Muse

Are you milking me for information, Old MacDonald? I'm not in the mood. It's brilliant. Thank you. It felt really good. It was fantastic. Hey, guys. Hey, did you hear about Callum's dad? He has a production company, and they're thinking of doing a live-action Old MacDonald for kids. And he thinks I have a quality. Just kind of running through the whole barnyard here, you know? Trying to find the right animal. Oh, okay. How about your pig? You got a pig in the repertoire? This little pig, he's going to market! Find some of the physicality. This little piggy's going to market. Okay, now do it again, but think like a pig. Okay. This little piggy's going to market. Incredible. TBTL.

I've been perusing your fortified wine list, and I've selected the 71 Hobo's Delight, the 57 Chateau Partee, and the 66 Thunder Chevettes. exquisite choices sir and mix them all together in a big junk wait a minute i'm a reasonable guy but i've just experienced some very unreasonable things in a few hours you're going to be smarter than anyone you've ever met what's that drop that's like you're doing a good job sweetie

what you do is so important sweetie have a good show what you do is so important

All right, hello, good morning, and welcome everyone to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Too early for flapjacks? My name is Luke Burbank, I am your host. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon.

Won't you join me for a little stroll through the slice of paradise I like to call the town where I currently am?

A place where we have a 100% chance of snow tomorrow.

Snow, snow, snow, snow, snow, snow.

I heard them say that on the local TV news yesterday. Yes, I was watching the local TV news here in Portland. They said 100% chance, and I thought, can there be a 100% chance of anything in this life? I guess what they're trying to say is it's probably going to snow tomorrow. If I am holed up here in the Nest Broadcast Center, it will be, with the full use, not to brag, of a tray that holds my silverware in the drawer where, as of yesterday, the silverware was once just thrown in in a sad kind of random pile.

Things are going to start happening to me now.

That's right. I have a silverware tray. I'm very excited. And when that fancy store canoe ever tells me it's okay to come pick up my coasters, I may have coasters too. And then we will really be in business here in Portland. We are in business as far as episode 3,356 in a collector's series goes, because that's going to start right now.

Let the fun begin.

There is a piece of audio. It's really more a piece of video, but for our purposes, being a podcast, we focus on the audio component. There was a moment that happened recently in Texas involving some kind of probate court and a Zoom hearing. That, you know, normally would have just happened and gone largely unnoticed. But a guy logged in and was accidentally using a cat filter. And then he said this.

I'm here live. I'm not a cat.

to the judge his name is rod ponton you're ever curious what the most texas lawyer name is i believe we found it it's rod ponton i will tell you the story of rod ponton and his kitty cat filter uh coming up then speaking of things that have gone as they say uh viral the uh outgoing u.s ambassador to vietnam dropped a surprise rap track i hear that you rap is that true yes it is true it's not as bad as i was expecting uh i mean and like what rhymes with tet i guess the word tet which he says many many times in this particular song of course that's a uh an important holiday an important remembrance in vietnam anyway we'll play the song coming up Oh, and then speaking of unlikely rappers, the dearly departed Alex Trebek. I made the change from a common thief to up close and personal with Robin Leach. Jeopardy! and Alex Trebek's family has announced that they will be donating his Jeopardy! wardrobe.

to an organization that basically gives clothes to people who are looking to kind of start their life over and people who have been, you know, unhoused and marginalized and are going on job interviews and could use some nice threads. Some of those people will be wearing Alex Trebek's old duds, and I love it. So we'll get into that, too. We'll do all of that with the help of this young man, the longest-running co-bro of the show, Known for his drawings of tall ships He never misses the sausage fest He thinks of his role on the show As sort of keeping things On the rails He describes himself as Conversational seatbelt Andrew Walsh Who is joining us right now From the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington Good morning, my friend

I'm prepared to go forward Hello, Luke That was a little joke That will make more sense later in the show As we hear tape from one of today's top stories There it is. There's that chuckle that gets me going in the morning. Hello, Luke.

You know, this is what I like. And this, Andrew, is why it's so fun listening to mixtapes that you make. You always go for the B side. Yeah, exactly. Everybody's been focusing on.

I'm here live. I'm not a cat.

Sure, that's the pop hit. That's burning up the charts. But is anybody talking about the flip side? I'm prepared to go forward.

Backed with, I'm prepared to go forward. Is that what the B slash W stands for when you're looking at, like, somebody releases a single, then B slash W, another song? Does that mean backed with the other song?

I don't know if I've ever even seen that.

I think that, I think it comes, I asked you a question and now I'm answering it, so that's a dangerous game, Dano. But I believe that that's what that means. So let's say that the Beatles released a 45 record that it was like, I want to hold your hand. Why would I pick a famous example? Because probably a lot of our listeners know what the B-side of that was. But let's just say the B-side was, what's another Beatles song? Did they have any other songs? So I Want to Hold Your Hand was a Beatles song.

I wonder, I'm actually curious about this because the Beatles were so popular that even their B-sides were probably hits. But I'm just going to guess. So I Want to Hold Your Hand. I wonder if the B-side was like Long Tall Sally. Oh, that's an interesting pick. Because they were really into doing kind of, you know, American songs that had been popularized by, you know, often black artists. Rolling Stones were had a major phase of that as well early on, I think. So I will. Should I Google it or have you got it here?

And it's interesting. Of course, this is always interesting because the Beatles were on like a British label and then they were represented in America, too. So usually the singles would diverge, as is the case here in the UK. A, the B-side was This Boy, which is a very sweet song. I always forget about some of these Beatles songs. In the U.S., it was I Saw Her Standing There, which I believe is a cover, right? But I think what you would say is if you were to, like, post this record for sale somewhere or write about it, you would say I want to hold your hand, B slash W, I Saw Her Standing There. And in my head, I don't know if I've ever looked this up, and I've probably been doing this since I was 12 years old, I always thought that meant backed with.

Guess what?

I'm as right as the rain.

I saw her standing there. Sure, absolutely. And also, I saw her standing there. Is a Beatles original?

It is. Oh, I thought for sure that would have been like an R&B song they were covering. Interesting.

It definitely sounds like it would have predated the Beatles and this would be their update of it. But no, they wrote it according to Wikipedia. Boy, you know, they actually never let me down. They had a couple of hits.

I mean, they wrote a song or two that became popular. I got to give them credit. Got to give them that. Is it McCartney-Lennon or Lennon-McCartney? Well, it depends who you ask. Doesn't it, Paul?

This is the part of the show where I always have to bring up that my mom is staunchly, well, she's staunchly anti-Rolling Stones. That's been well documented. She never liked that hard rock. But she's also very, very pro-Paul McCartney and could kind of take or leave John Lennon. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think I used to bring that up on the show as a way of kind of gently dragging my mom's musical taste. And I still probably would say overall I go Lennon. But in the last few years, I think I've spent more time with like sort of Wings era Paul McCartney and even, you know, like the, you know, the Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime song, which I know is sort of polarizing, but I'm kind of here for it or Silly Love Songs. Like and even like the stuff he did with Kanye, you know, which wasn't the worst thing I've ever heard. I mean, I think there's a case to be made for Paul McCartney. I still think it's probably the smart money's on Lennon, but it's not as much of a runaway as I think I would have thought five years ago. Do you know what I found recently?

We'll just put a little bit of a little bit of Ram-era Paul McCartney behind us here. I found the ticket stub to my first ever concert, and it was the big Paul McCartney. Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Yes. I flipped my shit. I was screaming. I was crying.

Listeners, there's something we haven't told you about Andrew. He's immortal. If you look back at old photos of that amidst all of the screaming teenage young women, you will see a very, wearing a very baggy shirt, you will see Andrew Walsh. You will see a 16-year-old Andrew Walsh.

I am 16, but I look exactly how I look now. Same hairline, same beard, same everything. Oh, by the way, you were talking something about going bald the other day, and I meant to tell you about a, well, I'm sorry. I'm all over the place, but I got my hair cut the other day. It had been quite some time, as a lot of people can associate with. Some people are probably associate with the fact that they're not getting their hair cut at all. So sorry if this feels like a betrayal, but I did. I masked up, and I went to Rudy's, and I got my hair cut. And the person who was cutting my hair, you know, at some point, it almost always comes up. She was cutting my hair, and, you know, the fact that I'm balding came up. And I usually bring it up. I don't want to make it weird. So to say, you know, you do what you can, like, you know, it's not, there aren't that many options of what you can do with my hair anymore because it's kind of, you know, thinning out.

Has the stylist ever said, do you see what I had to work with?

