Muse

You want to see me? Yeah, I have a seat. Is it serious?

Wow. Andy's a little scared. Okay, right there. Right there is the problem. There have been reports around the office that you have been talking baby talk. Why would people say that? Well, I have not good authority that you said the following.

You read that back to me? Andy have a boo-boo tummy. Would you rather me say, hey guys, my irritable bowel syndrome is flaring up, crazy diarrhea happening right now? Because things can get real adult real fast.

You are also on record as saying, widdle iddle, footy woodies, num nums, jammies, make boom boom, widdickawiss, and woad eyewind.

Do I sometimes replace R's with W's? Do I sometimes repeat a word to get my point across? Well, if I do, Andy saw we. T-B-T-L. flabbergast button and guess what you've pressed it make sure your bathroom really has got a toilet

that's way too high and kind of big also two plungers two plungers says it all all right

hello good morning and welcome everyone to a thursday edition of tbtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live podcasts are the future of show business my name is luke burbank i am your host i'm here live that's not i'm not a cat coming to you from the nest broadcast center High in the sky above Portland, Oregon, where we're supposed to get a bunch of snow, I guess maybe later tonight and throughout the weekend. I'm, like, making a list and I'm checking it twice of provisions to get at the store. Like it's, you know, like Little House on the Prairie, and we're going to be snowed in all winter. And I have to go make sure we have enough flour and lard or something. I mean, I could just walk to the Circle K if I was really that hungry. But the problem is, it's not snowing yet. It's just raining. And it's just like cold rain, which is really the worst of all worlds. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. But hopefully by tomorrow, when we join you again, I'll be looking out on a beautiful blanket of snow here in the 503. So anyway, looking forward to that and also looking forward to episode 3,357 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. Which is where we find ourselves this morning. I find myself with a new favorite person. He is 90 years old. He lives in North Hollywood. His name is Aaron Epstein.

You're like the coolest person I've ever met.

And he has been an AT&T customer since 1960, which, if you're doing the math, is a long time. And he's so mad about his internet connectivity there in North Hollywood that he spent $10,000 of his own money to take out two huge ads in the Wall Street Journal chastising AT&T. This guy is awesome. We'll tell you about Aaron M. Epstein, age 90, coming up on the show. Also, three people were stranded on an uninhabited island for 33 days before being rescued. Get off milk island. They were surviving on coconuts. That's how they were hydrated. It's a crazy story of survival. I also like, you know, on the show we go back and forth on Desert Island or Deserted Island. Deserted seems to make more sense because it's like deserted of people. There are no people except for like the one guy from the far side writing health on there. So deserted makes more sense than desert, but I like uninhabited because there's just no ambiguity there. In fact, it's unambiguous when you say uninhabited. So we'll talk about that. Also, I may have discovered a retail scam at my local Fred Meyer, which I'm almost hesitant to talk about on the show because I don't want to be responsible if people start going out and scamming this and other retailers. But I'll tell you what happened yesterday involving me and a garbage can and a refund of...

$30 from my local Fred Meyer. Plus, it's Blur's Day, or in some circles known as Thursday.

It's my birthday today.

So we'll do the Blur's Day messages as well. Plus emails, V-mails, and this guy long-standing co-bro of the show. He may be best known for his drawings of tall ships. He's back at it again with the white vans. And, you know, he's kind of an audio nerd. And I asked him to do a project recently where he actually, at night, set himself up with some, like, They look like headphones, but they're kind of microphone sensors, and they can actually kind of record. The brain is an amazing thing. It's a series of sort of electric impulses, and he was able to record the sound his brain makes at the moment when he's remembering something that he's embarrassed about having said. And this is what it sounds like. He is Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Was that a big enough setup for you? Good morning, my friend.

Good morning. I don't know who's keeping track of these things. I mean, I have some idea of who's keeping track of these things, but whoever's keeping track of longest setup next to shortest audio intro for me since 2012, that's got to be it.

That's got to be a prop bet. That's got to be a prop bet that you can get in Vegas.

Oh, hey, let's start there. Well, I had something I wanted to talk to you about related to the snow. Well, you want to talk about the snow, too, so we'll get back to that. But I just want to say I haven't read the articles, but because I told you I don't know how to read, but I have seen the Larry King of podcasts. Right. It's more interesting this way. Will I get? Absolutely. Will I get through a word without stumbling? I'm a professional. Look it up in the book. Questioning whether that's something we should have put on the bingo card. Andrew says a word, then stops and says, is that a word? Anyway, we'll come up with a drinking, a TV tell drinking game later. What I was going to say was I saw that people were sending us notes saying we talked about that person who was running on the field during the Super Bowl. And that person made a lot of money, I think something like three hundred and forty thousand dollars or in that ballpark because he played that placed a large bet that a streaker would be on the field. So I haven't dug into the details. Assuming that's right, I would like to bring up something which went through my mind when I saw that headline yesterday. And then I woke up this morning and saw that it was a poll question on the Dan Lebitard Twitter feed, which is exactly my question. Is somebody a streaker if they're not naked? I don't think that person is a streaker. You have to be naked to be a streaker, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, otherwise, you're just a distraction. You're a you know, you're my friend Matt Smith when we were in high school and he jumped on the field during a Mariners game at the Kingdome. and we were all shocked slash amazed, and he was detained by baseball cops.

Did they put him in a cell? I remember you telling the story. I can't remember. Did they put him in a little cell under the dome?

I think there was Kingdom Jail, and I think there's definitely whatever they call the football field now. There's Lumen Jail, which is, my guess is it doesn't have bars. It's just a room that is secure. Because, I mean, just at a typical Seahawks game, there's got to be 50 people arrested for disorderly conduct. Sure, yeah. just and being too drunk so um uh this okay i saw this headline going around and i also have i haven't dug into it but i would be very very surprised if this bet is actually paid it's because here now here's the head here's here's this is tmz super bowl streaker claims Andrew claims he won $370,000 for stunt sports book investigating now that by the way I hadn't even seen those words yet I'd only seen the headline he won a bunch of money on it and I thought there's no way that that like you can't I don't think that they would let you first of all you know these casinos and these you know betting outfits are not about trying to pay out bets they would rather not pay out bets what they would rather have happen as I've explained fairly recently is they would like all the bets on all the money on one side of the the bet so will the will tampa bay win the super bowl they would like there'd be the exact same amount of money on both sides of that bet so that that money pays everybody pays each other off and they just get to keep the juice they get to keep the the service charge that's the perfect world for them they don't want to be exposed they're not trying to gamble they're trying to process bets that's why they move the line around but anyway they're also not into paying out bets if there's any amount if there's even the slightest daylight crack for them to not honor the wager and like for instance if i put a bet on the portland trailblazers to win a game by or let's put it this way if i if i bet on them to lose a game a match sure no no and i and then i ran onto the Thank you.

court and pantsed dame lillard first of all i'm sure that some of the other blazers would um not take kindly to that nor would probably dame lillard but if i ran out on the court and created a distraction and somehow altered the course of the game that would i assume invalidate the bet and my guess would be that if you bet there was going to be a streaker and then you went and you were the streaker there's probably some loophole where they're not going to have to honor the bet Although the other side of that question is, what are the chances that somebody is going to both bet that there will be a striker and then also be able to get Super Bowl tickets and then be able to get onto the field? It's like the guy almost kind of earned the three hundred and seventy grand that he's claiming.

If if yeah, if this claim is right. And I do wonder if this is just another person who's getting even more publicity just by kind of stringing this story along. Because also, yeah, if you were serious about that, if you're really serious about this and everything that you just said is true, what you would try to do is you would get somebody else to do it for you and keep that secret, right?

Of course. That's why this – I mean he was wearing this outfit that he was wearing and you're right. He's not a streaker technically. You do agree with that.

