floating up into the sky, Magic.

What a great way to look at it. I think you're right. I love it. I think you're right. But you just at some point, you just you mastered physics and you just let them go up instead of they didn't hit the ground. They just floated away. And now the rest of us are left to kind of contemplate. What did that mean? That's a good ending.

Genevieve did not help me juggle the other day, by the way. This is not to your point. But like this really ticked me off. I was unpacking the groceries. And I don't know if you do this, but when I bring like a fresh pack of toilet paper or paper towels home, I do not put them in the cupboard in their packaging. I remove them from the plastic and I stack them up because I think if I need to grab the toilet paper quickly, I don't feel like you said this yesterday on the show.

When you and I are in the same brain space, we are in the same brain space.

You want to grab it quickly when you need it, whether it's a paper towel or toilet paper. So anyway, so I'm unpacking the groceries, and then I start taking the toilet paper out of the package, and then I take two of them, and I start kind of juggling them, and I tell Genevieve, throw the third one at me, throw the third one, and she refused to do it because she said I can't juggle, and just because she's right that I can't juggle doesn't mean she shouldn't have thrown the toilet paper at me.

Right, because you weren't actively juggling two rolls of toilet paper and saying add a third.

I was trying to. I was doing my level best, and she just said you can't do it. What were you doing?

I had two rolls of toilet paper

and I was just trying to toss them from hand to hand which was, even that wasn't the most graceful thing in the world. That's how it starts? Yeah, you got to

When the pandemic is over I will come to your house and you and I will have a session Actually, we should record this for a Hey Dummies I will teach you how to juggle three rolls of toilet paper

Ooh, that would be good. Genevieve also suggested that I don't start with toilet paper She said this isn't a good shape for you

Start with crab apples like I did

That would be fun though, I would like to know how to juggle

um all right it's very it's very doable and and i think you could do it um but um where were we

where we were i believe we're thinking we're going to the break donors we already did the break

so stannis i am your father oh right oh right jose vargas is in seattle washington thank you jose for supporting the program claudia villaman is in buffalo new york man I wish the Bills would have gone to the Super Bowl and I'm not just saying this for our listener Bobby our listener and friend Bobby but man I love that team that is a fun team yeah that really became a fun team and it'll be exciting to see what they are next year who are you rooting for in the Super Bowl oh Chiefs uh hardcore Chiefs I mean I was you know what's that oh yeah 100 100 percent right yeah definitely I mean that's a fun organization and uh they beat my brownies but again if you're gonna lose to a team that's not a bad team to lose to but I was I will be honest I was hoping that the Bills would would go to the Super Bowl but the Chiefs are not a bad consolation prize yeah I love I love Patrick Mahomes I find

his brother to be a little extra oh have you talked about on uh after these messages the uh the fact that uh jackson mahomes is inserting himself into uh uh patrick mahomes's

life far too much i didn't know who he was is he one of the guys in the barbershop scene and yes oh see i didn't know that i thought they were just all buddies i thought they were no one of

him is jackson mahomes patrick mahomes's actual brother and it is it i can't tell if they wrote

the commercial again this is state farm by the way for anybody who's paying attention at home

also i believe it's liberty biberty um no it's jake from state farm right yeah yeah it is yeah it is um please whisper because i don't want to be sore at me but this commercial feels i don't know if they wrote it to make jackson mahomes a minor character or if patrick mahomes or more likely patrick mahomes's parents said can you figure out a way to get your brother in the commercial your brother who is really extra and on tiktok a lot just on the sidelines so uh his brother jackson is you know i don't know what his sort of athletic background is he's a fairly tall he's i think he's taller than patrick mahomes but he's like a tall you know fit person looks like maybe somebody who had also had sort of uh sport aspirations but that didn't turn out to be the case and so now what he mostly does is tick tocks on the sideline when the chiefs are doing well and he sort of just like is doing what he does is a thing that i have always found annoying where he is sort of like acting like this is about 50 his brother and 50 him like the accomplishments of the kansas city chiefs like he's like we got this we did it we're going to the super bowl it's like well your brother's going to the super bowl you are a very i would argue insignificant part of the chiefs like your brother did you know your brother called an audible at the line and basically checked down to tyreek hill you are on the sideline doing a tiktok dance yeah it's like