Yes, and I broke a mirror on the arm of the chair and spun around. But I said, oh, I made a joke that, this was kind of bad. I made a joke that made me laugh way harder than her because she said she then said something about, you know, my male pattern baldness. And then it wasn't unkind. It just was, you know, we're just talking about it. And then I said, yeah, there's not much we can do these days other than just keep it comfortable. And I just laughed really hard at my own joke. But then that's sort of solid spoof. Thank you. And then she just really leaned into then talking about my balding hair to a degree where I was like, okay, well, maybe we're done now. You know, she's like, yeah, it's just wisps. And, oh, that's right. Then she started telling me about when it's time to, like, she's like, yeah, you're going to need to start just shaving it all pretty soon. But it's good that you have a beard. So just keep the beard for that. And all of this, by the way, I want to say, again, I raised the topic. Everything she was saying, I actually am interested in hearing. It was a safe space. I did not feel embarrassed or shame or bad leaving that place. Swear to God, I'm not just saying that. But I did think like, hey, okay, if I open a door, I better be ready to walk through it with these folks.

I had something that maybe wasn't quite as extreme, but was similar. I was getting my hair cut two times ago now. And I told you I now go to this place called Bishop's here in Portland. It's kind of their answer to Rudy's. Maybe there are Rudy's here in Portland as well. But anyway, Bishops is nearby and relatively affordable. And they have very strict policies, by the way. I told you they make you watch a YouTube video involving an English bulldog about staying safe during COVID on an iPad.

They make you watch it every time you know, I don't think you told me that or I was playing Hex Empire while you were talking. What's the how long is the video more than two minutes?

I think it's like two minutes. I've skipped it every time. I have pretend watched the video. I hope this doesn't get back to them. Every time I bear my soul regarding the place I go to get a haircut, people find out. Like when I thought Rudy's had shaved a bald spot in my head and it turns out it was alopecia. And then the CEO of Rudy's emailed me very nicely.

And I got a haircut from somebody at Rudy's years later when I was new on TBTL and they were asking me what I was doing for a living And I think I stumbled and bumbled my way into TBTL talk and she remembered that story. I don't think it was the barber that cut your hair, but but remembered, I think, being ticked at TBTL because you were I can't remember the details, but was familiar with the story.

Maybe it's become legendary within the company, but they do make you watch a video on an iPad. I watched half of it the first time. And then I was like, you know, I feel I mean, I'm not trying to be glib. We're in the midst of a pandemic. People are dying. But I just I felt like I knew what I needed to do to be safe in this environment, which was to mask up, to stay far away from everyone, to pay in advance using the website, to wait outside the hair salon until it was time for me to come in and to, you know, like you wear your mask while you're getting your hair cut, as I'm sure happened for you. and um most recently uh the person cutting my hair so this was the I just got a haircut like a week ago this person had me take when it was time to cut the part of my hair that

the mask straps were kind of covering had me hold the mask continue to hold the mask against my face and this gingerly remove the strap yeah and move it forward and then cut my hair and then put the strap back which i thought was a very elegant solution yep that's what they always do for me um so anyway i felt like i'm i didn't know if there was going to be anything and also it was weird to me that the video involves an english bull yeah can you tell me more about that no that's just the first screen that you see i told you i haven't really watched the video i've just watching it would probably take less time than pretend watching it i don't know what my problem is but i just know that when you look at the youtube video there is a freeze frame of an of an english bulldog on it and it has something to do with covid but anyway i was in there getting my hair cut and i said something like because what seems to happen when one gets a haircut is and i've said this many times on the show it's the only industry where you find that people want to work harder than you want them to it's the only place where they want to do more work than than you've asked like if you say hey just a teeny tiny bit off off the top it always ends up being kind of more off the top than you were really thinking or in my case anyway and because my hair is thinning on top i think a lot of this by the way where i've been with this lately is because the way that the bathroom is set up in my apartment, it has a very harsh fluorescent light above the mirror, and it is shining right down on my head and making – so basically every time I get up or brush my teeth or am getting ready for the day or whatever, I am looking at the least flattering version of my hair, and I think that is now starting to really seep into my consciousness. But anyway, I said to the person cutting my hair, I said, yeah, if you don't mind, just don't take too much off the top because my hair is thinning and I just need to have more up there to kind of work with, to kind of push it around. And the person cutting my hair didn't really say anything. And then towards the end of the haircut, I said, oh, and can you texture it a little bit or something? And the person said, oh, usually when your hair is thinning, I don't recommend texturing it. But in this case, you seem to know what you're doing or something. But it was just even the simple mention, the simple acknowledgement of a thing I had already acknowledged, which is my hair is thinning. That's the first time I've ever had the person cutting my hair be like, yeah, that's happening. It was just kind of like, oh, I mean, I didn't think it wasn't happening, but you're right. And it sounds like you got much more of a sort of full description of what's going on with your hair. I did something similar on Twitter this morning, Andrew. I set a trap for my Twitter followers, and many people fell into it. We got an email from a listener, a dear listener, who I've met in person. I'm not subtweeting them because I think it's actually an interesting proposal. In fact, we could do a whole half hour on this. Clubhouse? Are you familiar with Clubhouse?

I am. I've only read one kind of review. And when I say review, it's a friend was kind of ranting about it. She joined it. But this person has a lot of strong opinions. So I got the impression it wasn't a space we necessarily wanted to play in. But I did see a note from a listener suggesting that it's a space we should play in.

Listener Alex said, have you heard about Clubhouse? You should consider joining it. I'm guessing listener Alex is part of Clubhouse. So I went to check it out to see what it was all about. And it is it's a voice only. It's sort of like Twitter, but you're not reading tweets. You're just listening to people have conversations. You have to be invited to it. They only have it right now for iOS. So you couldn't even have it on your Android. That's discrimination Elitists And apparently Elon Musk Dipped in the other day Which gave it a real jolt Of interest and popularity So I went and looked at Clubhouse And then the thought that went through my mind I thought it was an interesting suggestion From our friend, listener Alex But when I started to read into it I thought, this really sounds like what we do Five days a week We're doing Clubhouse right now

Yeah, I didn't click through So I don't want to make it sound like I know what I'm talking about. This is one of those things that's been kind of floating out there for a while. And like I said, my one friend went on a rant about it. Her complaint was that it seemed like the people who were mostly drawn to it were people who had a lot of ideas about business, who wanted to share their ideas about business with other people who are in business, like mostly tech stuff. So I kind of got that vibe. But I also knew that it was an audio medium. And I kind of thought, well, that's not an outlet that I'm lacking for right now. And I'm not even saying that to joke like, aha, because, you know, we do all kinds of stuff. But and we post them on all kinds of social media. But I did sort of think like, oh, well, the audio thing, I have a lot of outlets for that right now.

Right. Before this was my job or like podcasting and even doing radio shows, I would have very much been drawn to this. Like I was the guy who was. calling into radio shows when i didn't have my own radio show because i wanted to talk to people and i wanted to give my opinions and uh you know that sort of thing so i can see the appeal i think you and i are are i was going to say uniquely set up but i think about 80 have we reached herd

podcast at what point heard podcastery yeah yeah when do we have 90 of the u.s population has their

own podcast but anyway it was an interesting suggestion from listener alex and i would love to get a follow-up alex as to why you think we'd be interested or if you're on it what your impressions are but of course where my mind went uh was oh this is a funny tweet potentially which was i said people are i went on twitter i wrote people are telling me to join clubhouse like i'm not generating enough mediocre audio content already and then andrew i linked to tbtl so there you go take that 8 p.m marketing folks i am promoting the show once i once tweeted about

my own podcast i am uh i have something here that i would like to play for you luke are you okay are

you can i can i just oh yeah can i put just the quickest button on this pin if you will bow uh i guess a pin is kind of temporary i'm not putting a pin in it i'm tying a bow around it then we never have to speak of it again i i then like we had a couple of very nice listeners uh listen uh someone i presume is a listener named raul said hey it's a good podcast and then another listener who prefers not to be named on the show but does a lot of stuff to help out around here uh gave us i guess a compliment and so then i thought it would be a funny joke to write to retweet myself and write this tweet in other words the original tweet i said about tbtl being mediocre i said this tweet was a trap to find out who my enemies and haters are many of you have exposed yourselves um so that's basically the same thing as what happened with my former hairdresser i set a trap for them by mentioning that my hair was falling out and they fell right in by later referencing the fact that my hair is falling out. Now, what was the audio that you were going to play? Well, I'm sorry

for that, by the way. I was just trying. I thought you might be going to break. So I wanted to make my intentions known that I have some audio for you here. I didn't mean to cut you off or cut off this conversation. But actually, if I can follow up on that thought for a second. Yeah, something happened to me last weekend that I regretted. I was really trying to just not tweet anymore to maybe like use Twitter only to read things and like basically no original thoughts, like to respond to people if they reach out to me, but just not tweet things that I think are funny. But then a couple of weeks ago I thought of a fortune cookie joke and I couldn't stop myself. I was several beers in. I believe it was a Friday night, and I just couldn't stop myself from tweeting my stupid dad joke, and I got all the good feelings from people liking it or whatever. But it's been very minimal. What was the fortune cookie joke? It was, and I actually don't even think, looking back, I wish I'd formulated it a tiny bit differently, but it was true. I was standing in my kitchen. We had already eaten way too much Chinese food. Then I was standing there just horfing fortune cookies. I had like two of them in a row, maybe three, and I just tweeted, I have good news and I have bad news. I just ate a bunch of fortune cookies because if you eat a bunch of fortune cookies, you have both good news and bad news. It's not even that great of a joke, but at the time.