That's the most important point to me. You agree with that? 100%. I totally agree with you.

Let me see where the pole is. And he has a – the outfit that he's wearing is promoting what I believe is like an adult website or Instagram feed or something. So what I think happened was the person behind that particular outfit, I mean outfit like as in the people making the pornos, probably egged on or paid this guy to do this. And that I think he's probably this I'm just totally guessing but I have a sense this guy just looking at him is probably kind of a big talker and he's probably enjoying his his time in the limelight such as it is and he wants to keep it going and he's making I think he's making some claims that I would be very surprised if this guy gets the money from this bet actually ever released him I would be pretty surprised.

You know, I'm looking for this poll that the Lebitard Show posted. Are you a streaker if you aren't nude? It looks like almost 6,000 people have responded and overwhelmingly they have responded with no, you are not a streaker if you're not nude. 94.4% of people saying that, which is a very lopsided poll. It reminds me of something else that's maybe worth mentioning to you. We were talking about Twitter and my Twitter habits the other day and how I'm trying to stay off of Twitter a little bit more as far as, like, me just posting funny things or whatever. Like, I just don't need to be posting stuff. However, I did something that I think is slightly – I totally forgot about this until I'm seeing it right now. I did something that is maybe slightly uncharacteristic for me, which is I tweeted at a minor celebrity associated with the Levitard show the other day. Most people would not have seen this unless you follow both of us Because, you know, I wasn't trying to get people to look at it I really wanted to get a message across to one Greg Cody For those who don't follow the show He's an older gentleman who's often the butt of jokes on the show He's a, not a journalist, well, he's a columnist He's a columnist for the Miami Herald Exactly

Has been for a long, long time Kind of the Larry Stone Let me make this a little bit more obscure The Larry Stone of Miami

Okay Yes, Larry Stone. Sorry, I didn't even know who you were. For some reason, I thought that was a Stern reference, right? The Larry Stone for Mariners fans. He's like, you know, I think well regarded in certain spaces down in South Florida sports, but is kind of the butt of a lot of jokes on the show. And because of his somewhat advanced age, he does a segment called Back in My Day, where he writes about how things were better back in his day. Like, you know, it's just like a real crusty, grumpy old man, you know, comedic essay he does supposedly every week. But it's a point of frustration that he hasn't been doing it every week. Anyway, I sent him a note the other day because he's always complaining that he doesn't know, you know, it's hard to come up with ideas. He's been doing this for so long that he's running out of things to write about. and I wrote him a note saying have you considered writing about modern light bulb technology because I'm a mere 44 years old and light bulbs I can't figure out light bulbs anymore Luke it's a point of like honest to God a real point of frustration with me I feel like and I'm just slipping into full-on Greg Cody here but I feel like when I was a kid all the light bulbs looked alike and they had a certain wattage on them and some of them were three wattages if you put one of those into your lamp and you could click it three times it'd be like dim less dim and brightest right but it was very straightforward 60 watt 100 watt okay 100 watts going to be brighter now with all of the energy saving light bulbs which is a good thing I'm not arguing against energy savings I don't know what I'm dealing with the watts don't matter it's about lumens and it's about like the the the quality of light coming out of them when I buy a box of light bulbs now I do not know if I'm going to like the quality of light coming out of it at all and I feel very lost and I feel cold and I feel scared and I feel old. and these are standard like what i think of as the standard light bulb size because that's where i get tripped up sometimes is there's also lots of different lamps and things where you know i'm talking about like the metal part that screws into the socket is a different size and i'm always at the home depot or whatever terrified that i'm buying the wrong size if it's something that's not just like whatever the most standard kind of light bulb size is that's an added uh complication And you know what I'm talking about, right? And also, what about smart light bulbs?

Right. Are those, wait, are the smart ones the ones that you talk to?

Well, they're like, I've never used one, but people swear by them. There are now smart light bulbs that are, I guess, Wi-Fi enabled, and they last a long time because I think they're LED. No one's using that horsehair filament anymore, Andrew, like when you were a kid. So now it's like, I believe that the light bulb itself is Wi-Fi enabled, so you put it in the socket or wherever it's going to go. So my guess would be you sort of leave the switch on, and then you are able to, through an app, control the light settings. You just basically have a little – and allegedly they last a long, long time, so it's supposed to kind of defray the increased expense of the light bulb. So you haven't even gotten into smart light bulbs. You're talking about regular light bulbs are too complicated for you at this point.

They really are, and I swear this isn't – I'm not exaggerating this for a bit. Like, I just feel like when they started introducing the more energy-efficient light bulbs, they started by kind of keeping them around the same size, but they were all, like, in those small tubes that were, like, wound up in kind of the shape of a light bulb. You know what I mean? They almost look like a fluorescent tube that's all, like, kind of curled up. And those, I had trouble finding the right— I'm afraid of those for some reason.

Because to me, a light bulb is the shape of a light bulb. It's not called a light coil. Yeah.

It's called a light bulb. Coil is a good word. Look it up. I could have used there. Right. But I felt like those were the only ones on the market for a while. I guess I'm potentially wrong about that, but it seemed like everything went that direction, and I had a lot of trouble.

It reminded me too much of a soft serve ice cream cone. And then you're licking them. I didn't feel comfortable with those LED coils.

And then luckily they started to bring energy efficient light bulbs back into the form factor that we're used to, things that look like the light bulbs when we were a kid. But I still say that, like, I must there must be something about it's not Watts anymore. Maybe it's lumens like lumen field. Like there's something I'm not understanding about these light bulbs and I'm just getting burned on them all the time. Not literally, although sometimes you ever growing up, did your mom or anybody ever have the little tray that would set around a light bulb and then you would put some incense or something in there? And the heat of the light bulb would like make no room smell nice. Those things, even as a kid, I was like, that is a fire hazard.

no but the the most hazardous thing around light bulbs when i was a kid was not the light bulb itself but the time that i had a little like night stand as a kid that had a lamp built into it like on a neck and then it came down and you put a bulb in there and i became i think i may have had a just a teeny touch of the ocd when i was a kid like i would lie in bed and i would look at the alarm clock and i would have to make it do a certain number of i would sort of cross my eyes a little bit and make the light from the the alarm clock you know the the the display i would have to make it do a certain number of kind of rectangular motions with my eyes you know stuff like that um that probably a little just a just a suissant of of that kind of you know bit of obsessive compulsive thinking and one time i got it in my head that i didn't have a light bulb in the in the in the socket but i i was very worried that the light was on and that it was just like burning electricity but i didn't know how to without going and getting a light bulb i didn't know how to figure out because it had a pole it had a little like brass pole chain on it and i'm looking at it and i'm like i don't know if this is on or off right now but if it's on is that just is that like is is electricity just like hemorrhaging out of this light socket and this is the thoughts you have when you're like a nine-year-old kid or something right and so i was going to go to sleep but i can't go to sleep not knowing the answer to this so the solution i came up with was to take the brass pull chain or copper or whatever it was and i don't know why this seemed like a better idea but to hold that and stick that in the socket and it turns out the socket was on very much so and my arm did like the i mean i was like it was i don't think i was in any mortal danger but it was quite a jolt I remember having that feeling I don't know if you ever had this experience Andrew where you actually can't pull yourself away from the thing that's electrocuting you I think you

know I've heard about that so much and I've definitely gotten that shock before there have been a couple of times in my life where and I think the first time I was a kid and I didn't know better and I did you know

stick my finger right into an empty socket not realizing that it was on and I got that I don't know if I've ever gotten that sensation of feeling like I can't pull away though but I've heard about it a lot like I know that's a thing and it just sounds so terrifying

