Muse

Well, I just think I'd feel much better about it if we could lock down a great representation visually of what my brand is. Okay, so how exactly would you describe your brand? Like, aesthetically or cinematographically, if that's a word. It's not. I feel like it's everything you loved about the classic movies of our childhood, like Sandlot, Billy Madison, Apocalypse Now, Happy Gilmore, Clueless. But at the same time, I feel like my brand is not rooted in the past. It's actually very forward-thinking and, like, futuristic. It's like, imagine like what 2090 is like, but like it's being described by someone who's from 1920.

TBTL. Guess what day it is. Guess what day it is. It's Friday. Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Everybody's looking forward to the weekend.

So I'm what's known as a psychic medium, but I'm also clairsentient, which means that I feel my angels. I'm also clairvoyant, which means I can see. I'm also clairaudient, which is most of the time I actually hear. I hear voices, and I also do financial advising.

I'm not handling this well. I don't feel competent. I'm depressed.

It's kind of weird. I feel like I'm being interrogated, but by someone who doesn't really want to know anything important.

All right. Hello. Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to a Friday edition of TVTL. This right here is a show that just might be too beautiful to live.

This song goes out to all the coffee lovers of the world.

My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You want showmanship? You got it. Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center, high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where they have still yet to complete the Earl Blumenauer pedestrian and cycle bridge spanning I-84. It was one of the very first things I saw when I moved here to this apartment in Portland. In fact, I think I talked about it on the first morning of the show. I had two big reveals for the audience. One, I was getting divorced and moving to Portland. Two, they were working on a pedestrian bridge, which at that time I don't even think I knew what it was. I think I just said there's some kind of odd building project. Anyway, they were supposed to have finished this thing in January. I guess there's, you know, the little matter of a global pandemic that can slow things down. Nothing can slow down a Friday episode of TBTL, my friend. Let the fun begin. Particularly when we've arrived at the auspicious number of 3,363 in a collector's series. If that's the actual episode number we're on, I did not check my helpful email this morning. i should have anyway just go with me i think that's the number that we're on uh i am so excited this morning at the the data the sights and sounds that are coming back from the red planet my friends because the mars perseverance rover remember yesterday we're talking about that seven seconds of terror. Well, I got on the NASA feed, chewed my fingernails down, and then when that thing sent back a message that it had landed,

I was extremely excited.

We'll play you some of the actual sound. There's a microphone on this rover. You guys, I'm going to play you what it sounds like on Mars coming up. Also, speaking of ambitious, almost impossible moonshots it looks like we are actually successfully siphoning off a number of the tony kornheiser show podcast listeners it's working it's working i think at least three of them have got at us on twitter there are dozens of us to tell us that they are now interacting with tbtl content which is exciting There are so many delicious elements to the Ted Cruz Cancun story We try not to talk about politics on this show That's not true What we do is we talk about politics but we preface it each time by saying We try not to talk about politics on this show And I don't want to necessarily talk about politics But the Ted Cruz story is just so great It's just as a tragedy in the most literal sense. Someone being taken down by their own foibles. And there's one especially funny part to me.

How funny is that? That's pretty funny.

That I want to delve into coming up. Plus, because it's a Friday, you've got some music for your weekend. All that, plus this guy, the longest running co-bro of the show. He may be best known for his drawings of the tall ships. There's a Hidden Valley Ranch Party in his mouth. He is Andrew.

Hey, Gorgle, what's a Toyger? Walsh. And he is joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Happy Friday.

Thank you. There's never hidden van. Hidden. Oh, my gosh. Can't even say it. First words today. First words, Luke. I can't even get them out.

You're you are forgiven for that. Listen, you are forgiven for that one because you're describing a food product that would absolutely never make its way onto your plate were you serving yourself and so you're not expected to know the ins and outs of the hidden valley ranch party right in fact hidden valley ranch