I think I saw it and I wasn't – so the premise is that some of the fortunes are saying positive things will happen and some of the fortunes are saying bad things will happen.

Yes, exactly, because I think I had eaten too. And again, I'm not trying to defend it and I'm not trying to say this is gold. I'm just saying that like the siren song of Twitter is strong, especially – and there's some correlation to the amount of alcohol and potentially Chinese food you've eaten that night.

Were you hungry right after you finished that Chinese food?

That's probably the MSG. So factual. But anyway, so I have not been totally, you know, living up to my oath of trying to stay off of Twitter. But I did then do something that kind of reminded me again why I should just stay off of Twitter because it's just not – I just don't think it's a great site. And this isn't about toxicity or anything, but I just tried to do something nice and good, but then I immediately regretted it. This was probably a week later. I have mentioned to you on the show that the person who writes – just that the on-the-media newsletter is fantastic. They have somebody who writes it now who is not necessarily on staff. I believe they hire her just to write the newsletters, and I don't know what the rest of her background is. I believe her name is X-E-N-A, I believe. I could be even wrong about that. But either way, I had just finished reading her newsletter from the media this couple of weeks ago, and I just loved it. It is so good. I think she is so smart. I love her voice. It makes me want – it literally makes me want to write a better newsletter reading hers. You make me want to be a better newsletter-er. So I – I saw that somebody else, and I think it was somebody who works on the media, had tweeted about it, like tweeted a link to it because their newsletters also live online. And I tweeted out something that I only meant as a compliment and maybe being a little bit cheeky. And I hate it because it came off as being like one of those guys. And I tweeted, this is the best public radio newsletter out there. And for the record, I write a public radio newsletter. and I don't I mean it's not the worst thing in the world but it's all it's just like I'm paying a compliment but also I have three fingers pointing back at myself like it's just like it was just in the moment god and then what do you think and if I tagged I tagged her in her she was tagged in it because I was retweeting somebody else's praise and you know I heard from several like well-meaning listeners who then jumped on that saying no yours is better and saying like why mine is better or saying you know stop beating up on my friend Andy yours is funnier or whatever i'm just like oh shit no they're tagged in this like i didn't i didn't want this to be a bunch of people well-meaning people who may be listening to this right now saying i think nice things to me because they want me to feel good about myself which i appreciate but like now suddenly it's a newsletter war or it's a comparison that that wasn't my point and also i think it lived in my brain that um both the original tweeter who was praising it and the person who writes the newsletter did not engage with it at all did not like it did not respond did not say thank you so then i'm like uh and i just hated everything about it and it was just again one of those moments where nobody did anything terribly wrong but just like a little bit of misjudgment on my part as far as tone um and then a little bit of misjudgment i'll call it

on some well-meaning people to compliment me but then suddenly it just lived in my brain and i felt so shitty about it for like days and i was like did you delete it gotta stop tweeting stuff No, I don't think so.

You have to just liberate yourself to delete. I deleted a tweet this morning, 45 seconds after tweeting it, because I just thought, eh, this was like too many internet. This is too extremely online for people to really get. And people were getting confused by it. I wrote, this isn't like, I woke up at 6 and I was just wired. I do not know why. part of it was because our friend Chris Hayes texted us by the way if you're playing bingo at home there you go uh that we should have an entire episode that's just NFL coach tape oh yeah which is a really good idea because just like off the top of my head I could think of about 10 examples you know above and beyond Dan Campbell from the Detroit Lions just like great moments in NFL coach pressers but anyway I was awake and I was feeling amp and I do not know why this entered my brain but i decided it would be funny to write a tweet about sort of like joe biden and the stimulus uh that's gonna go out and and and relate it to sort of like i don't know i again i'm admitting before i even say these words to you andrew that this was a very kind of weird and it's an extreme it's like a tweet that you know that account drill oh yeah yeah like it's an it's

like a bad it's it's like a it's like a very pale shadow of a of a drill tweet just very very weird

very weird and sarcastic and like makes no sense except to the three extremely online people who get the references but i literally i wrote something to the effect of like libs were big mad when trump signed his stimulus checks but now they're fine with joe biden writing zaddy on the

dogecoin he's sending out would you like to take an hour to unpack that no i would not but uh i remember where i was when somebody explained to me what zaddy is so and also big mad is is is like a

kind of a you know is a thing that's getting said on the internet and that was uh particularly like oh phooey who's the guy who's the rapper anytime you say oh phooey before trying to remember the rapper's name you know you're ah fiddle sticks who was the rapper who turned on all of his associates and then didn't have to go to jail for very long um not the the fire festival guy

no no no no he's the guy with the crazy rainbow hair yes seven um he has a number like seven tech seven nine or whatever oh fiddle sticks where's my tiktok login gosh darn it why can't i remember tech nine no it's something no it's whatever it's there's a number there's some

letters it's like tekashi 69 or something madness but that guy you know he had a whole when he got out of jail he did a whole song that was talking about being big mad so big mad is one thing that's layered in there that's i'm using terminology that i'm far too old for and then zaddy and then dogecoin and then people were saying people were like going wait what like they didn't understand I was joking. And so then I just deleted it and I just retweeted it as. Or I reformatted it as normalize Joe Biden writing zaddy on the next round of stimulus checks, which is much simpler. Also, it's getting limited engagement, but whatever. My point in this is if that tweet that you did to try to, you know, be supportive of and recognize how awesome the newsletter is from on the media, if it's bugging you, I don't mean it to bug you. Just delete it, man.

I know, but it's a little bit different because it was also kind of at somebody who, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know.

Let them think they've lost their mind. Right. No, because then them on the defensive.

Now, here I am talking about on the show and just like, you know, bleeding my insecurities all over the place. But I don't want. Yeah, I don't know. I just don't want to. There's something especially when if listen, I don't know if you know this. I've written a bad tweet or two in my time and I've taken it down. But it's not usually when somebody is like tagged in it. And so I felt like, I don't know, then, you know, and there are responses to it that are living out there. So then you have these responses to a dead tweet. Why did this guy delete the tweet? Did he say something terrible? I'm just like, basically, it's when we were allowed to go out in public and when I was a younger man and I did go out in public and have, you know, dinner parties or drinks or what have you with with friends, I would always come home and have a list of things to be insecure about and to beat myself up over. So, I mean, it's probably just my personality. And this time it happens to live online. It's not insurmountable. I'm not, you know, it's not it's not the worst thing in the world to happen. And so I'll let the tweet live there and live and learn is what I'm that sounds so corny, but I'm honestly just trying to do that. That's the way I try to stabilize myself when I find myself kind of spinning over past transgressions or even things I just interpret as transgressions. And I start beating myself up and do the whole Chris Farley stupid thing while you pound your forehead. I'm just trying to take those moments to be like, listen, nothing to do about it now. Just don't make that mistake. Like, what's the takeaway here? Try to avoid that in the future. Move on. And that's what I'm trying to do with that. That's really smart, actually. I mean, if you can do it, it's not always, you know.

I bet you that, you know, real, you know, psychiatrists or psychologists or whatever folks would say that that's actually a good thing because the feeling of of those like intrusive thoughts of, you know, why did I say that or why did I write that or whatever? that's a very powerless feeling because it's out there it exists and you can't change it but then taking that feeling and saying okay what i'm going to do with this is i'm going to use it as a as a as a instructive moment to not do that again that feels like something that's active and that feels less powerless and that must i can see why that would kind of calm you down a little

yes and also um oh it's zandra by the way zandra ellen if you want to follow this person on twitter And just don't mention me or tattle or do anything that shines more light on this conversation we're having now. But just big fan, big fan of Zandra's writing for real. And I don't know if you know this, but I also write a newsletter. My tweet just sounds like something like I'm thinking of people in my past who were middle aged when I was young. And that's exactly the kind of like weird, like kind of faint praise they would put on themselves or something. There's just something tonally that I hate about that.

I don't need to tell you this because you know it in your brain and the listeners know it. But I totally see why you put that in because it was in no way to point towards the fact that also check out my newsletter. It was for you to say I have also attempted this and I can respect that it's difficult to do week in and week out and this person is doing a really good job. It was a way of actually adding more of a compliment to the work of this other person. It just went down – it sort of went in a direction that you weren't intending it to.

It was a classic shame-recognized game situation.

Okay, well, now we've got a show title.

I think that might already be a show title. Like, from way back from the L.A. days. All right, listen, I need one minute and 46 seconds of your time. Okay?

I'm here. The virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity and may also... I want you to know that this is an Irish setter talking.

