Muse

Down 20, 5.03 to go, someone has run on the field, some guy with a brawl, and now he's not being chased, he's running down the middle of the 40, arms in the air and a victory salute, he's pulling down his pants, put up your pants my man, pull up those pants, he's being chased to the 30, he breaks a tackle from a security guard, the 20, down the middle of the 10, the 5, he slides at the 1, and they converge on him at the goal line. And the players with hands on hips at the other end of the field are looking at them and shaking their head and saying, why, oh, why is this taking place in a Super Bowl? TBTL.

Well, with all due respect, I mean, I hate to admit this, but I don't think I've been online in a couple days or weeks or whatever. So that's really not an important thing to me. My face, your face, instant face. Just go talk to whoever you want that does that stuff. I don't know. Okay, this is what I would do. I would start with a joke. Joke.

Vince Vaughn quote. Obviously.

Swingers or crashers?

Fred Claus. I could really lay him out quickly. With him out of the way, I think we're just going to be 360 spins and slam dunk pointers.

All right. Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Just study it out, and you'll see. My name is Luke Burbank. I'm your host.

I don't know who that is, and I don't care to find out.

Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where when we were doing our little sound check before the show, it was looking kind of gray and cloudy, and I'd queued up this audio drop to sort of reflect my feelings.

It's just so frustrating. I want to be in Florida getting a tan on my back.

Which is true. I do want to be in Florida getting a tan on my back. but a little blue sky has poked through maybe we're gonna have a nice day uh here in portland here in bridgetown they did this thing in portland this weekend that was so cool it's called winter lights i guess it's uh kind of a yearly thing this year it was different of course because of the pandemic where uh they were doing a lot of things to keep it socially distant but it's just basically a bunch of light installations all over the city um some of them really big on the sides of you know like department stores in downtown and some of them just on people's homes like there was somebody who just had a like a three-dimensional small box of light that was on their house on ankeny street here in portland and i was just absolutely uh tickled by the whole thing and then just driving around i thought of all this because one of the many nicknames of portland is bridge town because you've got a river that runs right through the middle of portland so between the east side and the west side you got to have a lot of bridges to get from one to the other and those bridges were all lit up and some of them had cool colors being projected on them and i just thought wow it's a pretty cool place that i get to do the show from um so you know what i take it back i'm gonna stay here florida you can have the sunshine you can get the tan on your back i'll be right here in the 503 bringing you episode 3354 in a collector series let the fun begin i said that with such confidence and then as the number of the show that is and then i uh of course had a moment of panic thinking i haven't doubled yes okay good episode 3353 scythes matters was Friday's show and that would put us today at 3,354. Speaking of racy comedy, we're going to talk about the absolute best and the absolute blurst of the Super Bowl ads from yesterday.

Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?

Including a commercial that has I think probably the dirtiest thing that I have ever seen or heard observed in a Super Bowl ad. I know what sex means and is. I don't know how they got this. I mean, it's so genius because it's not dirty on its face, I guess, but if you're anybody with a brain who is over a certain age, you get the reference. I thought it was pretty great. So we'll go through those. And also, speaking of comedy, a lot of people were tweeting and texting me over the weekend that Saturday Night Live has stolen my intellectual property.

How dare you?

One of my most overused jokes, and that's really saying something, because nobody overuses a joke like old burbs. One of my most overused jokes was the premise of an SNL skit this weekend. And I got to figure out how they climbed into my brain and stole my...

My idea and put it on TV and made it better and figure out how they did that. We'll do all that with emails and emails with the help of this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show. He's known for his drawings of tall ships. He sent me a sort of confusing text over the weekend. You and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals. So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel. Maybe he can shed some light on that. I'm not sure. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. What are you confused about?

With the text message I sent you, is that ambiguous? No, I mean, it's, ooh, explicit. I just didn't think that was where we were taking the friendship.

Yeah, well, that's why we keep some things off the air. We put some things on the air.

I feel like I'm caught a little flat-footed here. That's my fault. I took an off-air private conversation we had, and then I just put it right onto the show. And that sort of makes it my bad. I apologize. And by the way, I'm a hard maybe.

Oh, fantastic. because I also have a rhyme that involves the San Diego Zoo that I want to lay on you later. But again, we'll keep that for the text message relationship.

Let's talk a little bit about the piece of tape that we opened the show with. Kevin Harlan strikes again. Yeah, we were just talking about that guy. And the whole topic of people getting onto the field during big sporting events, particularly football games, and running around. And I will tell you this. Because I didn't actually realize that there had been somebody on the field during the Super Bowl originally because the NFL or I should say CBS, I guess, did what they always do now, which is they try very hard to not show the person. They don't want to give people attention for doing this. But then Kevin Harlan, who's doing the radio broadcast, has kind of made it his deal to call the streakers or the idiot on the field as like places like Deadspin or now, I guess, Defector would call it. And so we were playing tape of him doing that recently And it happened in the Super Bowl And I have now watched some of the clips You know, because it's the Super Bowl Everyone has a cell phone So there's like 37,000 angles of this thing The guy is out on the field He's in Kevin Harlan thinks it's a bra But it's not It's like, kind of like that Like a singlet It's something between a bathing suit And a singlet that like a wrestler would wear But it's like, imagine Remember that thing that Sacha Baron Cohen was wearing a lot I think in one of those movies It's like green And very very revealing It just barely covers your private parts

Oh right I don't know what that's called I didn't look closely at the footage I saw like you said some shaky cell phone footage I thought that maybe it was a sports bra Or something but no it was attached to his bottom It was a bottom and topper

Yeah it's not even a bra I would imagine this guy's Part of his visual joke he was going for was get a load of this odd thing I have on but then he has his shorts on over it so he's pulling his his pants or his shorts down because he's trying to expose this very very very scant sort of bathing suit type thing he has on but he isn't fully the problem is he still needs his pants up so he can keep running or his shorts or pants but so he's caught in the middle because he wants the world to see his silly outfit but he also wants to keep evading the security And I have so many thoughts about this, Andrew. We may end up taking up most of the show.

Okay.

So buckle up, everyone. You've heard of Idiot on the Field. How about Idiot on the Podcast? And it's me. First off, they need to just have, for the Super Bowl, if the NFL is really committed to trying to keep streakers off the field or bring them under control as quickly as possible, get some more athletic security guards. Just have a special tactical team of ex-NFL players whose only job it is to run out and grab somebody off of the field. Because why it's so hilarious, and again, I hope that they continue to not police this well because I love idiots on the field. I think it's fun. Yeah, I was going to say, whose side are you on? I am very much on the side of unexpected things happening during football games. As somebody wrote on Twitter and I retweeted yesterday, this Super Bowl could have been an email. that's pretty good uh not my joke but i mean you know of course it's partially because i was not rooting for tampa so i was a little disappointed uh in the outcome but it felt i'm sure if you're a tom brady head or if you're in tampa as we have listeners down there you are super psyched but for the rest of us there was a certain grim i don't know inevitability to it where this guy running around on the field was one of the more fun things that probably happened um i may have gain more yards than the Kansas City offense I don't know but if you are the NFL and you want to try to get this under control get some more athletic security guards because these security guards are flailing and running after the guy the guy actually did a pretty dope spin move one security guard almost has him and then he i mean he really does like a play that a football player would do where he's running and then he does a complete 360 spin which shakes the security guard who sort of and the thing is you got to wrap them up if you're a security guard you get your arms around his legs you keep driving your feet you cannot arm tackle a streaker in a singlet um and but anyway so that was thing number one they need to get more athletic security guards to catch these people thing number two everybody was so into this like kevin harlan is the goat of calling these things and he is but i wish he would have not said something now he's in the moment he's amped up he realizes this is his chance to shine because this is now his shtick he says something that you cut out of the broadcast andrew which was and i was kind of surprised that nobody commented on it i mean you cut out of like the version we played on our show I should say. I was kind of surprised that amongst all of the people sort of celebrating Kevin Harland's call, he said something in there that was very kind of gendered and really just not the way we talk anymore, which is because he thinks the guy has a... Do you want me just to play it?

I think I have it queued up, so you can hear a little bit of what you probably already heard. I don't think I have this perfectly, but hopefully you can just hear it here if you don't mind.

Pull up those pants! He's being chased to the 30. He breaks a tackle from a security guard, the 20, down the middle, the 10, the 5. He slides at the 1, and they converge on him at the goal line pull up your pants take off the bra and be a man

like we don't really talk that way and we don't and also it's just not even that's one of those things where i cut out where i sort of felt like well i'm being a little snowflakey here i guess but it's also just the worst part it's also just not funny like it's better when he stays in character you you know and you're taught you talk about the streaker almost in the same way you talk about the football players you know and that's what's funny there's a remove there like it just not only is it gendered and made me like kind of wince a little bit it's also just not funny it's

bad right and that's you you nailed it exactly like what kevin harlan sort of figured out is that if he calls the streakers exactly like he would call a play on the football field it's funny but as soon as he gets into his tight five of you know what are these guys wearing shtick as soon as he as soon as he goes away from sports announcing into whatever else he's trying to do is when it immediately falls apart for me and i don't think he should be like canceled or in trouble it's just one errant comment but i was kind of surprised that it was i was sort of expecting there to be at least a little bit of murmuring on the internet of like well maybe we don't say that part of it you know maybe maybe we don't talk about it that way but everybody was just kevin harlan is just and i guess this was the other thing i wanted to say which is maybe one of the least great parts of my personality which i'm able to bring to the show five days a week which is like the the way that anytime i like something after about give it about five minutes i'll decide that i'm not into it anymore if everybody else likes it you mean sort of or just i you know nothing gold can stay in my mind so just last week we were like that's so funny kevin highland this is really awesome and this week i'm like and without regard or unrelated to whatever bad joke he made or comment that doesn't really work, what I realized at some point was this is the easiest thing in the world for Kevin Harlan to do because he calls football games for a living. So it's not like, it's actually somehow the shine came off of it for me because I realized all he's doing, and again, it's a smart idea, but once you've, the first time you've heard it and connected with it, then you kind of get the joke and then the joke is not like super funny to me the third time I hear it. Like, all he's doing as a professional football announcer is just describing the guy's action on the field. He gets to the 20. He shakes a tackler. He heads to the 1. He slides down. Like, it's not actually that magical what he's doing. He's just calling it, like, a football announcer, which is what he is.