yeah it's like I just remember my arm going like my arm just being completely taken over by this electrical charge and just like going like I'm doing a motion that nobody can see because this is a podcast but just and somehow being like having this thought even in my juvenile brain like I got a pull my arm out of this thing and getting it out of there and then just like my whole like left side of my body just being like jelly um so uh you know after that i've never touched another

light bulb or socket i hire it all out on task rabbit because i'm terrified uh you get fiverr use fiverr to um find a freelancer who will plug in your lights for you um okay one two two quick things on this uh i this conversation reminds me another thing i used to do with light bulbs i forgot about was uh you were describing your childhood lamp and i was picturing my childhood desk lamp which is a classic kind of or was a classic kind of gooseneck um lamp uh and you can you know adjust it but i spent so many i hated homework so much and i had pretty strict parents who made sure i did all my homework or tried to um but i would sit at my damn desk for hours and hours way longer than I should have should have been there because I'd be just distracted and putting it off and doing everything but looking at the math book in front of me and one thing I would do is I would take my crayons and I would melt them on the light bulb or sometimes inside of the of the lamp I forgot because that thing got hot I can right now as I'm talking to you smell that smell of the melting wax and the mixed with the smell of the textbook that I was doing everything i could to ignore so it sounds like you never messed with that no i was i i didn't

even occur to me um but i my my fondest my only fond homework memory was being in eighth grade and and dating like having this crush uh of this gal who actually for a time was listening to this show and her name was nicky ballier and i remember being so excited because this new girl at the school who I thought was very cute, seemed to be reciprocating. And I remember I had this like weird like cast off hide a bed couch in my room in the basement. And I remember sitting on that couch in this kind of lotus position. And I remember thinking I have to do all of this math homework before I'm allowed to get out of this position. So it's kind of like forcing me to do the homework because I was getting uncomfortable. But at the same time, I was thinking about how excited i was to have this crush and i remember the song cherish by madonna was playing oh really on like star 101.5 or back then maybe it was called like kplz or something i remember listening to cherish by madonna and doing this math homework and thinking uh oh i've got this gal and just like being completely and totally like feeling like everything in the world was perfect oddly enough Even though I was doing homework I just have that That's like one of my like 20 most vivid memories From my childhood Wow And But that was the only time I think I ever Had any positive association With doing homework Or yoga

Or yoga

Exactly And the last thing

I just want to say about this Is Greg Cody did not Interact with my tweet at all At all Just email him Through his Miami Herald account Yeah maybe I will I think it's a good idea Like I can see him doing it Like, I almost want to do it. There was a there was a TBTL newsletter I wrote about a month or two ago when I was listening to even more Levitard. Believe it or not, I've actually kind of slowed down a little bit. But I think his his whatever I was writing about was something about like back in my day. I can't remember what it was, but I was writing about something from my youth and I'm writing the newsletter and I realized, oh, this is Greg Cody's. I don't think that you would read it and see it, but, like, clearly his voice was going through my head as I was talking about back in my day. And so, like, I want to do a back in my – I mean, I'll write – he's always getting yelled at because he's too lazy to write the damn essays every week. Like, I'll write it for him. He doesn't even have to give me credit. I'll just write a back in my day. He can insert some of his personal little details wherever he wants. Like, he should be taking advantage of this.

I think you should write your own column but put my in italics so it's back in my day.

like it's your day and it's a totally different column right right or it could be called back

and me day and i write it all like a pirate absolutely i i know that feeling because of doing those cbs sunday morning commentaries and realizing oh i'm just channeling andy rooney now i don't think i'm andy rooney i'm not famous like he was uh or prolific like he was etc but there's just that moment where i'm like oh this is that's why these sound this way because you're trying to right about a thing.

You're trying to have a take, and the way to have a take is to kind of point out how something's absurd, and then next thing you know, you've gone full Rooney. You never want to go full Rooney.

You never go full Rooney. Do you ever accidentally write a CBS commentary in the voice of the TBTL newsletter? Because I welcome that. I mean, feel free. The voice is yours should you.

Could you start writing my Andy Rooney commentaries for me for CBS Sunday morning? It's the real question.

I will. What's bugging you today? Light bulbs.

Hey, we're there. Ooh, that's a good one, actually. Okay. Can I borrow that? Sure. You know what? I'm going to delete this tweet. Can I use it for a CBS commentary?

I'm going to send this to you instead. I'm going to copy and paste it and send it to you.

All right. Let's do a quick break here, and then when we come back, I do want to tell you about this. I mean, I was very shocked at kind of what happened yesterday when I went to my local Fred Meyer with a consumer issue, Andrew. I want to tell you about it coming up, plus another consumer issue for my new favorite 90-year-old in North Hollywood. But all that in a moment here on TBTL. Let's thank some donors of the day. The generosity of the following six names I'm about to read Are the people who are Most critically responsible For today's particular episode They're donating to the show The money is how we were able to keep this going That's how we were able to not get fired By American public media Year in and year out they consider it And year in and year out we point to the donations And we say you can't because people are paying for this And they say fine you've outwitted us again Burbs and Walsh

Will give you another year of doing this And then we trick them because we do another TV telethon. Oh, and the adventure begins again.

Indeed. Oh, hey, y'all said this name. Joshua Johnson of Seattle, Washington. Thank you, Joshua. Janet Collins is in Berkeley, California. But I used to work in conservative talk radio. I believe Michael Medved, who I love. Michael Medved is at the top of the list of people who I couldn't disagree with politically more, but who, as a human being, I like a lot. But I believe he used to call it Berserkly, which is where I got that from. Right?

Which actually sounds like he's trying to use it as a slam, but it actually sounds awesome.

No, it sounds kind of fun. It sounds like a Gorillaz offshoot. Yes. You know, Berserkly is like two of the guys from Gorillaz that aren't – oh, great. Now I'm going to start trying to name the members of Gorillaz. It's the guy from Blur, right? I think so, yeah. Damon Albarn are those words that equal a name and then of course it's Del the Funky Homo Sapien right

the main guy I don't see that's is he a gorilla this is not the time to get into this but I don't think this is how Janet Collins of Berserkly would have wanted it I don't think I again really really want to emphasize I do not know but I don't think Del is considered one I think that he is featured on some tracks that you and I really like and he has made you know i think there's a lot of crossover there but you're right about damon alburn because i looked it up i can never remember that name and there was a time when nobody knew who the other members of the gorillas were right because they were like cartoons and now i'm looking at the names it's nobody that i recognize right off the top of my head but i will say i told veves wouldn't the like best socially distant halftime super bowl show had been the gorillas it could have been all animation it could have been just like huge because it's like if you're not familiar with the the gorillas like sort of steez or or or their visuals i mean they're like really epic imagery but it's all animated and in some ways almost like they they mess with some 3d kind of animation stuff that is really arty and really cool that would have been

amazing an amazing halftime show uh you know the weekend spent seven million dollars of his own money in addition to the 10 million dollars that the nfl laid out for the production cost of his halftime show no i didn't shouldn't pepsi be paying for that isn't the pepsi halftime show famously the people the performers that do the halftime show are never compensated for their performance but the production cost is supposed to be picked up uh-huh but apparently he wanted to i don't know i mean i thought he did a pretty good job i forgot how many hits that guy has like i was into it but um but apparently he wanted it to be even more grand or visually whatever than the uh nfl or pepsi or whoever picks up the tab possibly uh listener janet collins and berserkly i don't know who's underwriting it but yeah he wanted he wanted to be even a bigger thing And so he shelled out seven million of his own.