Is this the video that I have watched at the hair place? you my friend crazy does it have a it has a bulldog on it right you have been missing out

this is a mcconaughey sound alike i don't know about that but it is just a bulldog looking straight into the camera it's like a photo but they've animated the dog's mouth so it looks like the dog is just staring directly into you and saying these words i shit you not this is kind

of weird web stuff the virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity and may also spread through airborne transmission when tiny droplets remain in the air even after the

person with the virus leaves the area definitely set it on mcconaughey yes but with a little bit of a british lilt that comes through every now and then

Despite of this evidence, Bishops requires wearing cloth face covering while on premises.

Wait, this is a proprietary video. Yeah, it went to Bishops' website. I assumed that this was just a thing that they found on the internet and were making us watch, but this is original content.

I got it from their website, and now it's posted on their official YouTube page.

Due to the impossibility of maintaining physical distancing measures during services, Bishops also requires hand-washing or sanitizing upon entry.

Okay, now, for some reason, the dog is driving a Lincoln and staring at a bison that's blocking the road.

Do you agree to wear a mask while on Bishop's premises? God, that dog seems lonely. Have you had a call?

Wait, okay, now the dog is playing billiards in some fancy house somewhere. He's wearing an open-collared suit.

By himself, though, again, what a lonely life. I know that your car illuminates the ground when you step out of it, but I mean, at what cost, Makana dog? At what cost?

I won't play the whole thing, but I will say I love it. That's all it is. It doesn't go. I mean, it's just this kind of funny voice with this dog. And I don't know what app they use to get this dog's mouth to follow these words. But I actually I kind of respect this. If you're going to make somebody watch a video, make it weird.

And now next time I go there, I'm definitely going to actually watch it. The silliness is this just we definitely need to go to a break. We're more than halfway through the show. But this is the problem with me, Andrew, is I'm just resistant to things for no good reason. Like there's like, hey, can you watch this video? And I'm like, you know, I appreciate this place is open. I've gotten nice haircuts from the very professional staff. Like it's been a good experience. They've asked me to simply watch this video. But something inside of me is just very defiant. That was a word that was often used to describe me in Christian school. And it may have been accurate because I'm just kind of like, I don't want to watch this video about. And turns out it's a Makana dog. I would have. I mean, I would have looked forward to that.

Yeah, I was the same way. And I'm still that way. I would not clap my hands as a kid. We ever talk about this. This is something I just remembered somewhat recently. No. Although I would start a band called.

Clap your hands, say no.

Don't clap your hands, say no. I would bend my fingers for some reason. I didn't and this fits with me right I still don't like to like give obvious compliments when you're supposed to give obvious compliments like I just like resist the norms of society in so many ways that don't make any sense that just make my life more difficult but for some reason as a kid I didn't like being forced to clap my hands and I think sometimes my parents would maybe like to teach me they would maybe take my wrists or my hands and try to put them together like I was clapping so I would curl my fingers in so that my knuckles not in an abusive way just in a gentle way but i would curl my fingers in so that um i wouldn't be uh so that i wouldn't be clapping i also saw a photo of like my seventh birthday or something um it was sent to me recently and my whole family like extended family aunts uncles cousins are all gathered around me singing happy birthday and i look so pissed off and like i want to die like and i didn't like that attention being paid yes and i feel so bad because i know all these people are like seeing it now through adult eyes like i was just a kid who didn't like to clap and didn't want people singing happy birthday to me and really kind of making all the adults lives around me miserable with my

stubbornness well i mean hopefully they were also able to understand that this wasn't something you were doing to try to make their experience worse that this was just you being a kid and you didn't know how to process feeling uncomfortable with people you know focusing the attention on you

yeah hopefully probably didn't because it was ohio in the 1980s yeah this kid sucks and i see in this photo i'm not looking at it now but this one that was sent to me recently that like kind of rocked my world like seeing seeing my birthday from that perspective uh i had no recollection of this particular birthday party but it looked just absolutely lovely and it was like some sort of like really intricate cake that somebody had made for me and like i see everybody they're just kind of singing and putting up with me and it's just a second in time it's a split second right um when the shutter uh goes off but the i love my uncle frank so much and he was like a legit role model to me growing up and i just see a look on his face that it seems to me to just be like what the fuck is with this kid and it like you know again it's just like a split second and hopefully that's not it but it kills me it slays me well andrew here's what we do with those

feelings we focus on the next time yeah when i take you when i take you to a family-style mexican restaurant on your birthday and i tell them it's your birthday and they bring out a sombrero and everyone starts clapping i want you smiling you son of a bitch i don't like cheese all right let's take a quick break and then when we come back we will do the top stories stay with us it's tvtl thank you baby let's thank some donors of the day who are making the show possible with their donations i was talking to uh the rapper talib kwali yesterday i had mentioned on this show that it was going to happen he was super nice andrew and like i told you yesterday that I actually, I'm not trying to volunteer you to read this book, but I love that just in the, like, basically the foreword, he writes, I have many vices. I don't trust anyone who doesn't. I'm insecure about my physical appearance. I'm fiercely competitive. I can be selfish. It's like he totally and completely takes

the piss out of being a rapper. How old is he, by the way? Because he's got started in the late 90s, right? He is 45, so kind of Right around our age. Close in age to us. Okay, yeah.

But one of the things that he writes about in this book a lot and that he talked about, which I appreciated, was how sort of tenuous his financial picture has been at times because of not having a direct connection. I mean, he has a connection to the fans of his music, but for a long time was going through a record label, and they would take their cut. And he just gets into the complexity of trying to—I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. the complexity of trying to figure out how to make a living in the arts or entertainment business in 2021 and it can be really complicated if you're not good at dancing on tiktok which none of us are talib khali included and it made me while i'm talking to this this guy it made me in that moment when i should have just been focusing on this interview and trying to do a good job it made me have a moment of just deep appreciation for the tbtl donors you know um Because that's how we're able to do this. And it's an unexpected business model. Ask our bosses. But it's one that's been working because of people like Ben Massey, who's in Port Townsend, Washington. What? I miss Port Townsend. I'm loving being in Portland. It's such a cool city. It's fun to be near my family. But I do miss the small maritime village of Port Townsend, Washington. I should go visit sometime when things are safe again. And Kimberly Rhodes is in Tigard, Oregon. I visit Tigard all the time because it's where the Bed Bath & Beyond is.

The good one or the bad one? The good one. I was going to say, boy, I'm really kind of setting you up for the salt out.

No, the bad one is, I don't think the bad one will be around much longer because it was already being, its bones were being picked clean when I was going there. Kimberly, thank you for the donation. Appreciate it. Eric Vanette is in Canton, Massachusetts. It's like the second time in a few days that we've had a town in Massachusetts that I think of as being in another state. So if you told me Canton, I'd think Ohio, home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And the other day it was Concord. Oh, that's right, Concord, Mass. Lexington, Battle of Lexington and Concord. John Sklariff is in St. Paul, Minnesota. St. Paul, Massachusetts. John, thank you for the donation.

Man.

I know that we just do a version of this pretty much every day on the show, but isn't it going to be amazing to get to go back to the Ranham Bowling Alley? Yes. Yes. Like, gosh, I love that place. I mean, I love St. Paul. I love the Twin Cities. But just to go back to St. Paul, one final time before they cut us loose. Yeah. I do feel like we'll have one more trip to St. Paul. I'd say one is being generous.

Like, why did you book us a one-way trip? Wait, no, that actually doesn't even make sense.

No, it's one way there to get fired, to take our key cards away, and then we've got to hitchhike home. John, thank you for supporting the show. Also, Mary Holden is in Phoenix, Arizona, another place that we've had a very fun time with the listeners. And then Laura Whitmore is in Milwaukee, Oregon, Milwaukee, Oregon.

Wait, hold on, though. I do want to mention one thing.

You know, the original Pietro's pizza. Don't sleep on Pietro's pizza, my friend.

That is crazy that Milwaukee, Oregon, and the same time that you have Canton, Massachusetts, and given our conversation before. But I do want to quickly mention, and it doesn't matter because she will never hear this, that Mary Holden, of course, is the woman who donates to TBTL and reads the TBTL newsletter but has never listened to an episode of TBTL.