I'm somewhere between agreeing with you and that's the joke. Like, I think because I have very similar feelings, but for me, it's that it's learning. it knows like for me yeah him calling a streaker or i believe also a cat on the field which was another one of these as if it was a football player that is the joke that's why it's funny and again this person who has a bit of remove from the game and has to stop talking whenever there's a snap because those are the rules like there are rules to broadcasting these games and then applying those rules in the moment when it's just like of the moment it is funny and that's why it's funny but I'm with you whereas he becomes the I'm this guy this is my joke I mean it's not that much different than having an uncle who just delighted the hell out of you with his Donald Duck imitation when you were seven and then you're 17 and you're like yeah all right Uncle Bob not that that's a

real example from my life i love you uncle bob um but uh he's also the one who had the joke uh when my sister cut bangs one time said i know why you have bangs it's so they'll wake you up in the morning thought that was comedy gold when i was a kid that bangs joke i still think about it a lot

but anyway so i'm trying to understand it because that's the noise that's like like a sound of a

banging it's just yeah it doesn't even the setup doesn't even make sense the structure doesn't even make sense but it's a joke one of the earliest jokes i heard was my uncle bob telling my sister i know why you have bangs so they'll wake you up in the morning it's anyway yeah that's why this is what i had to work with imagine how funny i'd be if i if i came from a funnier stock and no anyway my point is it just becomes like kind of that uncle doing that same or anybody just doing this going to the same joke over and over going to the same well and being on the platform of the super bowl and kind of knowing like i don't know there's something about knowing you're going to go viral or trying to go viral that really takes the piss out of it well that's the part for me

like if if it happened organically one time or maybe a couple of times that like delights me but if it's like Kevin Harlan is kind of and I don't know I don't know Kevin Harlan I've never met him and he might be a totally awesome dude I don't know I know anything about him other than I can imagine a world in which he's just like okay this is my deal now is and and he probably knows it's the Super Bowl there's a decent chance somebody's going to get on the field this is a very very high profile event and he's like kind of licking his chops and then it's like now it's time for me to do my shtick and again I guess I'm just repeating myself and I'm probably not making any I'm not bringing anybody over to my weird side of this but I guess it just feels to me like it's a joke that's funny the first time but then after that it's just to me a football announcer who's just describing something in football announcer terms it doesn't get more funny to I mean, it doesn't the joke doesn't build in any way.

Yeah, no, I agree. And that's why I felt like those first ones we heard brought us joy. And the second one, you're like, oh, OK, he's doing it again. And this is going to be passed around either way. I was glad to have some new tape for the top of the show, though, because it was either going to be that or it was just going to be like the same old 30 Rock tape you've heard a million times.

Right. Dan Levy hosted SNL this weekend. I think it might have been the first show of the new year or something. I'm not sure. I know you really don't watch SNL I don't generally watch it on Saturday night Or sort of front to back I will usually just If there's a truly funny sketch It will kind of burble up through the internet And I will see it I thought the best sketch from Saturday night Was basically this bit where Mikey Day Is playing a tour guide at Universal Studios And he's training Dan Levy Dan Levy of course is the guy from Schitt's Creek And he's training him So they're basically giving the Universal Studios tour And Dan Levy's character is all hepped up on coffee And basically just keeps talking about weird He's dishing way too much about this otherwise boring universe Like he starts talking about back They're like on the right you'll see the car from Back to the Future And then he goes into this theory that Doc Brown had been grooming Marty and that he built the time machine to go back in time to not have done the bad things to Marty. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah, it's intense, right? But very funny. Anyway, I don't want to give away the whole sketch, but I would say that was the funniest one that I saw. But this one also made some waves in our world because I have for years been making the joke about my relationship with Redfin as if it's sort of like some kind of a dating site or a sex site or something because I tend to look at Redfin a lot, that app, and they did the same thing basically on SNL except with Zillow. Are you bored? Looking for something to spice up your life?

Oh, yeah. You used to want sex, but you're in your late 30s now.

And sex isn't really doing it for me anymore. You need something new. Something exciting. I need a new fantasy. Then you need Zillow. Zillow. So kind of put it together. It's like a totally like one of those old like 90s like phone sex ads where, you know, whatever. There's all these very gauzy shots, very lots of sexy satiny lingerie being worn. And then everyone's like looking at houses and getting really turned on. I thought that the actually the funniest part of it was when it kind of takes a turn because I've actually had this happen where you basically. It's all fun in games to be poking around on something like Redfin until you accidentally lock up with, like, a Redfin agent. Oh, no. And then it's the real world because you're no longer just doing, like, house fantasy. Now someone's like, would you like to set something up at 3 o'clock in, you know.

Weezer, Idaho. Anyway, that was Cecily Strong as the Remax agent who is annoying Mikey Day. Anyway, that is like, you know, obviously my joke, Andrew, what do we do about this? How do we I mean, we sue them. What do we do here? How do we get what is mine from SNL for stealing my idea?

Do you know this is not the first time somebody has asked me for podcast-related advice in just the past few hours? The other one happened in a dream that I just woke up from recently. I don't have an answer to your question, so I'm just taking it here. In my dream, I had a bunch of weird dreams that were all kind of disconnected. But one of them, I was at KUOW, and somebody was starting a podcast there, and they wanted to know, like, what are the rules for playing tape on your show? Hold on, Andrew, please. If you're going to do this. You feel like a dream captain came to life. Let's take you to Dream Corp. I almost texted Phyllis about this because, unfortunately, I got into an argument with Phyllis in this dream. And I want to make sure that everything's cool IRL. She better apologize. in the dream they start asking like well what kind of tape can we use in our podcast you guys use all kinds of stuff and i start to gear up for my usual like listen don't follow us as an example we just play what we play and so far we haven't gotten in trouble and then they start to say this person i can't read it was it was somebody in my real life i don't know who it was but he's a producer and he's saying yeah but what like we use tape of the president i'm like you can always use tape of the president are you kidding me yes it's the president you can always use tape of the president. He says, what if it's on Cairo radio? That's the radio station across town. Very specific, right? And I'm like, well, Cairo uses your tape all the time. They just need to, you know, attribute it like this was on KUOW. And then Phyllis was there and she overheard then she said they should not be doing that. And I did all the research. And I said, what do you mean you did all the research? And she just kept saying, I did all the research. They shouldn't be doing it. And I kept saying, but they attribute it to you. And that's where the dream ended. What do you think

is the subtext of that because i have some ideas it's i think we i think one thing for sure is i

got an email from a listener i haven't responded yet that came in over the weekend wanting to know if they can use a certain type of music in a blog post and i think i read that and i said i guess i

gotta figure that out at some point is that a police song music in a blog post music in a well

you guys know how that yeah somebody named Jillian wrote in um I need I read that fair play use isn't real and I can be sued if I play 30 seconds of a song I want to post a blog and I want to embed a clip with 15 seconds of another one bites the dust and later on I want to embed another short clip can I do this legally this is from listener Jillian sending it to me uh Jillian let me answer your question right here as long as you attribute it to KUOW and you're on Cairo radio I think you're But don't ask Phyllis because she's going to be mad about it.

Have you considered using Another One Rides the Bus?

Is that a weird L? Yeah. I forgot about that one.

Like, that was a big hit in my mind when I was a kid. I think, right? Did I? Wait, did I dream that?

No, but I was wondering, is that one that he made when, like, kind of when Queen had a resurgence kind of in popularity in the 90s? or was it actually from, like, when that song was popular?

I think it was – I don't know when that song came out, but from the Weird Al version. But my guess is because – well, Another One Bites It Does, that's actually kind of an older song, right? Yeah, I think 70s. You know how I learned about Queen? I didn't even know the band Queen existed until the Seattle Supersonics, R.I.P. They would play We Will Rock You to get just the, like, you know, the stomp, stomp, clap part. They would play that to get everybody Pumped up in It might have been called Key Arena at this point It might not have even been Key Arena yet It might have been like the Seattle Arena But I would listen to those games And it would be Bob Blackburn was done being the announcer And that was Kevin Calabro, friend of the show And To hear We Will Rock You And to hear Whatever it was, 17,000 people just stomping And clapping as it was like As Xavier McDaniel was about to come out of the timeout and do a baseline fadeaway jump shot. As a little kid, reenacting the game in my basement on a Nerf hoop, it was about as electric an atmosphere as I'd ever experienced. And so that was how I heard about Queen. Now, how I heard about Another One Rides the Bus was probably because my friend Ben McGow had a lot of Weird Al records.

It came out, Weird Al's version did come out around the time. It was parodying the Queen song around the time.

it was contemporaneous as that because I have I see that it came out in 1981 can I play a little bit here this is not the official album version this is better this is him appearing on the Tom Snyder show in 1981 let's just listen to this tape because I think that this is in our wheelhouse

L's first ever national TV to listener Jillian you are allowed to play weirdo yankovic on the Tom Snyder show doing another one rides the bus in honor of another one biting the dust

I forgot about Tom Snyder The pure, like the Charlie Rose Pure black background Like he's just floating in space

Yeah, oh I loved that show It seemed so erudite to me You know, like I didn't know about Charlie Rose in those days But yeah, Tom Snyder I think in LA, just on the satellite link With whoever he was talking to It just felt like a real grown up conversation When I was a kid Now Weird Al's gonna play here

Weird Al Yankovic, who first became known for his parodies of popular rock tunes in 1979 with his parody of a song done by the Knacks, which was called My Sharoma, and Weird Al rewrote it and called it My Bologna. It was recorded in the luxurious, state-of-the-art acoustic tile men's bathroom across from his college radio station because they wouldn't let him in the studio. Last September, Weird Al performed his newest parody entitled Another One Rides the Bus. This was done live on the Dr. Demento radio show with stations across the country carrying this program reporting an overwhelming problem with listener response. Everybody turn their radio off. Here is Weird Al Yankovic, and the weirdest thing that Al has ever done is one day he took a tire off his father's car and he sucked all the air out of it. He has his partner John Schwartz with him tonight.