you know i know i know people or you know couples where one of the couples is a runner and um if they're you know running marathons the other person is there like rooting them on and supporting them and that's really really important i take it in in that lifestyle but i don't think you would say we so for example if like if uh if our buddy uh the stew bot was rooting on his wife mandy and she got noted marathoner if she got to go because she's a runner right and she got to go to let's say the boston marathon i would stew bot say we're going to the boston marathon or would he say you're going to the boston marathon my guess is the latter right and he also if they had two vehicles

and one was typically his car he would not put a 26.2 sticker on his car or he wouldn't even put a 13.1 he didn't even do half the marathon in his mind that was mandy did a thing anyway that state farm commercial is where it's like again it's like the sort of premise is getting so stretched at this point that you have to get a haircut that makes you look like patrick mahomes in order to get the mahome discount and also the haircut doesn't look bad i don't get it like why are

i don't get the joke there by the way we still have some names to thank here but i thought i'm right in front i'm just reminding the listeners that this isn't a deed still

You're reminding Claudia Villeman of Buffalo, New York. We already said her name. You're reminding Jamie Bugle of Madison, Wisconsin. That's right. Yeah. Still to be mentioned.

If you bump into Mike Arnold there in Madison, Wisconsin, same. Does he still live in Wisconsin? I believe he's still running the old Wisconsin public radio operation. I could be wrong about that. But since he thinks, oh, I still have to tell you about the oars. Now that I found that out. But yeah, that commercial, I almost yelled that commercial. Get Genevieve down here yelling at me I don't get it like The point is that like oh We all have to get haircuts like Mahomes Because Mahomes is so ugly like whatever He's a stylish guy like

The downside of looking like Patrick Mahomes Is pretty limited

I'll take it

It's again that's what I'm saying It's like they're stretching this idea out of like patrick mahomes thinks he's the only one getting this deal on the insurance because he's patrick mahomes as is aaron rogers thinking it and now we're saying patrick mahomes is going around telling people you have to look like me you have to get a haircut exactly like me if you want to get a discount from state farm first of all how fucked up is that universe we're just wandering the streets just being like hey hey i'm patrick mahomes from the nfl's kansas city chiefs um what are you paying for your insurance oh uh 800 a year guess what if you get your haircut like me you can get that down to 600 and he's mistaken the whole time too which is right because it turns out andrew that deal is for everyone yeah um but his brother jackson is they cut to him for one second and what i can't help but think of is the people at the ad agency that works for state farm being like fuck we got this jackson mahomes situation it's a big deal to patrick we don't love jackson's contribution to this cut cut to him for half a second like just so that patrick's not mad at us i promise you they cut to jackson mahomes for 1.005 frame stops so that patrick mahomes agents did not hear that he was mad at state farm for not letting his brother be in the commercial i like to think that somebody

on the creative side of this at some point had to send an email and the subject line was we have

a frank stallone situation i saw frank's are i i i'm probably wrong about this but you know our guy who does the uh trump impersonation oh yeah scooby doo they call him scooby doo but scooby don't i feel i i'm probably wrong but i think he might have retweeted some kind of a chain of conversations that involved frank stallone i think it was frank stallone being very trumpy and what was funny was they were arguing about a particular movie i think and frank stone was like i don't like it and then and then he sort of referenced like um one person in the movie who's a famous person this story is has none of the detail you need in a story that is compelling but it basically it was like a thing where frank stallone was like other than my friend marty like being a martin scorsese it wasn't he wasn't referencing the director by the way but it was like other than my friend insert famous person who frank stallone references by like shortened first name i don't like it and it was like a it indicated to me that frank slum was maga e and b it was like bro i promise you your relationship with this person in this movie is like my relationship with jackson mahomes it is it's not registering on their radar or jackson mahomes's radar right right right like like how like really like get get get a clue um that's my

catchphrase by the way get a clue i like it and can i just because we always uh blank on his name i just looked at james austin johnson is the comedian who we're referencing who does the