dollars wow which is pretty crazy and then i think like he had the top eight songs on eight of the top 10 songs on spotify the next day were him oh wow which which is that that's the whole idea same thing happened um i think for like j-lo when she did it recently uh it's like the idea is that you do that show and then you just are dominant like your all your album sales and your streaming just goes through the roof i guess to the degree that it offsets seven million dollars i always kind of assume streaming doesn't really matter but i guess if you're talking about being eight of the top 10 songs on spotify that's gotta i mean the weekend is no dummy so he must have known that

that was a well-spent seven mil yeah um i can i just say one thing about that is i i because i don't want to talk too much about this anyway because i don't know much about it but i will say that i was retroactively impressed with the halftime show going in like i don't really follow the weekend much i don't follow really popular music a lot so i knew a couple of his songs it seemed like such a such a bland choice to me i was like yeah he's got pop songs but does anybody get excited about the weekend and then his performance was really bizarre i was was not paying tons of attention to it until it kind of really won me over by the end and then the next day i went back and i was reading about the bandaged faces and what was going on and some high concept shit and then i'm like oh this is all and i mean not you know not that i'm buying everything hook line and sinker but like there's a lot more thought and interesting story with both him as a person and an artist and the show it makes me actually want to go back and

re-watch it yeah i i i like his stuff and and i was literally like excited for him to play blinding lights and but then on the way to that there was because i was like okay well how many other songs But, I mean, he's definitely had some chart toppers, and I thought it was pretty good. You know who is known far and wide as one of the bigger weekend stands is listener Andy Ryan of Seattle, Washington, famously. So it was a great Sunday for him as well. Andy, thank you for donating to TBTL. Brandon, Volbright is out there on Vashon Island. Do you know for a minute, when I knew I was going to be moving out of Bellingham, I considered moving to Vashon? Uh, cause it's just beautiful and it's, it's sort of, it's, it's, it's kind of, uh, you know, it's, it's sort of between Seattle and Tacoma as far as North South stuff goes, but it's a little bit, you know, it's closer to Portland than say Bellingham is. And I actually know so many people that are moving out there. Vashon is all the rage these days.

You need to take a ferry to get to Vashon or am I wrong about that? You do.

You do. Our friend Bean still, I believe is still the owner of a giant Tiffany blue house. That's right. It's out there on Vashon. If anybody's got a cool couple three mil and you want to buy our friend's house, I believe it's still out there on the Red Fins. But anyway, Vashon is a beautiful place. There's a ferry from the Burien area, and then there's a ferry that goes south off of Vashon and connects you up with Tacoma. That was another thing I thought was appealing is you've got a couple options on the ferry. But anyway, thank you so much, Brandon, for the donation. Gretchen Van Miller is in Tacoma, Washington. You could take a ferry from where Brandon's living And you could end up where Gretchen's living See, it's all connected to Andrew But don't, Brandon I mean, let's make sure that you give everyone a heads up It's really the thing And then Colin Twos is in Arlington, Virginia Which is not accessible by ferry from Vashon Island But is a place where I once lived Ever so briefly back in the day Colin, thank you for the donation I wish Colin was our board op Because we could say Colin's on the ones and twos Oh, wow Wow. Colin, I hope that that doesn't impact your donation next year.

Yeah, you will up it because it's a good joke.

Yeah, exactly. I hope it doesn't negatively impact it. It can only positively impact it. Good point. Thanks to our donors of the day for helping us keep this thing going. 3,357 episodes later. Hello and welcome to Top Story. i had this um a kind of a weird it's a very uh 2021 consumer dilemma andrew um i was buying a bunch of stuff at my local fred meyer here in portland and when i got home and i brought all the stuff upstairs i realized that i had paid for but not brought home one of the items because i was doing the self-checkout which i don't know if you're like me but if i have over and this is exactly why if i have over a certain number of items and i know that's not a hard number it's just a feeling but if i have like a lot of things i don't like to do self-checkout yeah i just feel like it increases the chances of something going wrong something's not going to scan every three items it sets off a friggin alarm anyway and i gotta wait for the person to come over and clear it i just would rather let the professionals handle it oh see for me it's different i would self-check out in a entire cart of groceries if possible. But I just got excited there because I wanted to let you know that I think of you and the TBTL listeners every time I go into the self-checkout lane or make the decision of whether or not to go into the self-checkout lane now, because I always assumed that the self-checkout lane had a sign that said, you know, 12-ish items or whatever. I thought it was an express lane. But you and several listeners reached out to say, no, I don't think in my grocery store there's no limit it's just self-checkout and i've looked around i never see a self-limit sign but i am concerned about the optics of it as you might expect like i do not feel right rolling up uh with a big cart of groceries if i'm going to do it all myself because i feel like there's this understanding that these are people who ran to the grocery store to grab a few things that maybe you can hold all in your hand at once and then do a quick

self-checkout that's such an interesting perspective that's never been my thought about it to me it's like i would much i feel like going through the checker that's the cadillac service that's a professional person bagging your groceries making sure that the eggs are in the you know bag with the stuff that they go with i don't know any of that stuff i'm not a professional grocery person so when i'm out there trying to like figure out how many bags i'm going to use and what goes where and i'm scanning it it's not working and i'm just waiting endlessly that feels like that to me feels like the most low sort of a la carte version and if i want to if somebody wants to do that with eight million groceries like god bless i usually try to avoid it just because of the hassle factor but on this particular day this particular fred meyer was just it was packed and so i had no option other than to go through this self-checkout line which i did and i left this like thirty dollar smart human is the name of the company like stainless steel garbage can that was for the bathroom so it was like small but i like the look of those things uh i've got uh one of them in the the kitchen and so i was like let's keep the theme going anyway i get home and i realized i didn't even realize it till like the next day but i was like i paid for this thing and i don't have the thing it's still at the store so i called them they were very they're very cool about it they said just come to customer service go get the thing come up to customer service with the receipt show it to them and then they'll work it out i was like okay so i finally get around to going yesterday and i show up and there is just an insane line for the customer service because andrew the problem is at this particular store the customer service is also the check cashing and money order and government stimulus honoring and western union and i believe

also the switchboard for the store okay and did you did you also hit this on a day when people would be like did you say what day of the week this is was this just yesterday it was yesterday so that would have been wednesday yeah that doesn't seem like a day that that should be especially busy and we're also just in the middle of the month not the end of the month so i don't

know it would also by the way they offered faxing service 99 cents a page which seems high does it yeah like yeah i mean take a picture and text it to i don't know i just you know i thought okay i'm paying 99 cents you're gonna fax as many pages as as is needed no it's 99 cents a page wow so it's it's just this catch-all that handles every so somebody had returned bagels like when i got by the time i got to the front of the line be like in the background where all the returned items are there was a thing of bagels i was like i wonder what what's the story there somebody got these bagels and thought no i don't like these um they're not bagel bites i was looking for i was told these would be bagel bites here they are like anyway the line was crazy long so i decided instead i'm gonna go i don't want to wait in this line twice i don't want to wait in a line to tell them what i'm going to do and then wait in the line and then go get the thing and come back and wait in the line again also by the way you know what takes forever processing a money order like this is like this is a financial transaction you know it doesn't take that long hey uh these jeans didn't fit like i don't think that these should be the same i don't think you should ask the same people to do both jobs or at least you shouldn't have the line for hey these jeans didn't fit can you please scan them and put the money back on my card that shouldn't be the same line as i'm uh trying to wire eight thousand dollars to somebody across the country which is you know there's some paperwork associated with that these bagels didn't fit maybe yeah exactly um i you know what i ate the other bag of bagels and now these jeans don't fit so can i return the jeans and the second bag of bagels please i really want to know that bagel story though for real like

I'm kind of hung up on that. Would that be a good This American Life? Like, they take... one return bin and just like track the story behind everything i'd listen to that um so i'll

pitch it to greg cody i'll um so i i think uh sarah kanig has greg cody's personal email if you want i can get it from her to pass on to you so you can get in touch with him i um so i i decide to go to the back of the store and get the garbage can that i have already purchased but don't physically have and show them the receipt and hope that they will have mercy on me and so i go to the the place where all the garbage cans are and they have all of them except one and it should be the show pick today andrew i'll just send it to you i took a picture now i'm like how do i what what's the story when i get to customer service hi i'm luke i bought a garbage can from you which i didn't take home there's no other than the receipt there's or if you want to watch the security footage there's no real proof of this happening that that i didn't just take it with me right like i could have bought the garbage can put it in my car brought it back here to the apartment and just lied made this whole story up so i guess if you want to go back to the exact moment and watch the video and and if it's trained on the the checkout station i was at you might see that the smart human garbage can is still there but otherwise you're just taking my word for it and guess what i'm not even i don't even have the other garbage can because you're sold out of them So I'm just standing here with absolutely nothing for you other than a story that you're just going to have to believe.