Somebody tells me that basically somebody, like one of Tom Snyder's producers, asked Weird Al to write his own bio.

Yes, I know. It's so weird. Come on, let's get this up a little bit He's not even trying to do a good job reading He's just reading

The fact that we said tighten it up

Yeah, right?

Really rich Well, you've got to give us credit At least we don't do a lot of reading on this show Okay, I think he's

It's another one rides the bus Here is Weird Al Yankovic Here he is

Okay, so Weird Al is also on Oh, I see, he's on a small stage Colorful pants An accordion, of course. Behind him is his, like, you know, co-musician. That's what they call him, right? Yep. I hate Mondays. And he's got, like, a box with a bunch of horns on it. He's wearing, like, one of those harmonica neck devices, only it's got a whole bunch of weird instruments and horns coming off of it.

Riding in a bus down the boulevard and the place was pretty packed. I couldn't find a seat so I had to stand with the perverts in the back. It was smelling like a locker room. There was junk all over the floor. We were already packed in like sardines but we were stopping to pick up more. Let go! Another one rides the bus, sir.

Weird Al kind of smoothed it out a little bit later.

Yeah, I feel like this hit more of his like wild man phase yeah definitely there must have been something going around in that part of the 80s because like people thinking being wild or seeming wild equaled entertainment because i listen to a lot of the howard stern show and on serious uh satellite radio they'll play old episodes and maybe not like from the 80s but like even the 90s it's sort of like when you turn when you're watching the simpsons and one comes on where their hair is too wavy yeah right which It means it was, like, right newly born out of being Tracy Ullman show interstitials. And I'm like, nope, not for me. Like, Homer's voice sounds weird. They haven't developed these characters yet. Like, I want to get into, like, season four. Similarly with, like, Howard Stern, it'll be, like, his voice is really high and he's just being kind of wild and racy in the way. Not that Weird Al is being racy there, but just that kind of confusing being silly and high energy with being funny.

Yes, exactly. And, you know, Weird Al, like, all he's done so far is, you know, made a couple of parody songs. He's, like, struggling to get on local radio and do live things. So I'm sure, you know, him doing this. I mean, there's a part of me that enjoys this, but it's not nice on the ears either. Like, I enjoy it intellectually as much as you can enjoy early Weird Al tapes on Tom Snyder's show intellectually.

You have to wonder, too, like, what was going on that the Tom Snyder show, and I don't know which, like, incarnation of the show we're hearing. because he had all kinds of different talk shows and probably some of them were on all over the country and some of them were local and, you know, whatever. But, like, interesting that he had Weird Al on because, like, I'm trying to think of what an analog for that would be now. They're really...

aren't those kind of shows anymore I guess but it'd be like yeah I mean that's the problem they don't have like there aren't t interview tv talk shows anymore like that but just the fact that that was you know they had on a guy who's just singing a song that sounds like another song with you know an accordion is it's kind of interesting to me too just from a booking

standpoint and tell me if I'm wrong about this because I did not get you know well into the late night tv the way you did but the way it was teared up when you know you had the three broadcast channels the the late late ones like tom snyder it had a feeling of like it had a feeling of of rawness even letterman kind of started that way right like okay you have the more legitimate johnny carson who's like doing the traditional jokes but then you have like the later it gets you get the more like kind of oddballs the less less of a set you have as tom snyder and and you it has more of a college radio feel a little bit like you're you're experiencing something you shouldn't because you should be in bed and so they're just being a little bit more rough around the edges is that how you would describe like what what tom snyder's platform was and now you don't have that because if even like the smaller ones like samantha b or whatever even conan on cable like there's just so much kind of money and attention and this must be successful like nobody's just like kind of dicking around right the closest to that now would be like eric andre oh yeah which i've never i keep on meaning to get into that have you gotten into that

it's weird right it is really i mean it makes tim and eric look like you know like uh perry como or something like it's really it's out there i mean they have some real moments i mean they blur the line of like how much the guests are really in on it the stuff they do most of it doesn't work but the stuff that does work is just devastatingly funny um it's it's very adventurous but yeah i mean at this point it's like the only kind of weird or like you said kind of late night radio stuff is probably happening like deep in the bowels of like on-demand digital products for like Adult Swim or I don't even know what network Eric Andre's show is on but that stuff is way way way way pushed to the kind of the edges of things whereas you're right back in the day now when I by the time that I became aware of Tom Snyder as a kid I think he was transitioning into more like a Larry King model of the show okay yeah and I seem to remember it being a lot of times interviews about, like, the OJ trial or things like that. Like, I think it had taken on a kind of slightly more serious tone. I will say, though, my big takeaway now looking at a bunch of pictures of Tom Snyder is I've got to really be careful, Andrew, because I'm playing a dangerous game that I think Tom Snyder kind of lost. You paint your bald spot? One bald spot. And that is he got locked into a comb-over situation early on. So I'm looking at a picture of him from, like, the 60s, and he has a decent head of hair, but it's probably thinning, and he's combing it over, and it's probably kind of like my hair is now like if you were to see me from afar or whatever you'd be like yeah that's some hair that's guy's got a little hair on top of his head but the problem is over the years because he had committed to this certain hairstyle over the years the comb over became less and less convincing to where towards the end it was just a thin little napkin of hair that he was levitating above his scalp which is the thing that i'm trying to avoid i have to figure out the point at which i need to I just think the comb over is a very dangerous game Because you never know when to stop It's a very dangerous game, Dan-O I don't Do you know that I don't even Know what the original reference of that is Between you and me and our friend Stu

I don't know, oh well it's all It's just lebitard talk It's just

I don't even get the lebitard piece of that But I just know that Most of our text messages now with our friend Stu That's a very dangerous game

Yes, and it's, yeah, Stu just, Stu Gatz says it a lot, like, playing a dangerous game, very dangerous game, and now they're all saying it too much, you know, just like, you kind of get into, you get your crutch words or what have you, so. Yeah, we don't have any of those. Yeah, I know. No, it's all new and fresh content for us here. You know, I would have thought that Tom Snyder did that thing where he looked older and distinguished early in his career and so therefore was set up well for his later life. Like I have, well, I know what it is about my algorithm, but like so often I will be playing commercials on After These Messages with Genevieve and then the YouTube, and that's where I'm on YouTube most of the time, and then YouTube starts suggesting things. And instead of other commercials, it always suggests I watch Steve Martin as a guest on various late night talk shows throughout the year. so often I'll finish the only reason I got into after these messages I feel like it's become a tradition now by the time I'm done recording that episode I will stop for a while and just watch some of these and he like I love that man so so

much steve martin and i think i always just like looked up to him as a kid my uncle bob and steve martin two of the funniest men um in in the world i have some bad news and that joke you thought was your uncle bob's joke yeah stolen right off of a steve martin oh no but steve martin does not do

a daffy duck impression so did your uncle bob ever have what looked like an arrow going through his head he had an actual arrow through his head look it's not oh well that actually explains a lot it's

actually a pretty sad story it's weird that you would mock him for that um hey speaking of um of

after these messages and commercials and the like when we come back from this break oh we're gonna get into uh the super bowl commercials that aired yesterday and uh the ones that seem like they worked and the ones that worked less well for me and i am the official and final arbiter of these things which is why i could not even i have two show sheets andrew i have the one that you are allowed to see and then i have the one that is currently locked in a briefcase and handcuffed to somebody from a price waterhouse cooper who's standing what's your name his name is jeff um and that is the official word on what the best and worst super bowl commercials were steve martin always looked old that was my point okay let's take a break and then we'll be back with more tv Let's thank some donors of the day who are making this episode possible with their generosity. We want to thank Chris Tylea of Spokane, Washington And also John Williams of Midwest City, Oklahoma Boy, Midwest City, Oklahoma I wonder what that's like

I feel like it's kind of a Midwestern vibe

Do you think of Oklahoma, though, as being the Midwest?

You know, that's where my brain was going to Which is why I'm not 100% with you here on this conversation Because, I mean, I think Oklahoma is probably the true Midwest, right? I mean, we always get into this. Like, I always say I'm from the Midwest, but you look at Ohio, and it's certainly not really the Midwest, really.

I kind of think of, to me, it's like when you say the Midwest, to me, it's like Indiana and Illinois, I guess. But I think maybe I'm biased towards the upper Midwest. Yes, right. But I guess Oklahoma is also the Midwest. Good news, John. You don't have to change the name of your town. Midwest City, Oklahoma is just fine by us. And thank you for the donation. Also, Angela Santa Rosa is in Carmel, Indiana. Now, that's the Midwest, okay? Nicholas Carter is in the Midwest of Massachusetts, Concord, Massachusetts.

I'm guessing they're going to go with Concord as well, although I'm not sure.

I wondered if that was just a New Hampshire thing.

My guess is it's a New England thing. And I should actually know this. I mean, I think Concord, Massachusetts is a place I've probably even passed through. I could be wrong. I'm not going to go strong on this one. My guess is it's Concord, though.

See, you heard me say, awkwardly say, Concord, because I just assumed there could only be one place where they'd be like, we're going to say this weird. Once you've established that you're the place that's going to say it weird Then everyone else has to say it the normal way But maybe you're right, maybe it's just a regional thing

Yeah, my guess is there is one place where they say it weird And that one place is New England But again, I don't know And it's that, Lexington and Concord was the big battle, right? Oh, right So that would have been a Concord, Massachusetts Yeah, I think Lexington and Concord

Of course, it wouldn't have been New Hampshire

Yeah, I don't think it's Lexington and Concord But again, I don't know

I think you're right, Andrew, and I actually really appreciate the way that you – because that – I've heard – I mean, I couldn't tell you anything about what happened in those places, but I know that a lot of times when I'm getting an answer wrong on Jeopardy, the answer is Lexington and Concord, and it's never Lexington and Concord. I'll tell you what happened. Or King George lost. Sorry. Is that what happened? Weird. Is this why you have that don't tread on me flag up in your studio?

Yes, but it's about the independence.