when i was denigrating it online they said keep our name out of your mouth which is why i was not able to say it at the beginning i was actually keep our ranch out of your mouth done and done And actually, this raises something I wanted to ask you about actually for the past couple of days. I think it was Tuesday night. Yes, it was Tuesday night. Our dear friend Amy Wu had a huge and hugely impressive birthday celebration in which she hosted pub style trivia pairing up with like the pub trivia company that she, you know, used to work with IRL. And now they have some sort of online version. And in honor of her birthday, she wanted to do her favorite thing, which is put on some pub trivia. And so her friends joined from around the country, maybe even around the world, as the Internet works. And I don't even know how this technology worked, but it was pretty amazing. There were moments where she gave the trivia questions to everybody. I don't know how many hundreds of people were on this call, but then she would send us to our little breakout rooms, which are our teams. and I was on a team with Steve Nelson and other TBTL friendos. And our team did not do it. By the way, let me know when we're going to get a Steve Nelson reference, and I will have. I know. I didn't know I was going here. Oh, wow. You got a bad cable, my friend. We got a kid. Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Oh, yeah. It sounded fine to me. But anyway, I'm making this too long, as I always do. We didn't do that great, our team. So this one question didn't really make a difference for us, but I'm still butthurt about something. One of the questions was about a condiment that was invented in the early 1900s near the U.S.-Canadian border. I can't remember the details beyond that. And the answer ended up being Thousand Island Dressing. I do not consider dressing to be a condiment. It sparked a bit of a firestorm, especially amongst those who were actually competing for the top prize. Again, we weren't really in it, but I've been thinking about it since because people started fighting about it. It was the one kind of point of rancor during the thing. Luckily, it was near the end. And somebody argued, well, you put Thousand Island on sandwiches like a Reuben. And somebody said, no, you don't. You put Russian dressing on those sandwiches. And then somebody else said, yeah, but what's that? That's Russian dressing proving that dressing is a condiment. And then I just I tuned out after that. I was just like, I can't handle this.

I want to just let the listeners know, particularly our new listeners from the Heiserverse, that this might be a three-hour show today. I can feel it in my bones. There are just these days where, because we have a lot of stuff to talk about, but I could definitely do a solid, a tight 90 minutes with you just on this question. I mean, there are so many layers to it. One, I hope you don't take offense to this, Andrew, but I feel like much like you had a tiny struggle with Hidden Valley Ranch at the top of the show, which I actually sometimes have a hard time saying myself. You're not a person who likes a lot of condiments and dressings is my experience with you. So you having a strong opinion about what is and is not a condiment is surprising to me because it just doesn't seem like a space that you play in.

Well, I just think that it's a bad I mean, listen, you know that I love Amy Wu And I had a wonderful time, by the way I actually kind of forgot how much I missed socializing Not even kidding But it was a really, really wonderful night So I don't want to speak ill of Amy Especially on this, the day of her blurs But it's just you can't have a question Where you ask somebody about a condiment And the answer is a dressing

Oh, absolutely You agree with me? No, I absolutely agree with Amy Wu If you walk down the grocery aisle, condiments and dressing is all together. What makes something a condiment? It's something you might dip a French fry in, right? People dip French fries in Thousand Island. People dip French fries in ranch. People dip French fries in ketchup, right? I mean I don't see how it could be more of a condiment. Okay, then is Italian dressing a condiment? I don't think of it as something that people dip other foods into. Like they wouldn't dip a potato chip in. They wouldn't dip a fry. Italian dressing to me lives very much in the world of dressing, but blue cheese would be considered a condiment in my mind. The question to me is, has it expanded far outside of the topping of a salad kind of space? And if it has, if it's something that it would be reasonable, like if you got hot wings somewhere, they would bring you potentially blue cheese dressing with your

wings. That's now a condiment to me. Ooh, that's a dip to me. But putting that aside, because I won't even touch the blue cheese, I won't touch it literally, and I won't touch it conversationally here because I that's not a space that that I play in and so I but let me tell you this I'm quite sure and I could be wrong I'm gonna next time I go to the store which might be this afternoon I will take a picture of the sign and I could be wrong and if so I will totally eat my words but I will not eat any thousand island but I'm pretty sure the sign in the grocery store says this aisle has condiments and dressings you know how they list the various things I think if dressings

were a condiment it would just say condiments but wait a second then what makes something a condiment if the fact sooner or later gentlemen you will eat your word um what what makes something a condiment then versus a dip what is a condiment's use you put it on a sandwich because thousand island fits that bill although by the way i don't like thousand island i've never liked it it's not for me i don't even like russian dressing which is a very similar to thousand Yeah. But if you're saying what disqualifies blue cheese from being a condiment when they bring it out with your hot wings, is that not yours, but a person's is that it is now being dipped. So it is a dip. I'm just saying, when is something a condiment?

Well, let me just continue. Let me answer that with another question, not answer it. Actually, just continue to ask questions. Talmudic tradition. I will answer your question with another question. Because, listen, I don't want to be super – like, the thing that I'm very headstrong about is that Thousand Island should not be considered. Like, I do stand by that for now. Maybe you will win this argument. I don't want to just dig in and just choose my side and then just have to win at all costs. I believe that through debate we can become more educated, and maybe I will learn something here today. So that is the truth. Thank you. But if we're asking, like, what is a dip and what is a condiment, which things have now veered away from the original question, what is a dressing and what is a condiment? But are there certain things that are dips that are not condiments? Like, for example, because I don't touch any of this stuff, so I can't claim knowledge. But, like, if you're at a Super Bowl party, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that. If you're at a party celebrating the madness that is college basketball in March, and somebody brings out a plate of crudité, and in the middle there's some sort of a dip in there, and people say this is a dip, and they call it chips and dip, chips and dip. I love my chips and dip. Is that a condiment? Because I don't think of that as a condiment.

to me it's a condiment if it is also something that lives on a sandwich or hot dog or thing like that let's not even open that door of is a sandwich a hot dog but because my question is by by what i'm hearing from you nothing is ever actually a condiment because it's either a dressing or it's what is a condiment in your mind i think that a ketchup is an obvious condiment

Mustard is an obvious condiment. Barbecue sauce is a condiment. I would say sriracha is a condiment.