trump imitations yeah good twitter follow by the way yes great twitter follow i want him to this is one of the many ways that i think america is a less great place without donald trump as president andrew there's less there's less material for that guy there was one party that genevieve will

reference a lot she thinks about this a lot and it comes up in conversations and came up recently with with trump finally being out of office um way back in 2016 genevieve was at a holiday party in los angeles california la la land i was up here for some reason for some reason i didn't make the trip down um but she was at a party at a friend's house and um you know there's various people who work in the industry there and some comedian or you know some maybe i don't know comedian or somebody breaking into the scene was like going and of course it's like a white guy like a youngish white guy talking about how this is a boon how the election of trump is a boon for comedy and it made her so she's like that is i mean that's privilege right there right like yeah we can we can lock

kids in cages it's also anybody who's actually good at comedy will tell you it was not a boon And also, yeah, like you cannot you cannot parody a person who is a parody of them of of the idea of them.

Right. Well, right. Exactly. And also, like, if you're a good comedian, you will find comedy everywhere. You don't need a despot for comedy. Like, it's just like, yeah, it was just and and to her while, you know, while she and her friends there were feeling very.

you know fragile and upset about the state of the world then everything is so fresh you know

and there's like some some d-bag comedian well it'd be good for my 11 minutes at lucy's laundromat

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 any emails or v-mails that are striking your fancy today yes i have

several things i must get to emphatic yes yes there are three things that are important to get to the first one is uh from listener bobby who says bobby our friend bobby no this is a different bobby and it just says hey andrew bobby's earlier in this program you were talking about the oars System for starting meetings And you never finished your thought Can you tell us what ORS Stands for I tried to pick a generic name And I went with Bobby and then it occurred to me that Yeah as I'm saying it we have a Very specific listener who engages With us a lot named Bobby I really Regret choosing that name randomly That was a spoof that was an email from me To myself Luke would you like to know what ORS Stands for when starting a meeting Yes First of all the reason I was having trouble finding it is it's o-a-r-r outcomes agenda oh you're thinking of or right you would have gotten it otherwise right yeah of course if you said or outcomes agenda roles and rules responsibilities rules so people would write oars on the whiteboard and you'd say okay what are we hoping the outcome of this is what is our agenda for this meeting you know in other words how do we get there and then what are the roles people will play in the outcome and i don't know what the hell rules are and i don't feel like reading this article any further let's see rules effective meetings begin with ground rules for how people are expected to behave to ensure the meeting success seems like we could just lock those rules in for society and just stick with it but i don't know how much those have to change but anyway ors was not something that i made up once you realize there's an extra or an extra R in there, you find all kinds of references to it on the internet.

Oh, that feels so much better.

You good?

Can we move on? Did you, I'm just trying to, like, what went through your mind when you were sitting in a meeting and you were having ores, like, kind of run down for you? Did you think, yeah, this makes sense? Or did you, like, die inside? Oh, I died inside a little bit. Were you always as skeptical as we, again, I don't want to paint you with my brush, But like you and I are very skeptical of those kind of things. Were you always that skeptical?

More so. I think I'm trying very much not to be the cranky old because we are the old men in the room now. And I am trying not to be the cranky old man in the room who like scoffs at everything. I think that's both generational and an age thing potentially, but certainly generational. And like there are things that make me like just cringe like and that is the type of thing that makes me cringe. And I remember when we were first working with Kiki Lolo, who is, you know, our web producer, our digital producer, and she's significantly younger than us. And I was talking about something in a meeting. I'm just so used to, like, you know, doing a hard eye roll at anything procedural in meetings or get to know your stuff at work or that type of thing. And I can't remember specifically what we were talking about. and i just gave you know i gave kiki the equivalent of a hard eye roll on something and she said something like yeah everybody i know who's a gen xer has that reaction i think this stuff is fun

is this where you're kind of like i feel like the way that we talk about our generation has sort of evolved over time is it was this the beginning of you thinking that part of our generation is just being over everything as a sort of personality trait no i mean i don't think