She now donates? apparently the tbtl virgin apparently god there's something about mary there there is also uh mary

and another 10 uh hooked up because mary's an editor and somebody else is working on a

project where they needed an editor like mary is deep in the tbtl verse it's not for folks who

might have missed that particular episode uh yeah this mary in phoenix somehow accidentally i think she was trying to subscribe to the on the media newsletter and she was on twitter she saw you on there bragging it up about your newsletter work she was like all right i'll give it a day in court no she accidentally ended up on the newsletter list for a reason she still doesn't actually understand but started reading the newsletter Andrew that you write and loves the newsletter and the idea of this show but does not listen and has once been a guest on the show and is twice been a guest my friend and is absolutely a delight and the idea that Mary is now actually donating to this thing that she doesn't listen to is just great to me there it is

hello and

welcome to top story the The Internet is pretty obsessed with something that happened in Presidio County, Texas, recently when there was a civil forfeiture case going on and you had the various attorneys zooming in as well as the judge. One of the attorneys named Rod Ponton was using he's the county attorney for Presidio, which I've learned is the fourth largest county in Texas. so this was not a you know uh kind of um a total backwater this is like you know rod ponton is uh is somebody who has a certain amount of legal uh what would you say sway it's kind of an important guy kind of a big big wheel down at the uh presidio county cracker factory he was zooming in but he was using um i think somebody who worked in his office he was using her laptop and as has now become famous he uh was zoomed in through this cat filter and he did not know how to turn the cat filter off let me uh play the audio of that if i can

first uh take a listen to this logged into my secretary's computer and oh you know what sorry

that's him actually talking about it after the fact you know what i did to to make things extra complicated andrew i took the full file of ron ponton's uh situation and i i i made it just a little short sliver of audio so we could play the drop now here's the whole thing so this is him zooming in weirdly in this whole conversation the judge is by far and away the most knowledgeable person about what is going on mr ponton i believe you have a filter turned on in the video settings i will say that this cat filter is fascinating to me because it really kind of it really transforms i'm not big on like instagram filters or those snapchat filters maybe i don't think i've ever used snapchat but you know what i mean when people are putting little glasses on or little fun chipmunk faces i'm that's i absolutely encourage people to do that if it's fun for them it's never really been something that i found particularly interesting this cat filter is fascinating to me because this is the most mournful looking cat i've ever seen because of the way that it sort of puts your eye your eyes into the eye holes of the cat it takes on an

extremely mournful quality now my guess is and i'm not an expert with these things but my guess is that the filter kind of reads the expression of the face that it's filtering so i think that if you had like maybe somebody who was like really excited and upbeat with wide eyes i think the cat might have a different expression i could be completely wrong and i will hear about it if so because again i i'm not super uh you'll be hearing from my cat but um but um i'm trying to think is there a cat bar bar exam no i'm gonna come back there's some good cat lawyer puns i should have been working on that um but uh anyway i i think that it's kind of a reflection because he he is worried right and yes and you hear it the first sound he makes when he realizes that he is

in this cat filter and he doesn't know how to get out of it and he's in court you know zoom court but still you know in a princess uh the princess bride they say like that is the sound of true suffering or that is the sound of a man who has lost his true love this is the sound of a lawyer who is freaking out. The first sound that Rod Ponton makes. You might want to...

That's what I tried to do at the beginning of the show today. I didn't get anywhere near it, but that's what I... If you go back and you listen, the very first noise I make, it's kind of a...

Oh, man, that's so good. Here it is. Now that sounds kind of erotic. Yeah, I'm playing it over and over. Holy hell is this wrong? but holy hell is it erotic anyway I don't know why I need to do a Gilbert Gottfried impression on the show when we actually have the audio standing by but yeah that is

the tape right now so that is the sound of of a guy who does not know what to do and and the cat face that is on the screen really reflects that mood for this dude rod ponton you might want to

uh we're trying to can you hear me judge i can hear you i think it's a filter it is and i don't know how to remove it i've got my assistant here she's trying to but

what's funny is i mean i'm assuming that like i mean obviously uh the court is busy and uh it's going to you know they want to waste a bunch of time but you can just hear the gears turning in this guy rod ponton's head and i do this on our show all the time andrew if i'm looking for something and i can't find it it feels like i've been looking for it for 20 minutes on the air and it's been like four seconds or this is a weird comparison but on the the occasion when we get choked up on the show about something it feels like a lifetime but it's just been a half of a second you can hear that rod ponton is like feels like this has been going on for possibly days and he has been delaying the court and he doesn't know what to do but he just cannot he cannot handle the thought of delaying the court further so his solution is to just go forward as the cat go forward with it that's

i'm here live that's not that i'm not a cat i can i can see that um i think if you click the up

arrow next to this again i'm kind of sad because all the videos that i found sort of like faded out there i guess i could go try to find the original actual hearing um and and maybe that I wanted to hear, like, the rest of, like, the sort of judge talking him through it, how to turn the filter off.

Yeah, because it sounds like the judge knows what he's doing. Maybe judges have been working with a lot of people who have had—

Is it Judge Moonlight in IT?

Yeah, right, right. It sounds like he's going—because that's—you actually played about two seconds more than I've heard there. He starts to explain it. He says, you see an arrow on your screen? Is that what I heard? Yeah.

Now, there are a couple things that were interesting to me. One is that the only person, you know, this is a Zoom call, and there's, I think, two lawyers in addition to this Rod Ponton guy, and then there's also the judge, but the judge isn't on camera. The judge just has, like, a graphic that says, you know, whatever court you're in, which I guess is probably to keep it professional and keep it legal. But the the the the sort of graphic that the judge is projecting on their screen says something to the effect of it is illegal to stream or record this. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know. Which is weird because it's been streamed and recorded a billion times. Not like I think it's hurting anyone. Right. But there's literally a thing on the judge's tile that says it's illegal to stream or record this.

Oh, that's weird. Yet it was. I mean, because Jennifer said, why is this out there? I mean, how do people get it? And I assumed that, you know, because I don't know. I literally obviously do not know how courts work. But, you know, like you in regular times, there are certain like kind of open hearings, right, where the public can go in and observe. It's part of our kind of transparent process. And so I figured during Zoom times, these might just be like this isn't a case where you can maybe they stream it on their website. The court does and people can view it. I don't know.

Yeah, I'm sure it really, really varies from, you know, court to court and district to district. You're right. I mean, there are cases where it's seen that there is a public value to there being transparency. So you can go and watch the case happen. And you would think that that would, you know, extend to being able to zoom in. There's probably a question of like how many people you can actually have on the line. Are there mics muted? There's some technical stuff. But I don't know. I mean, I'm amazed that anybody—actually, you know what? Now I remember something else. You know who retweeted this? The judge. Oh, right. I learned that in the article you sent today, yeah. The judge who has on his tile that it is illegal to stream or record this. So, I mean, I guess everyone has agreed that this is just kind of a charming moment. You know who's sort of charming is Rod Ponton. Somebody did an interview with him, somebody called Global News that was on YouTube, that I found when I was trying to find the full version of this event. And please, nobody email me what Rod Ponton's actual politics are because my guess is there's a 99% chance they don't align with mine. I mean, he is the county attorney in Presidio County, Texas. He is either an appointed or elected official on the behalf of the government in the county of Presidio County, Texas. All of those...

words I just said lead me to believe he and I are not on the same page politically as far as worldview goes I could be wrong but I'm probably not that being said uh he's very charming in this interview this is him explaining what was happening from his perspective basically when this whole thing

was going down logged into my secretary's computer and he's going to appear at this hearing at 11 o'clock via zoom and when everybody's ready the judge calls the case and everybody's face is supposed to pop up on zoom we've all done it and everybody's face popped up except mine mine was a

cat but oh back at it wow yeah that's a long beep i want to know what he said i hope it doesn't come

to that um and then this is the part i thought that would really endear him to you andrew at least in the context of this interview he uses a way of describing his new viral fame uh in a way that you've described things before i think i learned this from you well you know it's just

one of those things it's like what's the saying we have out here in west texas you can't put toothpaste back in the tube oh yeah you know if it's if it's gone out and it's gone viral let it go yeah just have to roll with it you know it's uh it happened to me i can't deny it You know, it's I hope everybody can get a little chuffle at my expense today.

So there you go. And those are wise words even to you, Andrew. Your tweet on the media newsletter person has gone viral and you just got to roll with it.

I got to roll with it. Speaking of rolling with it. And this is like so self-serving and bad programming because I'm taking our conversation literally backwards. But I sent you an email containing the photo of me at my birthday party. I had forgotten the detail that I am covering both ears with my hands, and I look like I'm being tortured while, what, how many people? I'm not looking at it anymore. Like eight, ten of my family members are joyfully singing happy birthday to me around the table.

I am going to choose to believe, Andrew, this is the part of the show where we talk about a photo from 35 years ago that no one can see.

Such a bad idea. No, no, no, no.

But I am going to I am going to choose to interpret this photo in a totally different way, Andrew, because what I think I see on your face is actually a smile. I think you were doing a spoof. Oh, God, we're singing. People were singing loudly.

OK, you can believe what you want.

Your honor, permission to approach the bench as a cat. meow meow meow meow meow meow meow objection overruled sustained i'll allow it okay i i i think i don't see in because first of all we can't see your face you and i also had the exact same shirt at this age i had this exact shirt you're wearing and i loved it i would never take it off it was my favorite shirt that would must have been very big for very popular for guys our age i think you are doing a joke thing where you're pretending to cover your ears because it was loud Now, maybe you were kidding on the square. Maybe you really wanted to cover your ears. But knowing you, I think I can't imagine that when you were that age, you didn't have this element of your personality where you still wanted people to have an enjoyable time around you, even as a kid. And I bet you were covering your ears as a joke because one of the people there are three young girls that are singing happy birthday to you. And two of them have huge smiles on their face. They're not looking at you like what's going on here. They're almost laughing, I think, to your little stunt that you're doing.