Yeah, it's about states' rights. Yeah, right. Thank you. It was the War of Northern Aggression. What? Also, thanks to Ivan Chabra, who's in San Francisco, California. Ivan, I believe, was brought to the show by your dream friend, Andrew P. Fletch, Phyllis Fletcher. Oh, Ivan, yes. Or maybe just listened to the show and by coincidence knows your friend from your dreams, the very law-abiding and rule-following. That's, by the way, what I think the subtext of that dream was is.

we're friends and we work with phyllis fletcher and she is amazing and she is a fan of our show and just a dedicated supporter on like every level but let's be honest she probably has to kind of bite her tongue over about 60 of the things we do i don't know because we're kind i feel like we're kind of shady like the song says on tiktok i'm shady you can't be shady because i'm already shady we can't both be shady phyllis is i think a person who knows the real rules around things and just chooses to, you know, kind of go along with whatever it is we're doing on the show. But one of her productions, one of her many successful productions that she's a part of at APM, they probably would, they'd roll a little different.

Yes, but I will give Phyllis credit on this. There have been several times, I can even think of some, I don't want to get into them now, but there have been several times where I have turned to her, especially since she's been a part of APM and kind of said, hey, this thing that we played or this thing that i said maybe about a specific company or what have you or various things that i turned to her thinking like she gets the show how many we're just gonna be talking like the levitard show like

by the end it's just i actually went on the internet to try to see and this you want to talk about actual like intellectual property theft because whenever we talk about stew i now have to say my boy stew in the voice of dan levitard's father right i was like can i find that somewhere And then can we play that for Stu if we always footnote it by saying that's from the Levitard show? Or is that just officially too much? I feel like that's too much. Let them, yeah. I feel like. Well, the good news for you is it doesn't exist on the internet because I spent a long time looking for it the other day.

Anyway, I was going to say that Phyllis has always said, no, you're fine. I think you're fine. Like, I think that Phyllis, she also does understand a lot of the legal stuff regarding broadcasting, what have you. But I also think that she just understands what we're doing is is different and not held to the same kind of standards that say, you know, a production, a more journalistic production that she works on. I'm getting really boring here. But since I did sort of make it sound like she was being like a nerdy rule follower in my dream, that has not been my experience with her. She actually, I feel like, often says, no, you're good.

OK, you know who else is good? Andrew Fusen of Birmingham, Alabama. Andrew, thank you for supporting the show. Thank you to all of our donors of the day. We would not be here without you. So thank you, babies. Hello and welcome to Top Story. All right, I don't need to beat around the bush here. I want to list the best and worst Super Bowl commercials in my opinion. Let's start with the best because I think it's actually more fun to talk about the ones that didn't work. But I think the absolute best commercial from yesterday's Super Bowl was the Amazon Alexa ads, Alexa's body, which we talked about last week because you'd already done. You've already done an after these messages about this, right, Andrew? So, I mean, about the Super Bowl ads in general. So you're like really up to speed on this.

Well, I'm up to speed on a lot, a whole bunch that were released before the Super Bowl. And then I did watch the Super Bowl yesterday, so I saw all the ones I hadn't that hadn't been released as previews or what have you. I don't I didn't take furious notes because I'm going to go back and kind of rewatch all the commercial breaks. But, yeah, the Alexa one, I thought I had said on last week's show, and maybe I didn't. Maybe I've been talking about this commercial too much. But I had said, like, this is definitely my favorite commercial of the ones I had seen was the Echo, which I was surprised by because I felt like previous Echo ads tried way during the Super Bowl had tried way too hard and swung and missed on a lot of these. And this one I loved. And I also was telling people, like, it has what I feel to be like a real pearl clutching moment. Won't somebody please think of the children that I found delightful? And it sounds like that's what you're holding in on as well.

Indeed. Now, I can't imagine there are many people who haven't heard it, but just in case.

It's just flawless, isn't it? I think so. I mean, I literally couldn't imagine a more beautiful vessel for Alexa to be.

It looks like they must have some new, you know, sort of hardware for the Alexa. It's kind of a black sphere, right? Yeah. And so this woman is admiring it, and you just heard what she said. And, of course, the more beautiful thing that the Alexa could be in is the actor Michael B. Jordan. she's a bus with michael b jordan's face on it can i also can you pause it there for a second

and back up by five seconds because i thought when she sees michael b jordan and says there's nothing that it could be inside i even thought that the first time i saw the commercial i was like oh that's a little that's a little sexual right there i believe no uh i i didn't catch

that the first time but sure also this is just a clever bit of like a russia like

Matruska of ads but Do you notice that the way she is sort of Her interest in Michael B. Jordan is Peaked or her thought about him comes About because a bus pulls by that's completely Wrapped in some Michael B. Jordan movie That's I would imagine a real Thing that's on prime video

Exactly I didn't look up I didn't look up as we say What that movie is but my guess is That is an Amazon production as well

Something by Tom Clancy called Without Remorse starring Michael b jordan so you know it's their dime it's their whatever 5.5 million dollars i think was what it cost for 30 seconds so um anyway inside alexa how many tablespoons are in a cup there are 16 tablespoons in a cup so of course now it's michael b jordan is like in her kitchen when she's trying to uh cook something babe food just got here why you cooking who's that by the way i honestly think the performance by the guy playing the husband is so good in this? Yes, all of them. Like, the performances are so good in this. They're all amazing, but to me, the husband kind of steals it a little bit for me, because he's just, like, I don't know, there's something very subtle about his performance that I really like.

Turn on the sprinklers.

Honey, I already ran this. So, she turns on the sprinklers, then Michael B. Jordan is just standing sexily in their yard, getting just absolutely drenched, and somehow even more sexy.

Things are getting way too wet around here

And we've got the dirtiest joke Probably ever at a Super Bowl At things are getting way too wet around here I mean Sorry GoDaddy Right I mean and by the way That's how you do dirty humor Like GoDaddy just putting some You know big busted bikini models Standing next to Danica Patrick Or whatever Is not interesting to me As far as like you know I don't know titillating uh content goes in the super bowl ad that is how you do it yes you're getting way too

wet around here the commercial is just so good it's just i mean again people who if you haven't seen it because you didn't watch the super bowl watch it like it's just well directed like so many times these commercials they come up with a concept and they're all kind of related to this like what if alexa was like malfunctioning i think that was one last year where they had a bunch of celebrities using alexa or i should say echo to keep things from triggering um and um and you know it's just like well they wanted to get celebrities that a lot of them just felt like half ideas that weren't well executed but this is just executed beautifully like it's just so good i'll stop just saying it's so good it is really really good uh and i think

overall i have to say it was for me the best ad now there was a close second i'm going to give honorable mention to to an ad that is for a company that i use but with great sort of um what's the word trepidation trepidation or just kind of like i'm not excited about the ceo's way of being in the world uh but the ad for jimmy johns i starring starring um brad garrett the uh ray romano's brother from everybody loves oh right yes yes explain that to me yeah so it's this whole i mean it's this kind of basically it's set up it's almost like a sopranos type of thing where It's like Brad Garrett's character is like the sort of he's the sandwich king and he is very threatened by Jimmy John's. But there are just these subtle moments that and subtle jokes that make the ad really, really work for me here. I'll play some of it for you.

Tony Bologna vich here. People call me the king of cold cuts. The sandwich business has been real good to me. But now I got this Jimmy's John showing up.

First of all, he thinks it's called Jimmy's John, which is so perfect for this guy's deal. The whole commercial, he calls it Jimmy's John.

A commercial for their product, which is bold.

I love it. Yeah. And just the way that it's shot, it feels maybe it's even more like a casino than The Sopranos. It has that kind of like I'm the gangster who's on top of the world progression scene that's in a lot of those movies. He's like he's got a bunch of cars and he's in a hot tub and he's getting a back rub. And it's like everything is real good for Tony Bolonovich, the cold cut king. But now he's got this Jimmy's John that's that's, you know, that's cutting into his action.

I'm Jimmy's John's and I have high quality, reasonably priced sandwiches.

So he does a thing where he's throwing a Jimmy John's sandwich at one of his underlings and a piece of like bologna or whatever hits the face of an underling who takes it down. and then bites it gingerly which is just such a great visual joke like very pretty subtle but

still really good you got all natural meat sliced by hand i got turkey and ham made by science i'm good so he's like i love that i'm good he's in a

Like it's almost like a Breaking Bad situation where the same guy who ate the little piece of bologna that hit his face is now like pulling a, you know, some kind of meat loaf type compressed product out of a nitro, like whatever, dry ice thing. This is war. Sandwich war. So there you go. Thanks for the reminder.

Yeah. I had forgotten about that one. And that one also I think Veeves and I might have been like reacting to whatever came before it. So we like I was like kind of 15 seconds into it by the time I was starting to pay attention. Also, I was confused because he looks so much like one of the one of the actors who played a character. I want to say in Goodfellas, although it might have been Sopranos. Do you by any chance have any idea who I'm talking about? Because I do not. But like a tall guy with a mustache and that exact hair. He I thought it might have been actually some before I realized it was him. I thought it might have been somebody who was actually in one of those films.

You're not thinking of Chaz Palmentieri Are you? Who doesn't really have a mustache Most of the time but is kind of tall I don't know, maybe, maybe Either way, it's just pitch perfect though, yeah Yeah, it's really, really good Again, the reason that I'm like so-so on Jimmy John's Is because I think he's One of those guys, I've sent photos online Of him doing that terrible big game hunting Like, you know Where they go off and basically Kill some beautiful animal that's Endangered or being grown on a farm somewhere so as to be hunted which i'm not really a fan of but i will say the sandwiches are pretty good and also that commercial is pretty funny okay now can i let's get oh yeah well can i

ask you a question while we're talking about things we liked because maybe i'll spoil this because it sounds like you want to transition into things you didn't like um and maybe you didn't like this but i laughed at the drake from state farm joke i thought that was a pretty good

joke no that's a that's a buzzer for you I just thought it was basic I also just feel like yeah I don't know why but I just to me it felt unimaginative because just putting well I mean there's the good the best part of that joke is that Drake from State Farm rhymes with Jake from

State Farm and actually I think the best but well I mean that's definitely the joke but what I like about it is that drake who i always think of as being kind of a um you know kind of a a big softy kind of is standing there kind of intimidatingly the way he bites an apple intimidatingly intimidatingly at jake i thought was actually a pretty funny button that's actually what really

got me laughing i think i'm just put off by how buff both jake and drake are and how what's happening to me because it's not i'm going in the opposite direction i just so it's just a reminder As was Tom Brady's entire existence yesterday Since he and I are almost the same age It's just a reminder of how Not great I'm doing with my physical body Compared to those guys But I guess it's just like those, to me those State Farm ads Are just I don't know, I'm not doing a good job explaining why it didn't work for me I didn't think it was like the worst But it just didn't really It just didn't, like no part of it made me Laugh with surprise Which is probably the main thing that I'm going for You know, when I'm watching Any of these ads I mean, clearly, I guess I'm always going to give my award to an ad that was funny, which may not even make the ad the most effective. No, I think you're right. Which is a whole other conversation, right? I hate the dramatic ones. Well, yeah. Although, you know what one I thought was kind of effective?