it's hard i mean i've been thinking about this a lot lately as younger generations have come up and i've been you know it's you know either witnessing how they interact in the world or or in workplaces i don't i mean i don't think it was like this particular conversation but certainly it's something that stuck with me i mean i mean just again watching anything from the 90s i mean there's such a tone shift in the way we approach things i think it's legitimately interesting but I also think that there's some lessons for me in here like don't assume that everybody shares your hard eye roll at everything or if there's a meet and greet that everybody is going to have like a an antipathy towards it yeah like I do and I think it's good to remember those kinds of things and by the way Christina was not she wasn't like busting my chops or anything she just thought it was funny you know but it was just an interesting perspective on the way I navigate. the world but anyway so to be honest with you I think I would have been way even more sarcastic and openly sarcastic and that's probably I don't want to throw him under the bus but that's probably what was seeding Mike Arnold's use of this which he clearly denies by the way so for the record he denies ever taking part in this but my guess

that's a classic Mike Arnold move by the way

being funny but then pretending like you weren't being funny

because you don't want to get in trouble right

so I think he just kind of carried it over without being completely disrespectful to what my guess is a consultant brought that through the door you know

and then it just was like dude there is sorry to insert myself here but um uh there is a consultant that we hired i'm sure this has probably come up on the show at some point when i was saying things i shouldn't be saying but when i worked on that show rewind there was we had like i don't know i I wasn't privy to any of these kind of financial things. But we basically had, let's just say, $50,000 left in the account for the show. And they decided that they should—actually, you know what? I like this approach as a gambler. But they decided that they should basically bet their last $50,000 on a consultant who would come in and tell us how to be funnier, I guess. and somehow change the show so fundamentally that we would then go from being on like 150 stations to being on 800 stations. And he listened to, he hung out with us for an entire week. But as we did the show, as we wrote the jokes and did the skits and the whole thing. And then at the end, he said, and he got his, you know, let's say 50,000 bucks. And he said, I like what you're doing. I would say just keep at it.

I think I know who this is, too. I think we've talked about this off air. I think this person might have come to...

By the way, this person got fired from NPR for embezzling money during an election cycle.

Oh, really? Wait, okay, so...

Did we talk about that part of it?

I don't think I... It's Nina Totenberg. I do think that this is the same person because... I'm sure we're talking about that person, but I don't think I knew about the embezzling.

yeah he was he he was at one time the producer okay now we've narrowed it down to it's a white man which i know will blow your mind that a white man was prospering in public radio and got away with larceny um but he was a guy who was running at some point the election coverage and there was a bunch of money that went unaccounted for and he quietly left the network Under that cloud of suspicion He was also a Started out as Somebody who was in the priesthood We think the same person I didn't know if so I didn't know that

Maybe just text me later Because my problem is And I'm doing some googling But I can't Recall the name off the top of my head Everybody surprise surprise But I think when you Oh yeah now I think I do know it

but I won't say but anyway this is not interesting he's now leaning into his priest his former priesthood as a way of kind of doing podcasts and things where it's like I feel he's cloaking himself literally and figuratively in this kind of narrative that's more interesting because it's kind of like I was once somebody who was gonna never have sex again and now I interview people in public radio but that was I think where my suspicion around consultants really started because I was then laid off from that show like two weeks later. Wait, I thought you walked away from that show.

Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I was thinking. No, no, rewind, I was laid off. Yes, right, right, sorry, I was thinking that.

I got the nicest, were you thinking of, no, it's not the person that you just texted me. Oh, okay, then maybe I don't know this person. That person told me, the person you just texted me, sent an email that said Luke Burbank is never allowed to talk about his armpit smell on public radio. That guy was the CEO of NPR at a time. I'll name him, Ken Stern. Yes, Ken Stern. And he wasn't a bad dude.

Ken Stern is not the person who brought oars to NHPR. We had various consultants come in, and I will say this, like most of them were just really terrible and cringy. Ken Stern came in and consulted for us as we were launching a new show, and it was the only experience of having an outsider come in and actually walk us through a bunch of whiteboard stuff that I found really useful and insightful for whatever that's worth.