I'm just a man with a receipt standing in front of a person.

I'm standing in front of you. And so I'm like psyching myself up for the conversation while I'm waiting in this still very, very long line.

This could be one of those situations where a long line works well for you. If it's a slow day, the person might want to examine the situation more closely. If it's a really long line and they're just like there's just they've been dealing with tons of people trying to send money orders to Jersey, what have you. They might just be like, fine, you know, like I don't have time to dig into that. I don't have time to Columbo up your story here. Right.

So I want to say, too, that like the folks that were working at the customer service counter were totally nice and professional. So my my issue with the way that they're being asked to sort of spin too many plates up there is not with them. And I don't think it's a great call by whoever the management is of that place. But the guy was nice. He was less suspicious than I expected. Like, he was like, okay, let me see what I can do. He calls a manager. I did have to stand there for probably 15 minutes while they ran it up the chain of command. But I was just, all I wanted was a rain check. I was like, can I just get some kind of writing, some kind of a thing in writing that just says, hey, when these garbage cans come back in, I can have. I thought that was the best I was going to get, right? yeah because like i'm asking that because the alternative would be i'm asking you to literally give me some kind of money for a thing that all i've done is circled it on the receipt that's the extent of my evidence and then a store a shaggy dog tail how that's what i'm bringing

did you give a ballpark price on this thing what are you asking for yeah 30 bucks 30 bucks

um and so i was trying to and i was also trying to do everything in my power to convey a non-sketchy vibe right because this is portland and there are a lot of folks that are dealing with a lot of issues including drug use and the whole you know world of returns in portland at a place like fred meyer is can be very fraught because you get a lot of people that are doing all kinds of things one of the moves that folks will do is to dig through the receipts in the guard like if you throw your receipt out when you're leaving a store um and i know i have a personal experience with somebody who told me the story of doing this, by the way, so I'm not just like, this is not just something I read on Nextdoor, but people will go through the garbage can outside of a store like that, and if somebody threw a receipt away, they will take the receipt out. They will go find that item on the receipt. They will shoplift that item. Then they will bring the item back.

The person you know who did this, do I know? You know who I'm thinking of. Is it that person?

I don't know who you're thinking of, and I don't want to be more specific so as to out anyone. You know of this person I don't think you've ever met this person But it's like not somebody From our friend group for instance You know who I mean give it a second

Who am I thinking of Somebody who might

Display some sketchy behavior Actually you know what it could be that person

Because I have a feeling

There could be multiple people practicing this trick I always think So we'll keep talking in like an extremely Elliptical way about this person I this is the this person probably that person probably has run this scam and it's like how much if that person the person that I'm not talking about but who you were thinking of but who I'm now talking about if they just put their energy towards honest work they'd be a millionaire.

Exactly. Scams are so much more work than just, you know, like a typical job stuff. But yes, you can. I mean, it's pretty clever if you think about it, because you can't get money usually for an item if you don't have the receipt. But if you have the receipt, then you're you know, you're you're good to go. So anyway, I'm like standing in line at this. And this, you know, is a Fred Meyer that's in a part of Portland that's sort of, let's say, on the margins a little bit. So I would guess that these customer service people have kind of seen it all. And I'm – like I hadn't showered yet, so I have a baseball cap on and a mask. And I'm just trying to think like what is the energy I'm putting out? Like am I putting out guy who's tweaking but trying to keep it together energy? Am I putting – like so I didn't want to be overly solicitous. Is that what that word means? i didn't want to be like i didn't want to act like i was being so so nice that it was weird like this guy's trying to cover for something but i didn't want to seem like kind of annoyed and like this was their problem because really this was my fault i left the item behind i was trying to find strike exactly the right tone the guy was nice i'm like can i get a rain check i also thought that was a like a good way to play it was like i'm not someone who's trying to get money from you i just want this garbage can if you don't have it you know could i just get a rain check so when it comes in i felt like that was sending a clear message to him yeah you could have also

asked you guys have one sent to me although maybe that's asking right for shipping but a way of just saying like i'm not looking for cash here i'm not looking for um uh you know

payout i just want my garbage can yes so i was trying to really focus on that and he was like well i mean he goes let me just see he goes let me call the manager goes if we don't have any more it's probably easiest to give you cash back and i was like well i don't have to have cash i just just as a rain check is fine you start scratching your arm he's exactly he's trying to give me cash and i'm like still worried that that makes me look sketchy even though it's his suggestion right right right and so i'm like you know and so then he's like so then he goes well let me check on something so he goes on the computer and goes you know the um store on gleason uh they've got two of them do you want me just to like call them and i was like i didn't want to do that because i didn't want to drive across town yeah i just so then i was like well you know actually the money's probably fine now that's like exactly what a tweaker would say yeah he's he's providing me with a solution that involves me getting one of these garbage cans but instead now i'm going for

the money but i mean it does make sense and first of all you let me say let me ask you this my guess is you paid with a credit card or a debit card for this right so they would probably refund the money to your card anyway not give you straight cash so that they give you straight cash they do

huh okay if it's debit card i don't understand why maybe there's a processing fee yeah maybe okay but that's where that's how this thing all ended and sorry the story has taken uh way too much time but like eventually i end up walking out of there with 30 bucks and i was like i i honestly felt like i pulled off something shady even though i hadn't but i guess because it was a debit card they don't i was because that was my other thing i was like do you want to put it back on the card i bought it on because i'm just trying everything in my power to convey that i am a responsible citizen and that I don't need this cash to go get my fix and it's like I end up just walking out of there with cash in my pocket

I remember this reminds me a bit of a time I don't consider myself to be a pill seeker Luke I just want that on the record well I'm glad to hear that but when you're in pain I don't turn down pills and during a period where I had a lot of back issues which I've kind of been having

again lately but these were more severe like you talk about it on the ads right there by the way

that's not bullshit man i my theragun i use the theragun mini i don't say that in the ads because i think they're pushing the theragun gen 4 um but the theragun mini for me is where it's at yeah that's not bullshit anyway um back in the day back more in my early 20s i was having kind of more like um severe back pain or it kicked off with an actual muscle spasm that i've talked about on the show before and you know you've had those and a lot of our listeners have it's an intense kind of pain especially the first time you don't even know what's going on you can barely breathe and the first time I got that they gave me some muscle relaxers and then I and and I went to physical therapy for a while and then the next time something like that happened and it was not quite as severe but I was having some sort of back pain that really was bothering me and I really wanted the doctor to prescribe me some more muscle relaxers or some sort of pain pill And I can't remember quite the details about how I'm like kind of talking about it in the in the doctor's office. But like I'm trying so hard not to, you know, be like, OK, so pills, no pills. Hey, hey, hey, pills, Dr. Pill. I mean, I'm trying so hard not to do that. But I finally just had to be straightforward and be like, so can I get any pain? pills or muscle that relaxers and they're like no just take like you know three advil and i probably looked so disappointed and i don't think i've ever been i hate it when that i don't think