Can I say one more thing about Jake from State Farm? Because we'll never come back to it. I think that I don't think it's one of the best. I would give it a – it's funny because you set the bar so low for me because I generally agree with you on the State Farm commercials. I really dislike the State Farm commercials, the whole thing that this is part of – the whole campaign that this is part of the whole like, oh, you have to have the Mahomes deal. No, you don't. Like I just think it's all bad. And so the fact that this one made me laugh, I think a big part of that was it surprised me that it was actually funny, which that's kind of unfair to give it an award because everything else is so crappy. But anyway, I just wanted that on the record.

I will also – I will give them some credit too for not going with the, oh, you're giving me the Drake discount. Right. Yes. Exactly, yeah. Because they just can never – and I guess they were doing a subtle callback. Boy, maybe I never made it in the world of big-time TV commercials because I wasn't handsome enough to be the handsome guy and I wasn't unusual looking enough to be that guy. But, boy, the dude with the cheese wedge on his head has made some pretty good dough over the years, menacing Aaron Rodgers. He was like the discount double-check guy. He was just always showing up in commercials, like just kind of being overly excited about Aaron Rodgers. And then they brought him back. They made him Aaron Rodgers' stunt double on this commercial.

Isn't it Paul Rudd who's playing? You know what?

Paul Rudd throwing the football and having to slip out of his hands. That was also good. You brought me around I'm putting it in the good category I cut you off

off because I wanted to be on the record as saying, like, I'm with you on that campaign, but you were about to say another one that you liked.

Well, so here's what my plan was. The best, the worst, and then sort of notable for one reason or another. So I think, and there were a couple of really not great ones, but for me, the absolute worst one was the Vince Lombardi NFL ad for itself.

Oh, my God. I heard this thing twice. It's been rough. Alone. Heavy. And nothing from hell to sky has turned us back.

So apparently this ad is a sort of pastiche of different Vince Lombardi quotes, actual things that Vince Lombardi apparently said. But they've pulled them from different speeches to sort of cobble it together to feel like it's relevant to this moment. It's an actor named Russ Hutchinson being Vince Lombardi's voice Or I guess Vince Lombardi But OMG does this computer generation of Vince Lombardi not work It is terrifying It looks like the dad from The Wonder Years There are just kids that are playing And a random cartoon of Vince Lombardi shows up It's like the beginning of a horror film

It's really upsetting It really is I also, like, I'm an idiot. I thought it was Tom Landry. If he was like, that's Tom Landry. I'm like, oh, okay. Oh, because he has a hat. Of course it's Vince Lombardi. Yeah, I didn't realize until this morning that it's Vince Lombardi. But, like, the whole thing was just unsettling. Totally. Teamwork.

Like a ball. So, like, what happens is, like, these kids are playing football on the grass, and the ball rolls over, and then this meaty hand grabs it. This is what happens in horror films. And think about the sound.

that guy's there to do something bad yeah and the sound design like listen to the music that you were just playing it's so ominous it's so ominous and almost on the edge of distortion

like it's weird and what they've done again i can't tell if this is all computer animation or if they've just put prosthetics on this guy someone named ruch russ hutchinson they're trying to make him look like vince lombardi first of all there's like three people on earth who remember Vince Lombardi and what he looked like and none of them are watching the Super Bowl like I'm sorry to say this I don't mean to be dismissive of the sort of history of football but like no one cares anymore I'm sorry like it's not it's not relevant to the average person watching the Super Bowl they're not like everyone get be quiet there's a cartoon of Vince Lombardi like a time to get inspired and you're right this is the music by the way the kid looks at the football vince lombardi scary vince lombardi hands the kid the football i guess we're supposed to think that this is inspiring that this nine-year-old kid playing football is like holy shit vince lombardi just handed me a football the look on his face is like stranger danger yeah yeah who do i i guess i should i call my mom should i should i do the amber alert now or wait for this guy to leave it also by the way just suffers from a thing that a lot of these commercials suffered from which is just tying together non-related topics like yeah it's a pandemic and life has been hard for a lot of people so you should watch the nfl like i just it's it just feels it feels um i don't know it just feels to me a little bit um insincere like you're just trying to you're trying to sort of seem like you're being somber and you get it but really you're just trying to promote the nfl and then the weirdest thing that happens is and i'm sure they thought this was just like a real breakthrough is that this cartoon of vince lombardi then appears on the like real diamond vision they don't call it that anymore but they did in the kingdom when i was a kid the giant scoreboard in the stadium in tampa and this is where i think things truly start to come off the rails because they're cutting to real people in the stadium none of whom know what the hell is going on like i think maybe they thought there was going to be a triumphant yop when like an animation of vince lombardi shows up on the screen i was like uh why is the dad from wonder years up there like no one is hyped they cut to the first person they show is the honey badger uh tyron matthew who is thinking about the super bowl he's about to play and he is in no way giving the facial reaction they should have just like hired an actor to pretend to be excited about this thing, Tyron Matthew is like, hey, what can I do to personally lose this game for the Kansas City Chiefs? How about getting into with Tom Brady and committing four dumb penalties? He's thinking about his bookie who's going to break his legs if the Chiefs meet the spread. Right? So, and then they cut. So it's like Tyron Matthew, who's just completely not even looking at the screen because he's about to play in the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl and they cut back to uncanny animation and then it's a and they they must have thought we're going to cut we want to find uh people who are wearing different kinds of jerseys or maybe this is just random but they cut to two women who are standing next to each other one is in a Tom Brady jersey and one is in a a Tampa jersey that's like or it looks like a Tampa jersey that's number 90 I don't actually know who that is off the top of my head but these two women are also completely and totally unenthused like everyone is just ready for the game to start and showing them does not have any of the kind of like inspirational we got this oh my goodness honey do you remember where you were when you saw a cartoon of vince lombardi it has none of that

effect that they're going for they tried to get tupac i don't know if you knew that they were

now that would have been memorable so I give that I give that worst ad and then honorable mention in worst ad and this is again you know it was hard to pick just one but I went with an ad that when I literally within three seconds of just seeing who the characters were and what the thing was I knew exactly what the ad was and that was the Cheetos it wasn't me Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis and I guess we should say Shaggy ad just tell him it was you

but I caught you at the counter

by the way Ashton Kutcher may be one of the worst singers I have ever heard in my life which I feel okay criticizing him for this because it seems to be the only flaw in this person's existence he's ridiculously handsome He was a model who then turned into a comic actor who's now become a mogul. He seems to be doing just fine in life, but I'll tell you the one thing he cannot do, and that is sing.

His acting in this isn't all that great either.

Well, yeah. I mean, they didn't give – the problem with this ad is that it's one – it's like it should be a five-second ad because they're like, we're going to do it like the Shaggy song, and Mila's eating the Cheetos, and she's saying it wasn't me. But as a like Ashton Kutcher's like direction as an actor is just just look kind of surprised or look like, huh? They didn't give him any other anywhere else to go with this character other than just being like constantly looking at things and being like, huh? And it's like he only has like one of those expressions in his arsenal. And so we see it like 30 times in this ad. Also, again, me, I can't get over the singing, though.

So you're snacking on the sofa with me.

you even had him in the shower i mean how many takes did they not use of him's that that take on you even uh whatever it is you even did it in the shower you even had him in the shower i mean i can't believe this was the hero take this was the best ashton kutcher singing they had well

it's also weird because he's clearly trying to do like you don't realize until the final line that he does which is the shower line that you think he's maybe even trying to do a bit of a shaggy like have a little bit of that whatever that inflection is whatever that accent is um and i wonder reggaeton yeah and i wonder if that's part of it too or he's trying to mask it it is it is by far the worst singing i've ever heard in a commercial where the joke isn't what a bad singer which i almost kind of give him credit for i will say this the first time i watched it And I don't think this is on purpose I'm not giving him credit for this But when Shaggy takes over Which we'll hear in a second It is so relieving to have Ashton not singing anymore That I actually started laughing at the Shaggy lines Like it made me I wonder if it's like having Shaggy do the joke itself Wasn't good enough So they had to set the bar really really low Because when Shaggy comes in It actually makes me grin

Thank god there's a professional here Of the singing variety this will talk about Dreamcourt this will haunt my nightscape for probably years to come this will be an earworm that I never unhear

you even had him in the shower you even had him in the shower like what it wasn't me I even got you on camera that's what he's really leaning into his

shaggy

don't talk surprise don't you sleep behind your back You got to keep tabs before she emptied up, but let's review the situation, orange fingers, red flag. To keep you unstashed, you got to hide it better. If she asks where.