I find that so surprising because I think Ken Stern's background is he was like a lawyer.

Maybe I'm confusing him with another NPR muckety-muck. Let me do some more, but I'm pretty sure he came in and consulted.

Let me, okay, while you're looking that up, I'm just going to, I'm going to, like, blind item five other people who I worked with at some point who I have a low opinion of. Okay.

Okay, I once worked with a guy whose main thing was his garbage wasn't getting taken out in a timely manner. And he also was considering becoming a priest, but then later didn't do that.

Tell me more about the garbage situation.

Once again, the tables have turned. you're like no that's fascinating content and it is actually um no oh man i okay i just need to leave this alone now the the person i'm talking about who is not ken stern it's weird when you i mean you've never been fired right not yet it's weird when you get fired because it's like all of the people maybe not all the people but a lot of the people who you thought were your friends you're kind of like huh did they actually secretly hate me i guess ken stern ken stern would seem very pro luke burbank other than the email saying don't talk about your armpits which

i mean that's a relative you know that's reasonable people can disagree no they can't

but it's funny because when you're like when i when you're having the moment that i was having at npr in those days where it's like everyone's really interested in like investing in the luke burbank everyone's trying to buy luke burbank at 20 a share because i think that a reddit forum is going to really shoot it through the roof it's it's funny because it's just so much positive feedback and then one day you quit and they all hate you i know i'm jumping between jobs i don't have anymore but in the case of npr it was like so many people were just so unbelievably flattering and supportive and then you quit and then i believe it was probably ken stern who said he is not allowed to be on wait wait don't tell me anymore oh really it might have been yeah maybe somebody at the at the tippy top of the organization was like this is a persona non grata now because you did kind of you didn't give him a lot of notice right you kind of Oh, I gave them a lot of notice. The problem was they refused to acknowledge it, and then I basically just angrily quit and made them pay for my moving fees. Huh. Which was... That was... That's a weird...

Honestly, kind of a boss move. How did the tail wag that dog? I mean, once you're going out, how are you getting them to...

It was Robert Krolwich and his attorney who looked at the contract and said, do you want me to make medium-sized confetti or small confetti out of this? Krolwich? Did I tell... You don't know this? No. How do I have one public radio story I have not shared with you during our hitchhiking, driving across America or driving through Australia? So I was in this contract with them that was very generous to me, but I didn't want to work there anymore because I missed Addy and I didn't like they didn't let me talk about my armpits. And so I decided in that order.

Be honest in that order.

Can we call it a tie? So I was like, I'm out of here. And they said, you have a contract. And I was like, even then I was thinking, what are you going to do? Like handcuff me to the microphone? Like what? Like those kind of contracts in broadcast media make no sense because you don't want someone working at your organization in the in terms of the like sort of outward facing component of it. You don't want that person hating working there. Like it just there's just like it's not like you're, you know, dealing with somebody who does landscaping and it's like you need to mow these lawns until it's done. It's like you need to be entertaining and excited until the contract stops applying. But anyway, so I asked Krolwich because he's that dude's been in and out of more contracts than anybody you've ever seen. i was like hey man do you i'm having a problem i'm trying to quit and they won't let me quit and i was like he was like this was by the way at the same time that i was getting divorced this is like four to five divorces ago but i was getting divorced and i was had a high-powered attorney in la and i was paying that person probably i don't know who knows what the billable hours were but i'm guessing it was five hundred dollars an hour some insane amount of money um and so So Krowich said, oh, this is my guy. He gets me out of all my contracts. And I call the guy. And he's like, Krowich has a guy for getting out of contracts. And he, the guy that's like on a Saturday, he's like talks to me for two hours. He's, then I send him, I email him over the contract and he goes, do you want me to, what kind of, what size confetti do you want me to make out of this contract? And he talks to me for like two hours Which I'm sure was $5,000 of billable hours And at the end I was like what do I owe you And he goes Ah, for Krolwich, anything. Oh, wow. It didn't even charge me.

That makes sense, though, too.

Which made me so happy at a time when I was also hemorrhaging money to a different attorney in Los Angeles. And I just went into the meeting after that and said exactly what Krolwich's attorney told me to say. And then they just were like, we'll pay your moving expenses.