i've ever been prescribed a pill since then i know and i'm not somebody who has taken very many of those i mean maybe the last time when i got my wisdom teeth pulled which was now like 20 plus years ago i think they gave me i don't even remember what it was one of those things percocet Vicodin it was before we knew how dangerous that stuff was and I remember taking a couple of them it didn't seem like it did me that much good but I will tell you that I mean that's the old joke take two aspirin and call me in the morning that still is that's the main thing this is why when we have lots of medical professionals in the listening audience but this is why I am generally not that into going and seeking medical advice on things because my experience is most of the time I go in and if I'm feeling some kind of discomfort, they ask me a few questions. They say, well, let's just keep watching it and, you know, maybe take some ibuprofen and we'll just keep watching it. It's always, we'll just keep watching. And I think, you know what I was doing before? I was watching it. And I had four – and this is now four hours of my life I'll never get back to get the advice of we'll keep watching it. Now, again, I'm not trying to be disparaging of doctors, nurses, et cetera. I mean, they're giving the advice that makes the most sense based on what's going on. But it's just that seems to mostly be the response. And so that kind of makes me usually just want to be like, eh, I'm just going to I'm just going to I'm going to keep watching this myself from home.

So I always get I always get the same three everything, which I mean, again, and I know that I think the doctor that I have right now is a very caring person and a very professional person. And I respect him for that. But I've only been to his office like three times. And the answer for everything is you should, you know, start watching what you eat. You should get more exercise and you should cut down on the drinking. And so now anything that goes bad, like my back hurts right now. And I think, yeah, I should get more exercise and, you know, watch my diet. And like so anything that Genevieve is always saying, why don't you go to the doctor for this or that or this or that? And I'm like, because he's going to tell me that I should start, you know, watch what I eat, get more exercise and stop drinking so much. It's like, and I know those things, but I haven't made any progress on drinking.

Yeah, right. If any of our doctors, I mean, if you're a doctor, you must just know instinctively to just double the math.

Yeah, we've heard from doctors who say that they're, I don't know if it's quite double, is it 1.75? But it's close to like whatever people say, they add X amount to it.

But I want to just kind of wrap up the Fred Meyer conversation by just acknowledging something, which is I'm sure that there's a huge amount of privilege around. And I don't mean this to be critical of the people that worked there, but I'm sure there's a lot of white privilege and, you know, other sort of things about privilege. I don't even fully identify in myself around them just being like, here's thirty dollars, you know, like I'm sure a lot of that has to do with how I look and, you know, how I'm dressed and how I come off. And that I am a white guy, you know, so less people email in and say, oh, yeah, you know, you thought it was just like a fun little lark to go in there and have them hand you money and walk out. There are plenty of people that have customer interactions where they're completely in the right. They didn't leave the item behind and they have problems, you know, with how it's being dealt with. So I just want to throw that out there so everybody knows that I know that I was born on third and thought I hit a triple. Just being very clear about that. You know who was born a long, long, long time ago was Aaron Epstein. He is an AT&T customer from North Hollywood, as I've mentioned many times already on this episode. He spent $10,000 to take out an ad in the Wall Street Journal, and I guess in two different printings of the Wall. I was under the impression—I'm sure you can basically a la carte it. If you buy an ad in the Wall Street Journal, I guess you could run it in every printing across the country, or you could just target it. I guess if you're going to do it every printing across the country, everybody who picks up a paper copy of the Wall Street Journal seeing it, that would cost you maybe a ton of money. This cost him $10,000 to hit up, I think it was Dallas, because that's where AT&T is headquartered. And the other one he ran in Manhattan, hoping that people who are Wall Street investors would see these ads. And this was the ad. Paid advertisement, open letter to Mr. John T. Stanky, CEO of AT&T. Dear Mr. Stanky, AT&T prides itself as a leader in electronic communications. Unfortunately for the people who live in North Hollywood, California, 91607, AT&T is now a major disappointment. Many of our neighbors are the creative technical workers in the Universal Warner Brothers Disney Studios.

in the adjacent city of Burbank and our city. We need to keep up with current technology. May I remind you, this guy's 90 who's writing this. We need to keep up with current technology and have looked to AT&T to supply us with fast internet service. Yet although AT&T is advertising speeds of up to 100 MBS for other neighborhoods, the fastest now available to us from AT&T is only 3 MBS. Megabits per second, by the way, I believe. Your competitors now have speeds of over 200 megabits per second. Why is AT&T, a leading communications company, treating us so shabbily in North Hollywood? Sincerely, Aaron M. Epstein, an AT&T customer since 1960. And then he includes his phone number and his email address. I love this for so many reasons. I love that this guy is 90 and is aware of what his megabytes per second are. I didn't even know that's what that stood for until you clarified. That's why I was saying MBS.

And three is incredible. I mean, these are the, I mean, hey, Andrew, what's the most important part of the story? Ignore it. Now say what's on your mind. Three is incredibly slow. Like you and I, you know, this is when we do our speed tests on the days when we have internet issues, which, I mean, knock on everything and pray to the saint of internet speeds. Things have been good lately. But, like, right now I'm at 217. That's St. Derek, right? St. Derek from IT. He's the prince of the prince.

He's the saint of slow internet connections. Oh, my God. Pray to St. Derek.

He vapes. He's the only saint who vapes. That's a true. Anyway, I'm at, like, 200. I just did a check on one of my computers on Wi-Fi with a VPN on, which slows things down. I'm at 217. And this old guy is getting three. What can you do with three?

He was being interviewed for this article from this, I think, a local TV station. Mr. Epstein says, for the last five years, as soon as they started introducing streaming like Roku and movies on TV, my internet service although i was paying for 3.5 megabits per second sometimes was only 1.5 megabits per second so watching a movie through roku was just slideshows yeah i just again i keep hitting the same point but i love this guy had a roku yeah how do you how how do we make it so that when we're 90 if we make it that long andrew our brain is still plastic enough to like know what a roku is use it and then be annoyed that it's the wrong megabit per second those are just i can't do any of those things right now i'm 44 like i i'm fascinated that this guy is as plugged in as he is to the technology and i don't understand how you can just at 90 be just rolling with things like

this person is also how can we make it so that when we're 90 we have an extra 10k to throw around for one advertisement taking down a company with bad service.

He's, by the way, calling it money well spent. Good. As you might imagine, he's very happy with it. And he points out that the ads were what they were, but what's really helped get this some attention, including from AT&T, has been all of the reporting around it. Yes. And I don't know if he knew that going in, like if he expected this to become the story that it's become, because it's been reported on in a lot of places. The next day, he got a call from the secretary for the CEO of AT&T. Nice, nice. Although, a better end of the story would be, and now the service is fixed, but they just put out some BS general statement about how they're working hard to bring fastest service to all of their customers, whatever, whatever. So it doesn't actually doesn't appear that there's any solution because I guess part of this has to do with it's crazy that North Hollywood, which is, you know, more or less L.A., that this would be running this far behind. Although, you know what? Somebody said I saw somebody tweeting at Kai. I don't know where Kai lives, Kai Rizdahl, but somebody was tweeting at Kai that his Internet service is like they asked, is your Internet service from rural Missouri? and he wrote some response like sometimes i wonder so i wonder if he was having slow internet like if he's doing the show from home and if he's having slow internet it just seems shocking to me that in the more or less the footprint of los angeles the internet would ever be this slow

yes it does not make sense exactly like your old fella said like we're we are our neighbors are in the biz you can't do your biz with the internet this slow that's infuriating yeah um so the the

AT&T is, I guess, they have this thing on the website that explains places where the internet is faster and places.

where they're working on it, like where they're in the process of building out the network. And apparently this guy's neighborhood is not even in the in the process part yet. So it's still going to be a while. I mean, that's kind of the less fun ending to the story is I don't know if this guy's internet life is getting any better. I'll tell you what I would do, though, if I was any other service, free internet for life. And we are going to personally run a line out to your house. I don't care what we have to do. I mean, that would be, put him in the Super Bowl ad next year. Yes, how is that not? If you're Fios or whatever.