Again, they've rewritten the lyrics so that it's about Cheetos. And I mean, my problem with this ad, along with Ashton Kutcher's singing, is just that it just doesn't go anywhere. I mean, I guess I will give them credit. At the very end, there is maybe the teeniest bit of a surprising moment where Ashton Kutcher finally corners his wife to ask about the Cheetos. And then she says.

me oh okay that's actually the best acting that ashton kutcher does in the commercial yeah shaggy

with the next line though shaggy can't sell the next line that's the first time that's ever worked i know yeah i the only thing i like about it is and again you know i changing the lyrics of a song to be about your product isn't like genius but again maybe they just set it up with him singing so badly with Kutcher singing so badly that having having him sing having Shaggy actually sing kind of not saved it but helped it for me and I do wonder like could could you just have just done something with Shaggy and just like lean into that joke and like have it a music video and it's just I think this is another one where they just ruin it because they feel like they need more celebrity power more celebrity more celebrity what if we get you know Mila and Ashton it's like that's not gonna make the commercial better now use that money to buy 17 more writers for one afternoon you know and make it right but that's kind of a ongoing complaint with vives and i where they people confuse celebrity power with a good commercial right and i want to mention not that

anyone cares or it matters but i like am a big fan of mila kunis as both an actor and a human uh she's on dax shepard's podcast on the occasion because they're friends and she just seems like the most likable rad person and i would imagine that ashton kutcher is the same way uh because they you know have built a life together so i'm assuming that they're both like really awesome good people who get it and have been in various productions where they're really good this just was not i mean you said it best the confusion between like oh we'll just put famous people in something and then that'll make it interesting it's like this is not the best use

of these two either yeah and there's one thing about this campaign that i want to say that i do think is, I think, although like my opinion on this is kind of evolving, I guess, or could be evolved, but I think is genius or at least worth talking about, which is you do that thing when you're marketing your product and you say, what is it that people associate with this product and what is it that makes it special? What's unique, right? And Cheetos homed in, I think that's the 17th time I said homed in on the show today, on this thing of the orange fingers you get after eating cheetos or in this case cheeto pops or whatever the hell um which to me like i don't even like cheese i don't like cheetos and and i don't like messes and so like you you know you and i talk about yeah that just wings and ribs like it rubs me the wrong way but it is it i do get a visceral reaction from it and i do think it's interesting that they identified this aspect of eating their product that is unique and they said we're going to build a campaign around it i think it's it's worth talking about like it's interesting yeah you know what would have been

way darker but way better if they did some sort of like forensic files or dateline nbc oh yeah yeah just spot on thing but the evidence was the cheeto dust black light yeah and like you know what i mean like but just do it really like get keith morrison who's that kind of like wizened guy that's on does a lot of the dateline episodes he's very identifiable like if you just did it super serious but then the the key piece of evidence had to do with cheetos dust i mean i guess the problem with that is to really do it you have to be talking about

some horrible event you could you could do it though like like that would be a more interesting

take but i'm with you that the the and also i'll mention that um it made me very uncomfortable to see that beautiful home yeah or that set that was a beautiful home with just cheeto dust on the walls like oh boy yeah that really bummed me out now honorable mention and this is going to be controversial, and I'm sure that a lot of our listeners are going to be like, Luke, why must you be so negative? But for me, honorable mention in the worst commercial category would have to be Wayne's World for Uber Eats. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Wayne's World. Party on, Wayne. Party on, Garth. As a local access show we want everyone to support local restaurants but we'd never manipulate you the way all these this is my real question was is the is the concept of wayne's world or whatever was this ever funny i know that the movie wayne's world is like beloved and is in considered in the canon of greatest comedy movies of all time probably to most of our listeners but i'm searching even when it was popular on SNL originally it was the kind of thing that I never understood why people were that into it I probably even quoted it sometimes I wanted to fit in but saying Babraham Lincoln and

Schwing has never struck me as a funny thing I well I'm with you I mean I'm I'm yeah I'm the wrong person to provide any other kind of position on this because at the time I remember really liking S&M.

because it seemed like almost a rite of passage I wasn't allowed to watch it when I was very little so when we did get to see it we would watch like old reruns with my parents but like it just felt like finally I got to an age where I was allowed into the SNL viewing club and this you know everybody loves the era that they grew up with or at least that used to hold true so yeah felt like such a special time like will there ever be anybody who can hold a candle to Dana Carvey Well, it turns out Dana Carvey had three bits that were some of them were funny and it's all he's done for 40 years now. Like it just and again, maybe some people love it and I'm harsh in their their buzz. I don't mean to. But for me, I'm very much with you. Like I never I just don't think I ever like laughed out loud at a at a Wayne's World joke. It was just something that was all around us. And so we would probably do the imitations, but it never seemed funny. And when I heard they were doing these commercials, like, I was not excited about it.

Yeah, I guess I just don't – I only feel at age 44, finally, I'm ready to come out and say I'm a person who has never thought this was funny. And this ad was no exception. Also, mostly I was fixating on the kind of – I mean, I think Mike Myers and Dana Carvey both look pretty good for their age. But it had a bit of that uncanniness going Dana Carvey is lucky Because the Garth character has a lot of hair And glasses and a lot of stuff Running interference And Dana Carvey legitimately just looks really young still But Mike Myers The Wayne character He's just right out there And again I don't think there's anything wrong with how Mike Myers looks But it doesn't I'm not seeing 22 year old Mike Myers When I'm seeing this ad I'm seeing however old he is now And it makes me feel uncomfortable probably because it forces me to confront my own uh sliding appearance and uh and so yeah i didn't commercials do and also it's just like every joke in there is the joke is we would never stoop to these levels of whatever and then they just stoop to that level which again it's just kind of like i i would just didn't i didn't find it super surprising i will say that when they finally brought cardi b in that was a little bit of relief because at least she was funny right like i liked her takes um i thought and then at the end when it's kind of like they're all they somehow magically all turn into garths for some reason or they're doing a tiktok dance as garth uh i kind of thought cardi b was funny let's see they're doing a dance All right Cardi B doing whatever that sound is That I think like Dana Carvey's character does Kind of was charming Basically I Other than Cardi B I was really This ad made me feel uncomfortable

Yeah I went on a very similar journey too And I think I said something similar to Genevieve After it ended Like, yeah, well, Cardi kind of made me smile at the very end. Although like the as far as like worst commercials, like I did not like this commercial, but I also knew it was coming and I knew I wasn't going to like it. I mean, to me, I still don't think there's anything worse than the Scots ad. Right.

We talked about that because my nemesis is in it.

Oh, yeah. We did talk about this on the show last week. But like I still think that Wayne's World isn't quite as bad. Like the Scots ad is just so bad, but maybe it didn't strike you as so bad in the moment because we'd already crapped all over it on Friday.

Well, of course, this morning was literally the first time I watched it, which is very silly. I clicked on it. I was like, am I really going to give them the click? And then I did. And then I was really underwhelmed because it's just – it just doesn't – there's just not any kind of real – they don't even attempt to do a joke as far as I could tell. It's just, hey, Scott wants everyone to spend more money on their lawn care. And then a celebrity saying, but you're not going to have a nicer backyard than my backyard. And that's kind of the whole ad, right?

Yeah. But then you're just trying to jam in all these things. It's like, oh, we got Travolta and his daughter. OK, well, then they have to dance. OK, well, then they have to do a tick tock. But he doesn't know how to do tick tocks because he's too old. Oh, but at the end, they do a tick tock. It's just so dumb and lazy. And this is exactly one where it's kind of like no writers just put all the money into this level of celebrity packet with these people. It's just like this is the type of Super Bowl commercial that I find insultingly bad.

I will say that maybe because I've been rewatching a lot of Arrested Development, but Carl Weathers has done so well for himself as being as being sort of a parody of Carl Weathers or, you know what I mean? Like he was he was Action Jackson I think I mean he was in some movies but he has done a really really effective job of working consistently across television and movies and commercials just being Carl Weathers which is kind of great for him he seems you know he seems like a likable guy.

I was remembering his character on Arrested Development, and what a great – speaking of, like, writing something that's not expected, the fact that he always wants to get a stew going and that he's always, like, you know, just like he's super-duper-duper thrifty. I don't know why that just makes me laugh so much, but it's just not where you ever see the Carl Weathers character going, and then that's where they have him go, and it just constantly delights me.

Yeah, and I always – by the way – Simmer down, stew. We do have intro tape for stew if we ever need it. um but um yeah i have no i guess of him and i did this exact same thing on friday too um who's the other guy in there who's flipping burgers from the office and i couldn't remember his name on

friday and i can't remember i don't actually know that guy's name in real life but i know his name

is stanley stanley right i couldn't even think of stanley but like yeah i have no even martha stewart for that matter like i don't like i don't wish any of them ill and in fact i do root for Carl Weathers like but the commercial itself was just awful there's one more category which is

worst good commercial or best bad commercial uh which is a commercial that I actually kind of liked but there's just a couple of moments that I was like oh no why are we doing this and that would be the Hellman's mayonnaise fairy god mayo ad with Amy Schumer such a I am I am an Amy Schumer appreciator uh i really like her a lot actually sort of her stand-up but just her as a person in the world every time she's on a podcast as a guest i'm riveted uh i really really really like amy schumer this ad of course she plays um kind of a mayo fairy or something and i actually like some of the some of the takes and some of the lines they had them do but the problem is it suffers from like i think it's two of these very like repeated lines that are now played as comedy in a lot of things and I don't remember them off the top of my head but once I start playing it I will pause them so this guy is looking through his refrigerator he doesn't have anything it's a sort of random assortment of leftover things and he's trying to figure out what to do and then Amy Schumer appears in his kitchen with wings on

sad this is sad who are you I'm your fairy god mayo and that is a hot mess okay hot mess

I think we've probably said hot mess enough hot mess and living in your head rent free are both things that we've said a lot and will probably be written into various commercials and things because it seems current. And again, I'm not arguing that anything we say on this show is current. But we're also not getting paid millions of dollars. We don't have any illusions that this is good content. And we're not spending millions of dollars on hiring teams of really good writers to make this happen.