That's my sister and cousins. No, it's I mean, you know, you can believe what you want. But no, this is me. This is you. This was my childhood. This was the equivalent of me not clapping my hands and like curling my fingers. I was a difficult kid. And like I, in this moment, just felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable and wanted to disappear.

so you know for a fact that um like do you remember this actual moment happening or do

you just were reminded that it happened because of the photo i don't remember this exact moment i sort of remember that cake i believe that is a cake you can see it's three-dimensional i believe they recreated maybe my um elementary school it's got big trees on it like actual like towering out of it i kind of remember that cake i don't remember this exact moment but seeing this photo hurt really bad because i remember this feeling constantly and and then but i'd never seen it as an adult and they're in the kind of you can see my uncle over there and

again it's just a moment but he's kind of like so much like your dad yeah i know they look very

much like those guys are like twins and they look like my grandpa too the three of them um but anyway but it's just in this moment and i can't post this because there's a whole bunch of you know people in here whose permission i don't have um but uh you know my my uncle in this moment just So he's like, what's with this kid? Like, come on. Just be a normal kid first. He's also a guy of a certain age in that part of Ohio where that's their default setting on your face, right? Exactly. And by the way, I love Michael Friedman. Literally one of my favorite people in the world. I don't think that he's actually scorning me there. I don't know. But in the moment. But no, I mean, and again, sorry, I shouldn't have brought us back here. But as much as I like your generous interpretation, it's just that's not it. This is who I was, and it's just weird to see. But I mean, what do you think makes more sense? That this kid who's pulling a spoof grows up to spend decades not telling anybody when his birthday is as an adult, like, or somebody who doesn't, who for some reason has some weird, bad association with birthdays.

Well, I mean, listen, I am never going to win the argument about what was going through your mind in your own childhood, in your life, because I wasn't there and I don't know. So obviously you're the expert and I have to defer to you. So I can't really argue with that point. I'm not saying that you were loving your birthday. I'm just saying if you showed me that picture, I, having not been there and not being you, could see a different version of events where you were covering your ears to be like, it's loud in here, which you were also probably feeling a lot of anxiety around the attention that was being paid to you. But again, you lived your life. You know what you were like. So I'm going to have to go with your version of events.

I was just painfully shy. I said difficult before, and it probably was difficult to be around when I reacted in this way, especially being around much more normal human beings. But what it was was just an acute, an acute shyness that I think that in moments like this.

Have you just, like, powered through that? Because, I mean, you probably still don't love having a ton of attention on you, and yet we do this job. And we're talking about how excited we are to go out and meet with the listeners again, which involves us being on a stage in front of a couple hundred people or whatever. Have you just pushed through it? Like, what's different about you now than the kid in that photo?

I don't know. And now I really feel bad doing this. I forced you to open this photo on the air so we could talk about it, only because I wanted to hear your reaction because it is also kind of funny. It's an intense picture.

I mean, really, like, I'm not trying to sugarcoat it. Yeah, yeah. You know, the hands over the ears is definitely, you know, this is an intense-looking moment. It's a real Todd Salons type of moment.

Or is he the one who did Happiness Welcome to the Dollhouse Welcome to the Dollhouse by the way I remember people loving that movie And that movie being like tortured to me to watch Because I saw myself in it so much I remember when that came out I was in college at the time And I liked it but it was just like So intense watching it And feeling like You could identify with Don Wiener Don Wiener exactly And the bathroom scene really sticks out But anyway, yeah, I don't know It is weird, I guess we contain multitudes, right? I was thinking last night And then we can move on from my own psychotherapy here But I was thinking last night Vives and I did just a marathon Of an after these messages Because of all the Super Bowl commercials I'm glad that that ended with a podcast I don't need to know about that other side of your life

You want to see somebody cover their eyes

and then we made out for 30 seconds um i uh but uh i was thinking last night like so we got done recording a really long after these messages that was like two and a half hours because we were talking about the super bowl ads and there was just so much to cover and we kept saying we got to get through this faster but we didn't and then afterwards i did feel like completely depleted and also just like really just like oh i felt like i hated everything that i had said on the show and then i was thinking about like tbtl this week like i didn't think yesterday was a particularly good show for me and so there's some stuff living in my head there and i'm just like how do i have these jobs and also atm isn't even a job like and i love doing it jobs slash hobbies yeah but then like you know but then you know late at night the the scaries come just like what what have i what have i done delete the show or whatever and i'm just like why do i how how is this it how do i have the brain i have yet i do this stuff yet also i have the literally i think one of the best jobs in the world. So I don't know. I guess we contain multitudes. And it is also, though, as Stu Gatz would say, I didn't ask for any of this. It's weird how I got here. My path was supposed to be behind the scenes. And thanks to you, I'm putting it all out there. And I love it. So I don't know.

Well, I think it's official. We've got to join Clubhouse. Yes. We've got to get more. We've got to get more content out there. We'll skip over the Ambassador rap song. which is actually sort of cute in its own way because we need to end on a positive note. And that positive note, that is before we go to emails, is that the family of Alex Trebek is donating his wardrobe to charity, to something called the Doe Fund, an organization that provides paid work, housing, and vocational training to underserved Americans. americans with histories of addiction that's how cnn put it this is lauren m johnson writing on the cnn website um uh during his last days on the set alex extolled this is a quote from mike richards the executive producer of the show who i weirdly know didn't even realize was the executive producer of jeopardy until alex trebek got sick and they kept quoting the executive producer of jeopardy how do you know when i used to hang out with a buddy of mine jj tebow down the the famous trip where i went to la and my i had no money in my bank account but i was going to get this check from marketplace um that because i had done a story i had done like one freelance story for them which paid i don't know 200 300 bucks and our one time i don't know if she was our supervisor But definitely a very senior person at Marketplace And donor to the show, Deb Clark Was a producer at Marketplace And I showed up In LA, I watched them do the show This is back I think when like David Broncaccio was the host And I was ready to get my check and she went to get it And was like oh actually you know That's not how they do it, they'll just mail it to you And I died inside but I wanted to seem Adult and grown up and like this was NBD And so I went on to just write bad checks Throughout the state of California And on that trip I was hanging out my friend J.J. Tebow's friend, this guy, Mike Richards, who's now the executive producer of Jeopardy. It's David Barcaccio, by the way. Max? We're going to need a follow-up. Then what, Molly Woof? Molly Woof. We can do it. Sabree Bonashore? I could do this all day, you guys. All day. Anyway, this guy, Mike Richards, said during his last days on the set, Alex extol the virtues of everyone opening up their hands and their hearts to those who are suffering. Donating his wardrobe to those who are working to rebuild their lives is the perfect way to begin to honor that last request. Also, I guess Alex Trebek's son, Matthew, has worked with this organization before, has been a supporter of the Doe Fund. This just feels like great on about 50 levels. There's a picture of some of these guys who I believe are listed as trainees from the Doe Fund Ready, Willing, and Able program. and they're holding up these suits and they're like masked up and they're stoked and they're

like given the peace sign like this is great because I love the idea that these guys are going to be wearing these suits out on job interviews I also love that this doe fund is getting a bunch of attention because it sounds like an extremely good organization

I think about that stuff all the time and I remember even being kind of a young person and somebody just saying it's like how do you think about like getting ready for a job interview like now, just, you know, like when I was going on interviews a lot in my early 20s and all of the nervousness and fitting into a suit that never felt super comfortable on me, but it was still my suit and I could wake up in the morning and take a shower and do that. And just like, can you imagine going on a job interview when you're waking up maybe in the backseat of your car and you only have the clothes you slept in last night? Like it's just so impossible. So this you know, I like this story too and it reminds me of those facts, that it's kind of poverty is cyclical. But more to the point, I think, why do you think only three pairs of dress slacks? Like, was it 13? Does it say that in the article? Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I don't have it in front of me right now, but it lists all of the things, and it's like a goodly amount of shirts, like dozens of shirts, I think, like 33. Yeah, I've actually, you know what?

I've got the list here. Can I read it?

Yeah, please. 13 suits, maybe?

Yes, you're close. In all, the family donated four suits, 58 dress shirts, 300 neckties, 25 polo shirts, 14 sweaters, 9 sport coats, 9 pairs of dress shoes, 15 belts, 2 parkas, and 3 pairs of dress slacks. Yeah, 3 pairs of dress slacks is an odd number. Wait, did you say 4 pairs?