Exactly, yeah. How is that not already? Maybe that is in the works.

Yeah, it should be. I mean, because that's just a... And my guess is that this guy, if the interviews with him indicate anything, this guy seems like a delight. Like, he's ready-made for... You know that Can You Hear Me Now guy? That guy's 2000 and late. Yes, he is. Aaron Epstein is the new customer who's crossed over to a new service. Yeah, can you Roku now? are you still to this day all these years later i still can't i still don't like saying can you hear me now when i lose somebody on a cell phone connection yeah it bothers me it bothers me i say like are you able to hear me like i feel like i'm just giving them what they want if i say can you

hear me now yeah no i i avoid i feel like there's another one in uh if i can't think of it though this goes nowhere it goes nowhere i swear i'm jellin there would you you don't say i never say

that and then to come out here with the smile on your face like that the world is just beautiful i don't understand it it bothers me enough you got to get it done i thought i had a shorter

version of that i don't i mean i do have this might actually be the gentleman in this article saying this it bothers me but that's a little creepy wow wait is that aaron epstein that is uh somebody i used to play the it bothers me drop on the old radio show like crazy and that was somebody who called i can't remember what we were using for a listener line then but that was somebody who called the listener line and left that as a voicemail somebody who apparently i guess enjoyed the drop but it is you know it bothers me wow there is why is that creepy i don't know and if that person is a tb tail listener my apologies but um you know also

can you do some vo for our next halloween episode right 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

Two can play at this game, Luke. What if you just play the top story sounder here and we just kept going back and forth trying to wrestle control of the show from one another with our benchmark audio piece?

I was trying to not mention it so you could just start with the right audio because I was embarrassed that I forgot it was a birthday and I started to play the email sound. But now you've locked it in because you know what? You never miss a chance to embarrass me in front of the listeners.

That is true.

I was ready to just forge ahead and act like the first thing that played to introduce this part of this show on this Thursday was one Tim Heidecker. And I could have edited that.

It was totally clean. I could have cut out yours. I knew it. I mean, I was making the edit in my head. And I thought if I mention it here over top of the music, Luke is going to be mad because then it won't be edited out. But I thought also it was kind of funny concept. Like, what if you and I did start to get to that shut up, little man, point of our relationship?

We're there. You just took us there, little man.

Wait, you're the little man. But, yeah, so anyway.

Well, let's not do that. And I'll try to remember next week when it's a Thursday that we have a different song.

Oh, don't be embarrassed. It's not a big deal. It happens to all podcasters. All right, let's do some Blursdays here. Also, just a few Blursdays today. So I once again slipped in a quick little non-Blursday message in the Blursdays. I like doing this. I think it's fun. The listeners at home can play the game. Was that a Blursday or was it Blursday adjacent? I'm so good at this game. You are pretty good. I got 100% right left. You're really good. So let's start with a real Blursday, though. Because you also cut out the things where I look good. I did. I cut out like when you said that's not a Blursday, I cut out the word not. So it sounded like you said that's a Blursday. and everybody's like, why is Luke?

He's so dumb. Has he been pill-seeking again? Liz says, happy 35th Blurs Day to Justin. Hopefully we can celebrate the way you had hoped for next year. You are the world to me. Love, Liz. It's a Blurs Day. Our buddy Linder says, I'd like to send a large Blurs Day blurs to my TBTL BFF. Maggie, we only recently became best friends in the comments section of the Stens page. I'm often literally lulling at her texts, things her kids say, and her expert-level use of TBTL drops that perfectly pair with whatever is going on in my life. She is a professional. Look it up in the book. Absolutely. Maggie, middle shelf.

Long time active and delightful 10

I don't think this is Maggie Middle Shelf

Oh

Because there was something else in Linder's email to me That indicated that You're saying we have two Maggies? I believe we have two people named Maggie who listen to the show If you can believe it Love it Yes Sorry

I mean that's Yeah Bad news that I credited the wrong Maggie, but it's good news that we're up to two Maggies listening. Did we ever close the loop on that?

We thought we had two Emmys, one Emmy, one Emmy Kate, both living in Florida, but it turns out, no, they're the same person.

We did close the loop, and it was the same person. It was the same person. Let's hope this doesn't go the same way.

Right. But this is good, though. So two Maggies, one Emmy. I mean, you know, we're going to have a MiGOT pretty soon. It was tough. That was a rough one. All right. The other day, maybe it was just yesterday, and I'm sorry. I'm going to have to stop the music for a second. But we received this on our voicemail line without any explanation at all. You know what would be perfect here? Once again, put the email every week. I'll get it from a female. Oh, man. Since we're just playing V-mails, I mean, this is the intro I would use. I don't know. You want to talk about embarrassing. I made a mistake with my system here and accidentally deleted something that I had all set. I had this set up for today. I got it here. Here is the McDonald's song I tried to play a second ago. Oh, my gosh. Boy, that's karma, man.

McDonald's is your kind of place. Hamburgers 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 we got that without any kind of explanation of it at all But I did get a note from a Bloodhound Gang member Named William in Waynesboro, Virginia Who says, my mom used to sing that song too She grew up in Cambridge, Ohio Another example of a town you think is going to be in one state But it's in a different one She grew up in Cambridge, Ohio and worked at a McDonald's I wonder if that will help with the mystery? Says William This was not a Blur's Day But I wanted to throw it out there

So the theory there being Or the possible theory being that this might We may have been able to at least Kind of focus this in on Ohio or the Midwest Or whatever we've decided Ohio is Because this listener's mom would sing the same song

Yeah, so we know it It did make its way to Cambridge, Ohio At some point Alright That wasn't a Blur's Day button No it was not, but I'll edit it so it makes it sound like you thought it was Lori in Mill Creek That must be Washington, right? I would think so. Okay. I mean, that is a place in Washington. Yeah. Okay. Lori in Mill Creek says, I'd like to wish a happy 40th Blur's Day to Jason D. in Linwood, a colleague of my daughter's that I randomly discovered last year is a 10 when I heard a voicemail from him on the show last summer. Hope your semi-quarantine birthday is special. That's from Lori to Jason D. I love it.

Believe me, we're as shocked as the listeners when we find out that there are sort of, you know, people who are connected through TBTL who didn't know each other. Like the listeners are always kind of like, I was at a thing and I started mentioning TBTL and this other person was aware of it and I was shocked. And I would tell you, I share your being shocked at those kinds of stories.

Yeah, I guess I'm going to have to tell this. By the way, I'm just starting to see the very, very first snow flurries coming down. I wanted to talk about that. I did not rain flurries. I did not think it was going to actually happen. We'll see. I'm going to tell you about something I did in the meeting today that kind of embarrasses both of us. And I apologize, Luke. And, you know, we had a meeting today. It's Thursday, a departmental meeting.

was one where we were supposed to go around the horn and talk about the projects that we're working on and listen you and i have projects we're working on but we work with these people who are like i come on after brains on and they're talking about the two books they're working on that are going to come out in 2022 and 2023 i don't know if i'm allowed to freaking say that maybe i'll cut it out um i'm talking you know uh nora's producer is talking about all the huge projects they're working on and i'm kind of like well i made a fart joke on the show the other day And so when it's my turn to go, I try to have a list of things that we've done and are doing and things that I can kind of brag about, but I always feel very insecure about it. But one thing I mentioned is that we've now been kind of opening up the text message line with our listeners. They can text me, and it's just kind of another way of, I don't know, just kind of bringing the audience closer to us and us closer to the audience, which is something that's been a lot of fun, by the way. You can just use the TBTL line number, 206-414-8285. But I couldn't just let it be, Luke. I'm telling them, I'm like, hey, we're experimenting with this texting technology. We'll see how it goes. Maybe it could be applicable to other shows. But then I have to say this. Right now, the number of texts I'm getting hasn't been overwhelming, which I guess doesn't speak well for our numbers. Why did I have to say that? Why didn't I just say, obviously, I'm flooded with texts? I wish I hadn't done that. I can't keep up with them, but I do my best because I'm just like we have just hordes of fans who are just trying to knock down our text doors to get to us. But I'm doing my best. I'm a duck's legs flapping in the water trying to keep up. But, no, I'm like, I've gotten a few. I guess we don't have a very big audience. How you doing, boss? That's what happened in the meeting today.