But also, can I just say a couple of things, though? Hot Mess isn't even new anymore. hot mess feels like a decade old like it used to be like um like what do we used to say like absolutely or whatever um but uh beyond that it also just doesn't make sense like it's just a hot mess like maybe if you're cooking something and it's a big stew and it's like a bunch of yeah simmer down like there could be a hot mess but he's taking a bunch of just i don't know cold cuts and veggies out of a fridge and he's holding them awkwardly it's just like not how anybody

would say hot mess right and that is a hot mess i don't know what to do with any of this stuff i got half an onion an artichoke what even is an artichoke no what even is this is a big thing

now people love to say what even is people love to write it people love to put it in commercials i feel like the it's time has come and gone let's just move over and watch the wings now here's the

hellman's magic creamy dreamy oh yeah that's normal oh yeah that's normal which is a cousin

of like um what would be another way that that gets said in like that well that's not weird like it's just like one of those throwaway lines that i feel like ad people are writing into things because they think it's kind of like i don't know clever or something oh yeah that seems normal and it's just like in too many ads for me can i ask you a question uh before you go back to it like

Because nothing about this Amy Schumer commercial held up to me. I didn't even understand what the point was. And I'm like you. I really liked her, and I was looking forward to seeing what this commercial was going to be. And you're a known mayo enthusiast. And I don't like mayonnaise, although you wouldn't know that based on the sandwich that I ate on Friday. But what I was going to say was, oh, that line, oh, that's normal. I will say that in the Paramount ads, which were like serialized commercials, Stephen Colbert does say at one point at the mountaintop, at the peak of the Paramount Mountain, at the Paramount, he says, yeah, because this isn't weird enough. And he pushes a button. And I got to say, that was a laugh out loud moment for me. Do you remember what I'm talking about? I actually didn't see that ad somehow. Did you not see any of the Paramount ads? They were loaded. I mean, there were probably they were more. paramount ads than anything in the first half they were um they were like a serial they were a storyline where they take a bunch of their characters for like it's a paramount streaming service they're unveiling i'm assuming to replace the cbs one although i'm not sure about that and so you have all of these famous celebrities some of whom are cartoons or animation some of whom are irl and they're all like climbing the paramount mountain and things happen along the way and at the very top you have steven colbert and i believe he's like a bartender up there for some reason he just has one line where he says yeah because this isn't weird enough and they push a button to dance or something i don't know what it is but i will say that somehow him saying that of steven colbert though like and anything that comes out of his mouth honestly that guy i

mean even the ads they were running some ads like promos for his show you know because he was going to do a special after the super bowl episode of of uh whatever it's called the late show with stephen colbert and there's these little moments that are just he says like something like hey stephen colbert you know um like you know we're gonna do a special episode after the super bowl which guess what it will also have commercials or one of them he's just dipping a football and he's dipping the nose of a football i know i just have been thinking about that since i saw it like why does that make me laugh so much it has to do i think with with stephen colbert uh i love him Now, I know we should probably try to wrap things up. The Dr. Squatch, I'm usually like a fan of like a smaller company, like betting big to try to, you know, sort of make their mark and, you know, spend their whole ad budget for 10 years on the Super Bowl. I like that as an idea because I like gambling. But, I mean, this one for some kind of soap that I guess is supposed to make you smell more manly or something. It's terrible.

And these have been kicking around online for a while, too. They'll air before a Vimeo video or something. I don't know. And it's just kind of like, it's both trying to be like, this is for men. But also, men can have a sensitive side because we know we can't say that. So there's a little tribute to like, let your daughters braid your hair, but you're still a man. It's just so, I hate it.

It's just weird. Yeah, I'll just play like a couple seconds of it.

Your soap is...

Also, what is the swear word there? Your soap is shit I mean I don't think That's even the contention right Maybe it smells quote unquote feminine Or something But I don't think that the idea is that Because this guy's washing with a soap that's not manly enough The soap itself is shit Oh that would be a good prank Didn't Veeves prank you by putting nail polish on your soap one night

Yeah a clear nail polish We are not a prank family but she pranked me once And got me good and she still talks about it It was actually April Fool's Day And this is when I was waking up super early and going into KCRW, and I'm just like, I could not get a lather in the shower that morning. I couldn't get a lather. At one point, I'm even kind of clawing at the soap, like, why is the soap broken? And then I just dry off, and I go to work. But I did say to Veeves, I'm like, something's wrong with that soap. And she just started laughing because she had coated it in clear nail polish. That's great. I love that.

Your body wash is a synthetic detergent, but you're not a dish. You're a man. Switch to Dr. Squatch Natural Soap for Men. For men who build things, open pickle jars on the first try.

Oh, my God. This is just like the meeting where they came up with this as the concept. It just makes me cringe a lot.

Eat dragons and let their daughters braid their hair.

Oh, LOL, LOL, Andrew. Because that's all the other things that he said were like hyper-masculine, but then letting your daughter braid your hair. That's – I wasn't expecting that one. I have to be honest. That got me. Oh, yeah. It really got me. Anyway, I also just don't think that there are – here's what I'm wondering. Who is the customer base that is men who have been thinking they've been washing in the shower with whatever soap? Let's say they have a family and there's like a bar of dove soap in there or whatever the soap is that, again, I'm going to go with some real broad gender stuff here. Let's say that their wife tends to do the shopping and she's buying whatever kind of soap she's buying and it's in the shower. Are there enough men who are that unsatisfied with that soap? They feel it challenges their masculinity that much that they want to go buy a manly soap? I don't think that that's a statistically significant number of people in America to support a company.

Well, I think that's the type of commercial this is, though, right? There are commercials that try to sell you something because you already think you need it and they're providing some. Then there are the commercials who are kind of creating a new market and planting the idea in your head. And I think this would be in that category, right?

So they're hoping to get a bunch of guys who had never even considered what the soap situation was to think, you know what? My soap is too feminine and I need to get this. sasquatch soap or whatever i just i mean i think you're right probably but it just i just don't think so looms large enough in the minds of most people particular most guys that they're i mean i just hope that that's this company fails based on this ad i hope this company fails and has never

heard from again me too and again they've been making these for a while and um this was like their super bowl one but yeah i i i hate it what you know what i hate what's another phrase you're talk about internet phrases you hate thanks i hate it um i hate that phrase but thanks i hate that phrase and thanks i hate this commercial before you move on too far we are you going to at all mention that maybe you didn't like this one but i like this going in and i liked it watching it live too but the um i think that the the lemons falling from the sky in the bud light lemon

seltzer commercial is really good i thought it was a very compelling commercial but i wondered about for people that didn't see it it was people talking about you know kind of life giving you lemons and making lemonade and they're talking it's like three people are standing around reminiscing on 2020 and it starts raining lemons out of the sky and then it's just like pandemonium because it's just destroying everything my thought was did anyone die did anyone get killed by a lemon because like at one point a guy's running through like an airport and it's like the glass is shattering and i guess i give them credit for making the like if you want the joke to be funny you got to commit to it but my thought was like thousands died in the lemon incident of 2020

It reminded me of some of the things that I like a lot, which I'm not sure. I don't think you're familiar with Watchmen, right? You didn't watch the TV show. Oh, but you did read the comic book, so you know that like.

A long time ago.

Okay, whatever. But there's things fall from the sky kind of famously and mysteriously and weirdly. And same with Magnolia, which is a movie that I loved when I was in college, although I don't know if I'd like it now. So it's kind of reminiscent of that. It's dark. it's of the moment without being a commercial that is like Vince Lombardi reading a bunch of quotes that have to do with adversity or just like this year has been a tough year it's a somewhat lighter touch but also kind of arty and then I just really think she lands the joke at the end when somebody comes up, interrupts their little circle at this picnic and says well you know when life gives you lemons and she says we know the expression Mark because they had already been talking about it There's just something small about it, and that's one where there's a world where I would have hated that commercial, but somehow I just felt like all the execution was good in it.

The crying bride under the table at her wedding that's ruined because of the lemons is pretty funny, too.

There's a lot of lemons. Well, you know what they say when life gives you lemons.

We know the same, Mark.

I don't know why Mark is a good name to choose there. I don't know why, but it is.

A couple of noteworthy ones Real quick here I actually kind of thought That the There was one for like Michelob Ultra Organic Hard Seltzer Because you know When you're drinking malt liquor That's been turned into a vodka like substance You want it to be organic I think we all agree The commercial that they did With these celebrity lookalikes

Oh this is one Is it Don Cheadle Is that Yeah

I actually thought it kind of worked like at first I was I was trying to and I'm scrolling down here on this website I'm on to try to get to it. But at first I just thought this is sort of your typical, you know, I don't know, just kind of lame hard seltzer commercial. And then and then they I was surprised.

Sorry, I'm stumbling here because I think I have it here, actually, on the one that you sent. In fact, this is one I want to watch again because I don't think I paid enough attention to the beginning of it. And it's kind of confusing on purpose, but essentially we see a bunch of people that we think are famous, but they all look off by a click, right?

And the voiceover was like – I was like, this is not – what's his name? Christopher Walken. I was like, this is someone doing – my ear was like, this is Christopher Walken-ish, but it's not really him. And then the guy who's supposed to be Stallone, I was like, is that Frank Stallone? Right, yes, yes. I had this sort of unspecific, unfocused feeling of something is off. And then it was very rewarding to realize that, yes, something was off. These are all celebrity lookalikes. And it's a person doing a Christopher Walken impression.

And I believe maybe the first person we see is like a Serena Williams lookalike. Yes. Or Venus Williams.

It's a Williams sister. Superstars.

knows what goes through their minds i gotta say i'm enjoying this even more the second time knowing what the joke is because i haven't seen this since the super bowl when i was confused and the imitation is really funny superstars Who knows what goes through their minds when the stakes are this high? When their legacy is on the line.

Sometimes you just want a hard seltzer.

A hard seltzer with no carbs.

With no sugar.

Who needs that? I want a hard seltzer that's USDA certified organic.

With no artificial aftertaste.

But in a world where most things seem real,

sometimes they're not. So at the very end, you have a Don Cheadle lookalike. We suddenly realize that it's just a lookalike, and he is doing some action scene where he lands next to the real Don Cheadle, and they are face-to-face now. I think it's opposite. Oh, sorry. What's that?

Yeah. Well, I think it's that Don Cheadle basically ziplines onto his own yacht to confront the fake Don Cheadle.

Oh, I see. Okay, gotcha. I missed that.

In a world where most things seem real, sometimes they're not. I don't know who a lot of these people are supposed to be

Which is why a lot is lost on me there But obviously the Stallone one

Yeah, I thought that that was pretty effective But again, mostly because I like anything That makes me feel a little bit smart And I felt very validated that my like, huh And then they actually do a thing at the very end of the commercial where they cut to, I assume it's the guy that was doing the voiceover, and he is very clearly not Christopher Walken. Oh, yeah. Here, let's take a listen to this. Which is kind of a nice pullback.