It was only 4 suits? Only 4 suits? Oh, no, no, 14. I think you have a printing problem. donated 14 14 sweaters among the donated items are 14 suits 58 dress shirts are we looking at different articles that have i think there might be a typo in yours and 14 seems more right to me of course you're probably reading from the new york times i'm reading from the new york post so i know no i'm reading from cnn so who knows but it seems like for his job 14 suits makes more and plus we're seeing more than actually in the photo i only see four suits boy i did it again

Dan Walsh really honed in on the interesting part of the article. Can I focus us in on some real granular stuff, which is the other article I read yesterday had a photo of I think it might have been either somebody who worked on Jeopardy. or somebody who was with the Doe Fund or maybe it was one of Trebek's kids. Anyway, somebody is at the set where Jeopardy is being filmed and they were in there and then the other person helping pick through Alex Trebek's wardrobe for what to donate to this place was the official Jeopardy costumer who was kind of an older guy. Maybe he looked like he was in his 60s or something. And I just thought like, I mean, of course, this is a national television program that is watched by millions, I would assume. Of course, they're going to have somebody that does wardrobe but that had never occurred to me that there's somebody backstage who's saying wear this pocket square alex and not this other one like and i just thought what an interesting job to have to be the person who decides what alex trebek is going to have on for this particular

show and like that's your whole job well yeah i mean i guess it does make sense but you're right we just feel like we know alex so intimately because he's just been in our living rooms for so long you just picture him i don't know just showing up like that basically or there's just a

big there's a dressing room that's got a bunch of suits and he just like somebody's job to keep them clean and pressed but then he just goes in and puts them on and comes out and hosts jeopardy based on whatever mood he's in not that there's somebody who has a union job to go today is more of uh an argyle day for the socks or today is more and it sounds like i'm trying to be dismissive i mean i'm not i just it just had never occurred to me that that was someone's whole sort of full-time

job and i wonder if it i wonder if they would take into consideration what the um contestants

are wearing right because that's i'm always very fascinated with the outfits of the contestants i need to be careful because like half of our listeners have now been on jeopardy in some form or fashion maybe not half but definitely like a handful um and i think our listeners all looked spiffy when they were on there but yeah i'm always very interested in the outfits that the contestants decide to wear or maybe they don't decide to wear maybe they have to bring like options and because you know what the with the that sort of interstitial interview that they that they do I think the system is you submit three anecdotes and then Alex and I guess now whoever the guest host is picks the anecdote that they want to follow up with so you have a one in three chance and when our friend Mike Peska was on the show he felt like Alex Rebecca picked his worst anecdote which he thinks really just threw him off for the rest of the show i forget what the anecdote was but it was basically like he also i might have mentioned this before but mike i mean this is because mike's brain is a supercomputer i think one of the other contestants if i remember the story right when the one of the other contestants showed up like this is not when they're about to go out on you know the set but like showed up wearing a hockey jersey and later on when he was making a bet he was factoring in the thought that this person probably knows hockey like he was explaining it to me this is almost 20 years ago now oh god i'm old uh but he was explaining to me all of the calculations that his brain was making as to betting on like double whatever or you know um the daily double i think he might have gotten one of them somehow it came down to his perception that one of the other contestants really knew hockey wow anyway um but yeah i guess mike or our listeners would know if they uh if they also told what the contestants what to wear but i like to think or i was even i meant they're

not telling them what to wear so much as they know what the contestants are wearing so do they offset alex in a certain way with his oh to oh i see yeah i would think it'd be like alex is the

touchstone yeah sure it you know uh Alex rules everything around him wardrobe wise like Alex gets all done up and then they're going to say to the contestants now you have to dress in these colors because those are what compliment Mr. Trebek can I ask you a personal question yes how

often do you or maybe I should put this question differently and make it less personal how common is it for one to develop a pretty strong crush on Jeopardy contestants because I don't watch a lot of Jeopardy, but I'm going to say about a year or two ago, Genevieve and I kind of got a wild hair to watch some Jeopardy, so we turned to On Demand. It was before we were recording the nightly version of it, which we do now. It just kind of cycles in and out. But the only ones they had On Demand were some sort of championship series from years back. I don't know what it was. And there was this woman who kept showing up, and I'm Googling it now. I can't figure out who it is. So I don't know, like, to what level she rose and Jeopardy has been going on for so long. But I found her to be just absolutely beguiling. And and I was like, wow, I wonder if this is common. Do people just kind of develop pretty strong crushes on these folks?

I can actually tell you that for the first time ever, this is probably a year ago. There was a contestant on Jeopardy that I was so intrigued by. Maybe it wasn't a year ago. Maybe it was six months ago.

And I actually started following them on Twitter. And I'm being a little delicate because I guess it's like I don't know if I want to put them on blast or I want to be on the record as saying I had a mild crush on them. But I found them to be very intriguing. Whatever. I'll just say it was a contestant named Frankie Butler. And she's a TV writer. And I don't think she won. But she was just so charming and funny and seemed so normal to me. I mean, I don't think that the contestants are abnormal, but a lot of the contestants just seem like they're very much about trivia knowledge and accumulating that. And I don't know if beyond a love of Jeopardy, I would have that much to talk to them about. But this woman, Frankie Butler, just seemed funny and got it. And I started following her on Twitter. So I don't know if that's if that if that is a full on crush. But definitely I was intrigued by this person who I just thought seemed like pretty cool.

yeah I am and I can't figure out I don't know if that's the same person I don't I don't think so I think mine predates that but yeah I it seems like especially for a hardcore because I only watched it for like one evening and I'm like ready to break up with Genevieve and you know

get down on one knee you do go for a certain studious type she was yeah kind of Daria well

she she was yeah I found her she was like both like kind of nerdy and quirky and like I loved her style i think she had some kind of cool glasses on just you know checked all the boxes

yeah no that's definitely like i would say that um now we'll just get into talking about what we look for in the ladies oh good finally this dude podcast gets to that part wait andrew

cover your ears i can't my fingers are bent in because you're trying to make me clap

here i go once again with the email every week i hope that it's from a female no man it's not from a female

all right i think yesterday um we sort of i kept it short on the emails and v-mails because i was heading off to do that uh chat with uh talib kwali so i apologize if it was truncated yesterday i I don't know if we left anything out or if there was, you know, if the shelves, if the cupboards were full of emails and emails, what's the status today?

I have two things I'd like to read to you. One is a longer email from Ben that gets into some kind of dark territory, like almost like kind of trigger warning. It's a thoughtful response to some things I was saying about Slayer the other day and white supremacy in death metal music. And I want to read that to you. But I also then want a palate cleanser that I want to play for you, which is a 19-second voicemail that I received. So this first email, though, comes from listener Ben. I'm going to give his full name here because I think it's worth it because he also left a voicemail the other day. His name is Ben Quick, and he deserves the credit, by the way, for meticulously saving and archiving all of the TBTL shows from, like, 2008 to, like, 2011 or something on the Internet Archive. archive. We were talking about that the other day, how like I kind of relied on those to kind of preserve our own archives. And I think we gave credit to somebody else for doing that. So Ben had left us a voicemail saying, oh, yeah, by the way, I'm glad you guys are still doing that. That took a long time, but it was loving work. Anyway, Ben also writes in to say the irony that Ben's last name is quick and this project was anything but. That's a really good point. That's a really good point um so the other day i was talking about how i had seen some slayer graffiti and it inspired me to listen to slayer but then it sounded like there was like some blatant white supremacy in there and then i kind of got upset and so i did some quick googling and i read this article about you know white supremacy in death metal what have you and um ben says hey guys i just want to weigh in on the discussion about slayer and heavy metal in general i'm not going to try and defend any of the white supremacy stuff. I, in fact, just learned from you guys that the S in the Slayer logo is the same as from the SS, you know, the Nazi, which sucks. I love Slayer's early music, though, but I will concede it's super not for everyone. I don't know if they're all white supremacists. However, I do know that the lead singer is not a white guy. So I actually don't know what his background is, Luke, but that's all Ben says. And then Ben says, doesn't mean he can't be a shitty person i just don't know enough to speculate the the album um and this is what i listened to or i tried to listen to called rain and blood is one of my favorite metal albums but the words i would use to describe it as an album would be frantic loud dark indulgent troubling you get the idea um i'm not going to actually go into all of this detail but he makes a pretty compelling argument that this is social commentary from the perspective of um not like from the perspective of of the devil it is you know it's death metal and that's why this particular song that i heard that seemed to have white supremacy leanings was actually met a commentary about a very specific nazi who actually

lived and that it's not the singer or the band praising this person but instead it's from the perspective of like pure evil and um and that's why ben says the song is not supposed to be the singer saying i like these things and want to do them it is a commentary and with a lot of metal a straight up condemnation of these kinds of people in that kind of behavior at least that's been my read on listening to metal uh anyway he goes on to give some other examples from other bands as well and I think it's like worth saying that only because I don't know much about this and I had very little context for it all I know is I turned on an album I heard something about the Aryan race I freaked out I pulled over I googled white supremacy slayer which is a bit of a you know you're going to get results on that and then you know in me reading something frantically and that's not to say that this music is for me or that I completely agree with Ben or that this is the end all be all on this but ben clearly just has way more context than i do so i wanted