Which was, I want to talk about my armpits. You said I can't. That's a breach of contract. See in Seattle, suckers. Is that what you said?

And pay for my moving.

Oh, yeah. Sorry.

See you in Seattle after you pay for that was the move where the movers literally packed my garbage.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a so. All right. Listen, I got some more.

Anyway, thanks so much to Claudia Villeman of Buffalo, New York.

Hell of a show. OK, I do have some important business I do have to read here because it is time sensitive. OK, this is from Cheryl in Corvallis, who is setting up a Valentine's card exchange this year. This is the fifth year in a row that she's been doing it. We really appreciate it. But I want to point out here that she mentioned she got a later start than usual this year. So if you want to participate and I'll tell you how to do that and what we're talking about in a second here, but know that a clock is ticking. She needs everybody who wants to participate to email her by this Saturday, the 6th, I believe. And if you're unfamiliar with it, it's basically, there's a holiday card exchange that our friend Melly runs to out of New York you send and receive I think you'll get like 10 cards and you'll send out 10 cards and if you want to participate in this just send an email to tbtlvalentends tbtlvalentends at gmail.com that wasn't taken somehow it wasn't put that was available on the open market put the word in in the subject line and in the body of the email just include your complete mailing address and then cheryl will put you in the system with everybody else and you'll be assigned some other people to send some cards to and luke no joke um people often will post photos of the the cards they receive and they're always so fun and i mean there's not a lot of pressure here even cheryl says like you can send a postcard a crayon drawing a poem like whatever you want it doesn't have to be super fancy um and if you're not artistically inclined don't worry about it but just brings a little bit of joy to the world

you know I think this all the time and I say it semi frequently but like the only meaningful thing about TBTL are the listeners people like Cheryl and the people who like Mellie and the people who are sort of interacting with these various projects like what a wonderful group of human beings yes

absolutely can I play one more voicemail for you that is from a wonderful human being yes I wouldn't usually get into people's personal life updates on the show but this is coming from one of the longest term longest term listeners of TBTL you might know him as the perfect 10

Nick in

Florida of course we know Nick Has worked at Disneyland No I'm sorry in Florida it's Disney World Disney World For I think as long as we've known him

I believe he ran the front desk of a hotel That was part of the Disney World empire

Yes and unfortunately as he Even called into the show to talk about He was Part of the layoffs that Disney World Unfortunately had to go through Stop talking about your armpits Yeah and he was like I want to move And I want you to pay for it

My armpits, my body I will continue to greet every guest At this Disney World property with Hi I'm Nick Armies Have you smelled my armpits

And it's arms right I always get this wrong He explains it to me a million times And I feel like my instinct is always to say Armies but it's actually arms It's the opposite of that joke I think it's the opposite of the joke Where does the king keep his armies

In his sleevies

Opposite joke Okay so anyway that's Nick Nick called our voicemail line as he often does and he has a little good news

Hey dummies, it's Nick currently of Florida but soon to be Nick of Minnesota I actually just accepted a position in Minnesota I will be the new director of guest experience for one of the resorts in Brainerd, Minnesota I am very, very excited. I am very relieved to have a position. Both Leanna and I are very, very happy. So the best part about all of this is when you visit the mothership, you tie that into the 4,000.

episode because that's clearly the main thing I'm already thinking of. So yeah, good

thing. Talk to you later. Bye. There you go. Congratulations to Nick, the perfect 10. I love that he's moving to a what I would guess I'd call a TBTL hot spot, although during a pandemic, maybe I shouldn't be using that terminology. Hot zip. Hot zip.

Yes, I like that better. That's great. Congrats, Nick. Happy for you, brother. And I think that the lesson here is if you are a Like long suffering Deeply support If you make your way onto a TBTL playing card If you get a TBTL tattoo If you dress up like a hot dog Outside of a Waffle House Good things will come

That's right All we need from the listeners Is everything

You will turn your frown Sorry Make a smile your umbrella There was like a motivational speech Of a newscaster sportscaster in seattle tony ventrella had called like turn your like turn your smile into an umbrella does that make sense is that like being unreasonable in unreasonable times i feel like if

you have a smile and then you turn it into an umbrella you're turning it into a frown because umbrellas right bend the wrong way so i feel like something make an umbrella your smile maybe it's

make an umbrella your smile oh that would make sense so like things are bad you have an umbrella But then you like turn it over and now you're smiling.