I'm not Christopher Walken. He's like a younger Asian man with glasses.

Yeah, he's very, very, very recognizably not Chris Walken. So I thought that was kind of cool. Also, I thought that the – I don't know if – I don't think it really worked, but I thought it was sort of a clever idea was the ad for Fiverr where they tried to sort of like do something with the Four Seasons landscaping debacle.

I didn't get it. I knew that they released a teaser where they didn't say anything but Fiverr, and they showed the recognizable outside like garage door. Like in the teaser, they didn't say anything about Four Seasons or, as I called it on an ATM the other day, five seasons until Genevieve had to stop me and say, you're talking too fast. You said five seasons anyway. And, you know, that's part of the joke of this ad, by the way. Well, you know, when it came on TV, I couldn't I couldn't follow it. And I felt like, wait, yeah, all you did was kind of co-op the Four Seasons moment. But you didn't really do anything with it. But I could be wrong. Maybe I was just like not paying enough attention.

No, it's they're trying to do too many things, I think. So, yeah, they're again, I give them credit for identifying something that is like very much in the zeitgeist right now, or at least was. But the problems are they're trying to not be political. So it's like you're choosing an inherently political topic, which is, I think, anyway, it's like this place where the press conference happened. And, you know, that was basically like a really pathetic moment for for Rudy Giuliani and the Trump supporters that were going to try to blow the lid off of some phony election fraud. So you sort of got that as the backdrop. But then they don't they don't address that at all. Like it's not a political ad and they don't want to get into that because they don't want to alienate anyone. So it almost then makes no sense to use it as the backdrop. Yeah. And so they just establish it And what they're trying to do Is basically say Oh the people from Four Seasons Landscaping They seized their moment of fame And now they've got this whole huge operation And so it's the actual owner Who just has An absolutely brutal Philly accent Just right out of my Philly family Like this is how everybody in my family From Philadelphia talks And it's really her And she sort of like goes into that garage door And then this whole sort of giant operation of different things going on kind of opens up. And that's, I guess, supposed to be the premise of the ad. But take a listen.

Looks good, guys. Success. It's often right place, right time.

So she says, like, you know, looks good, guys. And then it's like they open the garage door and she goes in. And now she's in the inner workings of this landscaping place.

when opportunity knocks at your corrugated garage door you when opportunity knocks at

your corrugated garage door that puppy up fiver gets that from graphic design to web development or even a pr expert for things like i don't know booking a press conference

so she's like pulled up in her like weird uh little space car that she's driving around in this huge operation up to a a press conference that says four seasons they were trying to remind us of what the premise of the commercial is I think now it's a fine ad I guess but the part that's kind of funny Andrew that actually like relates to what you were saying on ATM accidentally is she's going around there's all these like really involved science projects going on and these like glass cones and stuff and then I guess I think it's her son I don't know if it's really her son or someone playing her son busts out of this thing and says we found a

fifth season to get you where you want to be we found a fifth season

i don't know if that's really her son but if it is that's one of the better acting performances that got turned in in all the commercials like he did a really good job of selling it and i do think the idea of them finding a fifth season is kind of funny yeah i kind of missed the ending there

so i lost the thread of that commercial while we were i'm like oh these it's the four seasons i probably said it's the five seasons one um and then i was like confused immediately as to what

was going on so well yeah and and again i i give them credit for for having a good idea but then i didn't feel like they really like i didn't think that they really exploited it and i and again i really think it's because they were trying to be apolitical after using something that is by its nature kind of polarizing as a backdrop um and then last but not least in the noteworthy category for me and we could talk about each and every commercial that aired and i would have four to five boring takes but these are just the ones that i thought we should highlight today uh i forget the exact name of it but this ad for a civilian space mission i don't remember this one i see this in your notes i don't remember this at all there was an ad uh for of course now i have like x'd out of the screen that has all the ads it's not particularly important it's some kind of space program that's it's just a sort of beauty shot of like an astronaut suit and it's promoting this particular whatever this thing is and it's saying the only all civilian mission to space and i think there's a thing people can like enter this drawing or whatever to be um no thanks i want to be the one civilian on a mission to space that involves everyone else being an astronaut i would like to please go into space with people who spent their lives studying how to do this who were in the air force who are scientists who have been through all of the training and i am the one dilettante on the flight i do not want to be on a space mission that's other people like me

i see see i and so you have more of a problem with the with what they're selling than the way

oh yeah the ad is fine actually the ad's kind of cool but the the idea of like and you know me i think i'm a fairly adventurous person if there was a mission to mars i think i would be and i was somehow allowed to go on it even if i couldn't see people again i would really wrestle with that idea because the idea of getting to go and see something that no other humans have seen is appealing to me that being said i do not want to be on an all civilian space mission i don't

want to work yeah it's like yeah you want to fly to florida yes but you also have to be a flight attendant no i would rather no it's more like would you like to be on the first yeah would you

like to be on the first cross-country flight manned completely by people who've never flown a plane before no no i don't want to do that please so um that was my uh that was my take on on that particular ad i also don't know how that's going to work exactly like i don't know enough about the product or who it is who's behind it but i also would be very surprised and i'm usually wrong about things but i'd be very surprised if whatever that thing was they're advertising led to an

actual space mission involving civilians i would be shocked it's part so it's shift four i'm just looking at the at the sheet you sent me it's shift four um but it says it's part of spacex let me just read this oh it's part of spacex okay last week spacex announced it will launch four private individuals on a crew dragon capsule into orbit around the earth dubbed the world's first all civilian mission the spacecraft will be commanded by uh jared isaacman the founder and ceo of shift for payments why is it called shift for payments that's who the ad is for shift for payments um you can be on board the ad voiceover reads for inspiration for super bowl ad uh anyway um yeah that i don't understand why it's called shift for payments is this

that's probably some other company that's partnered with spacex to do this gimmick

to get more attention would be my guess yeah so that's a weird yeah that's a weird uh crossover

there but again i just like that just doesn't sound very appealing to me and i don't i mean And now that if SpaceX is involved, they actually have, you know, gone to space now and or at least some level of space and come back. So it's, you know, it's not like crazy Larry's, you know, crazy Larry's discount space travel.

My captain thinks I'm crazy. Our manager is out of town.

We've got to unload some of these second stage boosters.

Here I go once again with the email every week. I hope that it's from a female. Oh man!

Not from a female.

All right. An email or V-mail before we shoot off into space? Oh, nice. The only space mission involving only podcasters.

And I will say this, and I'm saying this just so that Genevieve doesn't come in here and hurt me when she hears how much commercials we're talking about today. We will be talking about this on After These Messages, and I think we have a whole bunch that are highlighted so there won't be too much repetition there because I have a whole list. Sorry about that. No, no, no.

I thought you had already done that, which is part of why I felt like it was okay for us to talk about it.

No, no, no. Honestly, I don't mean that passive-aggressive towards you, but what we're doing is we're creating, like, these different categories. Like, one of my favorites is, and I'm stealing this joke from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, but one of the categories is you're a poet, but you didn't even realize those words rhymed. Like, all of the types of commercials where it's just, like, the voiceover, like, the overly dramatic voiceover. voiceover we're the ones who have to show the world they can't keep us down like you know just so we're organizing commercials into like kind of groups like that and then deciding what are the best and worst so i just wanted to say uh after these messages we'll drop tomorrow but in regards to emails v-mails and listener feedback here on tbtl i made a comment last week about zug zug The caveman, the frozen caveman statue slash monolith that is in the St. Paul area, right? It's definitely in Minnesota. I think it's in the St. Paul area. And I said, oh, yeah, there's a joke on Futurama where they call sex Zug Zug, like on a different planet. Everybody's obsessed with Zug Zug. I was wrong. I heard from several people reminding me that it was actually Snoo Snoo. I want to read this note that I got from Julia, who is actually my sister-in-law, Genevieve's sister, wrote in to say, I think the word from Futurama you're looking for is snoo-snoo from when they go to the planet of the Amazons. Zap has a good line after too much snoo-snoo about the spirit being willing, but the flesh is spongy and bruised. Zap Brannigan? Yeah, because isn't, yeah, Zap Brannigan. As a matter of fact, and also, and who's his little, like, alien sidekick guy? But anyway, yeah. Oh, I forget that guy's name. Yeah, anyway, great line. Just Zoidberg from that show.

Yes. What is that drop? I can't play because I'm playing the email music, but there's one of those. There's a Zoidberg drop we used to play on this show a lot, which is something like, I just want to talk.

I have no intention of mating or whatever he says. Right, I don't have that, but I remember you playing that all the time. I love that. Anyway, I confused Zug Zug with Snoo Snoo, which has been a real problem in my relationship. So there you go.

All right. Well, glad the record has been set straight. You know, I'd never looked at the Zug Zug, even though our friend Stu had sent it to us and you talked about it. It's actually very cool. It is, isn't it? Like, I really like it. Yeah. Like it's a very it's a clever idea because it's yet some sort of sort of Neanderthal type caveman type thing that's in what appears to be a frozen block of ice. And then it's, you know, in a place where it tends to snow a lot. And obviously it's unlikely would have happened just this way. But when you look at at least the photos, you can almost imagine that this this guy was wandering, you know, the tundra of the upper upper Midwest and just got kind of frozen in place. It's a very cool piece of art or whatever it is. Science? I don't know. It's science. All right. Any thoughts on a song to go out with?

I was just starting this. I was going to play a song by the band TV on the radio called Staring at the Sun. I just want to talk. There's nothing to do with mating. So good. Okay. TV on the radio. What song are we going to hear? This song is called Staring at the Sun. This album came out in 2004. I probably haven't listened to this since 2005. But I think this is a song we like.

All right. We'll go out with that and say thank you so much for listening. We're going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. Do please listen to After These Messages if you want to hear more Super Bowl commercial talk or even if you don't. So if only to keep me out of trouble with Genevieve, please.

I think we'll be fine.

All right. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, stay safe, mask up, take care of yourselves and each other. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

Thank you.

Know the trees because the dirt is temporary More to mind than fact-faced Name them monetary Eat the skins and let the Move the best kiss between Quietly pour out like light Power out.