Well, you know, usually when you tell me stories about this, I try to tell you it wasn't as bad as you thought. But that definitely sounds as bad as you thought. It was stupid. Yeah, maybe stifle that. Yeah, maybe just don't say that. Maybe just don't say everything on your damn mind. Well, here's the good news. I do actually, I come to you with some good news. One, most of the people on the meeting were probably not listening. They're probably doing things, working on their book projects or other such things. I mean, honestly, like this is the good news about for any of us, you, me, any of the listeners, whenever we say something that we kind of wish we would have said differently, unless it's like a very, very like a one on one conversation. You're sitting in a quiet room, staring someone directly in the eyes, talking about the future of your relationship or something. Unless it's like that. If it's a group setting, if it's a party, even if it's a work thing, no one's paying as close of attention to what we're saying as we are.

Well, the two people on that call who matter the most were probably paying attention because they're like our bosses who, you know, get a lot of –

But I just don't think – I just – I mean they could still be reading things. They're listening. They're listening so as to give you some kind of response, but I bet they're – they've got a lot of things going on in their head. I don't think that they all – they both said, well, then, you know, I guess this is the beginning of the end for TV Chill. I don't think that that's what went through their mind. The other thing you can do, and you laid this out yesterday, and I thought it was actually very good advice. So just all you have to do is next time. And I can't give you any crap about this, Andrew, because the only reason you're in the meeting doing this is because I refuse to go to the meetings.

We go to the ones where they talk about how great our numbers are.

Well, yeah, I have a knack for showing up at one meeting a year. It's the time where they're just loving on our show. But you're only in the meeting feeling this pressure to sort of give the TBTL update because I am somehow incapable of helping out with this thing, which is – that's on me. And then the last thing is what you said the other day I thought – or yesterday was really nice, which was – so just take that and just remember next time that it's okay to just say the thing and then to just let it lie. And I think part of the problem, you and I talked about this conversation before the show, but you didn't give me the full story. You said, I mentioned the text line. You're going, I don't think it made the biggest splash. And my thought when you said that was a lot of that is probably also attributable to Zoom because it's not like you're just in a room with people. Half the people are muted. Again, the person, our boss, could have been getting an email at that very moment. Like the point at which you said, hey, we're getting texts from the listeners. and then you didn't hear a response and then your brain probably started to like you thought there was another step and there wasn't and that's why your brain said keep talking and then it went to a place that was maybe not the ideal place as far as the kind of way that the other shows and our bosses perceive our program it's just because you didn't hear a response and I know that feeling, I do that all the time so just maybe you can harness the bad feeling you're having I'm going to go.

And and and turn it into something productive, which is just like next time if you say something, there's no response.

You don't have to follow it up with something. Yes. And I do think that's definitely a lesson to be learned here. I will also say in a very pragmatic way, the bosses we have now, the two women I'm thinking of are very hands on and like they know more about our download numbers than I do right now. And they are not people who we've had bosses in the past who are like some kind of paying attention to us, some who were so checked out they didn't even know we were on the network. That was kind of fun looking back. That's how we ended up hitchhiking. A little benign neglect. Never heard anyone. Yeah. Well, actually, it could have led to an abduction of two podcast hosts, but it didn't. So, anyway, me saying we haven't been overwhelmed by text messages does not suddenly have the big boss saying, we have to cancel TBTL. They're not getting tons of text messages. She knows exactly what our numbers are. I guarantee it.

Yes, I agree with you. So don't beat yourself up over it. And, you know, for both of us, we'll just, you know, we'll just let it lie next time, which is hard for us. But that was a teachable moment for you and for me by extension. But also, could some people please text us? What the heck?

I'm getting plenty of text messages. It's been fun. Yeah. All right. One more Blur's Day here. This is from Garrett, the music doctor, who says, I'd like to wish a happy first birthday to my five, Isaac. Isaac's a solid name, man. I especially like Isaac for a baby. His mom and I love our jolly little jelly bean, and we are so proud of everything he has accomplished in this unexpectedly isolated first year of life we can't wait to see you walk try new foods and most importantly hang out with other people happy blurs day isaac that one was

a blurs day definitely by the way music doctors definitely sounds like a person who will come dj your roller skating party i know and that person's coming in a mobile music doctor van A van that has some kind of vinyl or some kind of lettering on the side that tells you we're dealing with a music doctor. This is the music doctor's mobile DJ unit, and he is here to make this bouncy house birthday party really, really happening.

Do you think it's a white van, but it's decked out a little bit to look like an ambulance with a red cross on it?

Well, in that case, though, you know what has to happen is he has to take the partiers, the roller skaters, what have you, and has to drive them to another location in the ambulance. That's true. Because we established, oh, update on that. Oh, yeah, your dishwasher? Yeah, they still haven't done anything. Oh, so no update on that. No, there's no update on it. The update is that there's no update. Just waiting until they, you know, I guess until the 19th. Then if they can fix it, then the negotiations begin, Andrew. Then that's when I'm really going to start. Like I'm not going to settle for anything less than a 50% Reduction in my rent That's not what you're not going to sell for anything

Less than that no no Well, I'd be interested in seeing how

I'll be like do you understand The the respect I'm treated with At the Fred Meyer customer service center Where they will give me money over a garbage can Simply because I circled it on a receipt And you can't give me

A 50% rent break because my dishwasher Doesn't work I think you're getting closer Turn closer to convincing them, by the way. I think these are good tactics. Hey, should we go out with a Gorillaz song? Oh, good call. Yeah, I was going to go out with a Cheap Trick song just because I happened to hear it on the radio yesterday. But I like the Gorillaz better. Which do you like?

Oh, you know, I like that old Clint Eastwood stuff. That's kind of the big one, right? I mean, I like a lot of their stuff, but I don't know the name of it. Oh, you know what? Actually.

Actually. Do you know Melancholy Hill? If I do, I don't know the name of it. Let me see here. I only had one of their albums. I really liked it. Let me look it up here.

So maybe we'll go out with Melancholy Hill just because it's kind of a pretty song. I like it. It's a little bit melancholy, but I think we can all handle it.

I don't have this record, so my guess is I do not know this song at all. Let's see. When this come out, 2010. Yeah, I should catch up. Like, I've never heard a – I don't think I've ever really heard a Gorillaz song that I don't like. I love the kind of mystery around the band and, again, all their imagery and the universe they built. yet there's so much I don't know I only know one or actually maybe two records but here it is on Melancholy Hill off of Plastic Beach I love it alright that's how we'll go out

and we will tell you that we'll be right back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you until then please enjoy your Thursday stay safe mask up take care of yourselves and each other and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all

Thank you.

Up on melancholy hill There's a plastic tree Are you here with me? Just looking out on the day of another dream Where you can't get what you want, but you can't get me So listen, I can see

Cause you are my medicine when you talk to me

When you're close to me

Power out!

You