I think it's objective, agenda, umbrella, release. Got it. I think that. How would you like to go out with the song Breakfast at Tiffany's?

I would love it. What about Breakfast at Tiffany's? Tiffany's? Who is that by? I only know this because for. I said, what about Breakfast at Tiffany's?

Tiffany's this song popped in my head for no discernible reason I think two Saturdays ago and it was the day that I was doing a big house clean it was a big house cleaning day for me top to bottom Luke top to bottom and the whole time I was every time into a smile every time I took off my headphones like you know usually I'm listening to a podcast or something but whenever my brain went to just like relax level it would just start singing the song breakfast at tiffany's and then i started singing it in that exact voice which is for some reason i like to sing that song in like a muppety voice which and she said i think we're both kind of liked it anyway so for about 48 hours i kept thinking i need to listen to this song to expel it just right clear it

you know the song i heard this weekend that was kind of like that although i i definitely stan And this song was Roll With Me by Della Mitri. Oh, I don't know it. You would if you heard it. It was like, look around your heart, pretty baby. Is there something? I always thought that was like Toad the Wet Sprocket or something. No, it's not. It's Toad the Damp Sprocket. Show title?

Yeah, we needed one.

Have we already done that? No, we need it. I'm 100% sure the last time Toad the Wet Sprocket came up, I probably made that stupid joke. I'll do a Google. The right time to roll with me. And the video for Delamitri Roll With Me is, I believe they're from Scotland, and everybody in the band, you know, they were adult men when they recorded the song, they are superimposed onto the faces of children being wheeled around in strollers. Oh, that sounds 90s. It's uncanny. I would say, don't watch the video, do listen to the song. What's the song? I'm wondering, should we go out with that instead? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, let's just put it on the schedule for tomorrow.

You said it's Delamitri. What's the name of the song? Roll With Me by Delamitri. Roll With Me, huh? I would have never known that. I've heard that song a million times. I would have never, ever known that that is the name of the band or the name of the song.

Also, are they from Scotland? I've been telling people that for years, and it's very possible. Sorry, my computer went to sleep.

We should mention here also that Jonathan Demme does not play Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, which is something that Genevieve told hundreds of people years and years and years ago because she thought it was a fact and it was not.

Del Amitri is a Scottish alternative rock band formed in Glasgow in 1980. Damn, 1980. You love the stick-to-itiveness of Del Amitri. Because they really broke late. That's not a guy's name, by the way.

What's that? Because they broke late, right? Because that song would have been a 90s song.

I mean, formed in 1980 and they were just like doing it and doing it and doing it well. and then and like i would assume like like 1995 or something it came together for them with the song right time to roll with me or i think it might be roll to me according to the roll to me

yes there's a right way to rock the listeners and way to roll

I give it five popcorns up Alright let's go out with a little Deep blue something That's what they're called deep blue something Not me Alright thanks for listening everybody We're going to be right back here tomorrow with more Imaginary Radio for you until then enjoy the rest Of your Wednesday thanks for being part of TBTL please stay safe mask up Take care of yourselves take care of each other And remember that This song is by what's it called? Deep Blue Something. Deep Blue Something. And also that there is no mountain too tall. And good luck to all. The world has come

between us Our lives have come between us Still I know you just don't care And I said

what about breakfast to Tiffany She said I think I Remember the film, and this I recall, I think We both kind of liked it, and I said Well, that's the one thing we got

I see you, the only one who knew me But now your eyes see through me I guess I was wrong So what now? It's plain to see we're over And I hate when things are over When so much is left undone

And I said, what about breakfast at Tiffany? She said, I think I remember the film And as I recall, I think We both kind of liked it And I said, well, that's the one thing we got Power out.