to at least share that before i said yeah and i knew because you you know you said what you said which was based on some research and i then i said what i said which was based on emotion which is it's definitely not the kind of music that i gravitate towards i also don't gravitate towards horror films the the i'm just like a not a person who finds you know that side of life to be particularly intriguing. And I know I'm lumping these things in together, but I don't think that's crazy. I mean, Rob Zombie is Rob Zombie and also a prolific horror director. So I do think there's an overlap in these worlds. But what I was saying, I guess I would say I'm not trying to say anything about the people who listen to the music. I am a little bit suspicious, even if it's a meta commentary, I'm slightly suspicious. For instance, why am I doing this, Andrew I know nothing about this but I do know that is it Ian McKay from Fugazi I believe has been one of the more harsh critics if like the brief Wikipedia-ing that I was doing while we were talking of of I think some of the the stuff that's gone on with Slayer I could be mistaken but to me it's like there are bands that play intense music like Fugazi that stand for the sort of politics and worldview that I would tend to you know agree with if you will and anyway I don't know enough about the topic to say anything more on it other than I've not been and other listeners who love this stuff I'm not trying to say anything about people who listen to the music I'm I guess I just am it's hard for me to fully wrap my mind around why because it's so far from what I would ever want to do artistically how somebody would want to just write a bunch of songs about just like absolutely gruesome things and then perform them put them out in the world i don't really get that because it's not what i would do but i'm not trying to say anything about

the people who like the music i mean there's a i would say though i mean for whatever it's worth i know that fugazi fugazi is one of those bands i mean listen i'm not saying that it's music to go to sleep to um but it's one of those bands that i always thought was way closer to like metal or whatever based on their name than they actually are i mean you know ian was in minor threat but it's more of a kind of a punk background and they don't really get into like the the dark metal and it's not the musically stylistically it's nothing like it and thematically it's not although i understand what you're saying that you're not saying you're basically saying hey you like to rock but it doesn't have to be necessarily you know all of your music doesn't have to be steeped

in the occult or or like guar i mean guar is taking it to its logical extension right and then guar is camp though right almost a comment on yeah like to me i wouldn't yeah right like if like i don't i don't know again i don't know anything about the people that are in guar like what their politics are but my sense is like if you i would go to a guar show before i would go to a slayer show because to me guar is is meant to be like a like a parody of that style of music the thing about going to a slayer show for me is it's not quite enough of a parody you know what

and actually very much to your point because i was very interested in that um because i didn't know you know i didn't see these quotes uh from ian mckay about this or mckay i don't know how you say it i always say mckay because i don't know what it looks like to me but um this is really interesting so i'm on a wikipedia page uh for uh an album by slayer called undisputed attitude listen to this and this is where and again i didn't raise this to argue with ben about it but i'm i'm just on uncertain ground too i just get the impression that they're doing and saying and putting a lot of bad messages out there whether it's slayer or or bands like that and then sort of retroactively saying well it's all commentary you know in the same way you know eminem talking about violence towards women and his wife at the time and then saying, I'm playing a

Yeah, but what are you but what are you putting out there and how is it being interpreted that you can't totally disassociate those things? And here Slayer's cover of Minor Threat's Guilty of Being White raised questions, by the way, like Minor Threat and Fugazi. They're coming from a very, you know, progressive perspective. So I don't know that song, but it's called Guilty of Being White. It raised questions about a possible message of white supremacy. The controversy involved the changing of the refrain from guilty of being white to guilty of being right. That's how Slayer changed the lyrics. This incensed Ian McKay, who stated that that is so offensive to me. And then King said the lyric was altered for tongue in cheek humor. Like, and it kind of reminds you of just like how many terrible things can you say and then just say, well, you don't get the joke. I mean, we had a president who did that for four years, right?

Yeah. Well, again, it's a complicated topic because it's not something that you or I like. So it's very easy for like for me, if literally there was a never another song like in that genre that was recorded, my life would not suffer at all. But I know that for some of our listeners, they really dig it. And I don't want to I don't want to harsh their vibe, I guess. But and also, I just don't know enough about the topic to say anything informed. Now, you want to get into Keith Green. You want to talk second chapter of Acts. You want to talk about the Christian musical High Tops. I will go toe-to-toe with anyone. You know that was about drugs, right? High, tops. It was all about how being high is tops, daddy. Let me text you a sticker of a unicorn with its brain exploding.

Okay, palate cleanser time. Here's a voicemail I received. I don't know why.

McDonald's is your kind of place. Hamburgs in your face. French fries between your toes. Dill pickles up your nose. And don't forget those chocolate shakes. Made from polluted lakes, McDonald's is your kind of place, your kind of place.

So thanks for calling the TV channel, 206-414-8285.

That's great. That must have been a fun regional spoof wherever that listener grew up. I'm surprised it didn't make its way out to Seattle. I never heard that either. I wonder if that was a jingle that only played in a certain region of the country for McDonald's, like in the 70s or 80s, because that's clearly like the that's like a that's some kids making some funny rhymes around what is probably was a real McDonald's song. Right. I mean, that's my guess. By the way, the do you know a parody of Jingle Bells?

Like, you know, the Jingle Bells parody, right? Batman Smells Robin laid an egg. Okay, do you think that younger generations know that anymore? Like, do you think, like, 10-year-olds even know that? I mean, Batman is still a thing, right?

Yeah, very much a thing, but he's kind of different now. You know, I mean, he's very buff and drives a motorcycle car. Sometimes he shoots a motorcycle out of his car. I haven't seen a lot of the Batman movies of late.

I'm trying to remember if it's him or G. Scott, but I definitely know that one of them drives something with three wheels and goes really fast.

okay yes um commonly confused um uh that's a great question i mean that gets back to the thing we were talking about a while ago on the show which is how how did this stuff spread when there was no internet how did my cousins in philadelphia know something that was sort of close to miss mary mac mac mac all dressed in black black black with silver buttons buttons buttons all down her back like and it would be you know from place to place there would be slight differences like we would say jingle bells batman smells robin laid an egg batmobile lost a wheel and joker got away hey do you remember was that pretty much what you said in ohio exactly i said the hey because we would always follow it with a hey yeah i wonder if that was you know verbatim in other places like there would sometimes be a small variation depending on where you grew up but i'm always just wondering how did these kind of childhood songs and memes and things how did they cross the country as much as they did when there was no internet yeah how did they travel i mean some

things could have made it into pop culture let's say a a small wonder reference here or there but like i'm not sure yeah like the smaller things how did that get there i have found one reference to this song online but it takes me to fresnostate.edu slash folklore slash ballads slash a string of letters and numbers and somebody slash jerry tarkanian what is that oh it's just a deep

deep college basketball joke before jerry tarkanian was the head coach of unlv jerry the shark tarkanian who famously would chew on a towel on the sideline he was the coach of fresno state um i'm glad i i'm glad i killed your momentum to point that out right no no that that's fine i have

no momentum here that's actually more interesting because what i'm on is like what you ever find yourself in those weird corners of the internet

I'm on something called Parler, spelled with an E right. Like, this is just a weird white blank page. This was probably posted in, I don't know, 2005. I don't know, like, what. It's not even really a message board. I'm on some sort of, it looks like Fresno State folklore website. And somebody just posted this and says, earliest date, 1984, keywords, non-ballad, parody, humorous. And then the notes are, I will make the assumption that if I learned a kid's song from a source other than my parents or school, it qualifies as a folk song. This seems to fit that bill. The pancakes claim in the tune of this is down by the riverside, not in the version I know. Anyway, I'm sorry. I stopped ruining my momentum, Luke.

Well, the good news for you is you're not the only one messing this segment up because Jerry Tarkanian was a coach at Fresno State after UNLV. which was that's why I was so distracted that's why you were confused I was going along and then

you're throwing misinformation at me and it's just it's just stumbling blocks I would like it if you would stop ruining the show by twice reading things cold from the internet do you know

that Jerry Tarkanian was born in Euclid Ohio in 1930 you probably didn't know I didn't Ohio and no I didn't know that though that's yeah east side right so we've been able to um we've been able to end the show where the listeners were hoping with some detailed info on jerry tarkanian's we said it's an interesting business model didn't we say that earlier we certainly did yes well and we've delivered on that all right uh that's gonna do it for today's program did you have a thought on uh a uh a song to go out with well if you didn't ask i was just gonna hit go

on Silly Love Songs by Paul McCartney.

Yes.

All right. I love it.

That's a great call. That song always that song always clears all Jerry Tarkanian related chatter from my head.

Does Slayer do a cover of Silly Love Songs? I think so. But they change it to White Love Songs which is just terrible.

It's a joke, Andrew. Yeah.

It's a joke. I actually don't even like my joke. All right. Let's move on. Let's get out of here. Thanks for listening, everybody. We started to be back here tomorrow.

Nobody's listening. It's fine. We'll see you tomorrow. Until then, have a good Wednesday. Stay safe. Please mask up. And remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

When I look around me and I see it isn't so Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs And what's wrong with that? I'd like to know Cause here I go again

I love you I love you I love you

Power out.