People put ketchup on their hamburger sandwiches, and they also dip their french fries in it. So is it a dip or is it a condiment? I think it's a condiment. If you go to the condiment aisle, it's there. Okay. But then Thousand Island is a dressing because you think of its primary purpose as being something that goes on salad.

That's my understanding. And again, since I don't eat it, that's fine. But I feel like if I go to a restaurant and I order a salad, they don't say, would you like ketchup, mustard or Thousand Island? They say, would you like Italian or Thousand Island or, you know, the other stuff, the other ones?

You know, I don't think I don't think you're totally wrong. I'd be I'm going to be curious to see where the listeners come down on this. But I also think to me, it's like I don't think that it's I would not have been. Now, maybe if I was in the moment and I'd had a couple of adult bevies and I was like, you know, maybe near close to winning the trivia thing and I put the wrong answer down, then I could see I could see myself being a little bit more strident about that being a miscategorization of Thousand Island. But just sitting here in the sober 1030 a.m. light of day on a Friday, I'm not I don't think it's wildly off base to say that Thousand Island is a condiment. I am

I'm going to put it on the poll Guillermo Boy does anybody have a segment like that That's something we could do I don't know why I'm calling you Guillermo But here we are Speaking of other shows

The main Twitter activity around our program Over the last 24 hours

Apparently, it looks like it's been a lot of people who identify as listeners of the Tony Kornheiser show who call themselves Littles who are now, again, flocking by the twos over here and listening to our show. We had one person say that they now love our show. That's amazing.

Yes. In fact, I think there's a few more. I just opened up Twitter because I'm putting this thing on the poll, and I see that somehow through this Twitter conversation, we might have two new listeners, maybe even three, dipping their toes into the TBTL verse. But then I did just see somebody wrote, I'm sorry, I already have too many podcasts as it is, so I will trust you that TBTL is good, but I can't get into it right now. So Sully from Boston is dead to me. Cross Sully from Boston off the list. that is so sully from boston i know it's your cousin from boston are those the sam adams ads yeah which is weird veves and i were talking veves and i were talking about that and after

these messages um for the hyzer heads uh for both of the new listeners i'll just explain andrew and his longtime girlfriend host a really great podcast about advertising called after these messages but i like to talk about commercials too and so whenever andrew and i are doing that on this show he has to whisper because uh genevieve will be a little annoyed that he is cannibalizing their content so that's what's going on i'm just going to do it like i'm going to annotate the entire show that's why i told you today's show is going to be three hours because i'm going to

basically annotate everything i want to make sure that you are comfortable with the way i'm writing this poll when i put polls on twitter i usually try to be a little goofy about it but it occurred to me we want real answers here so i was gonna write is thousand island a condiment at first i wrote is thousand island dressing a condiment but i felt like that was tipping the scale so i'm just writing is there thousand island a condiment yes or no i was gonna write yes or no don't be a silly goose but it occurred to me that that might not be fair to you are you comfortable with the straight question is the thousand island a condiment choice one yes choice two no in fact by putting yes first I might even be – by having ballot hierarchy like that, I might even be – I'll tell you this.

If you want to put no first, it will still come out overwhelmingly that, yes, it is a condiment. I will give you this much. I'm giving you – Andrew, I'm actually going to go – I'll go minus three on this. I'll actually give you an advantage by letting you put no first. Everything is sports betting to me now. I will let you write that question as, is Thousand Island a condiment? no or yes if you care to because i still think it's going to be in the 80 percentile that it is

yes considered a condiment that's my prediction last time i went to a poll to win an argument i did not win that argument and it was uh whether i forget what was that poll that was a fight between me and genevieve that was whether or not um dennis quaid is an a-list celebrity where did that one shake out i said i said that he absolutely is the internet said no he didn't no he isn't and then a lot of people said well it really depends on what point in his career but if you're asking right now 2021 then no okay last question for you because i just want to be um should we make this a poll that goes through the weekend and we can report back on monday because i feel like just the recording of the show three hours though it may be might not give us the sample

size that we want yeah let's give let's see if we can get four hyzer heads tuned in on monday okay with this compelling over the weekend uh plot arc that we're going to create can i just very quickly before we move off the topic of dressings slash condiments slash dips the actual story of the hidden valley ranch dressing is kind of interesting i may not captivate you andrew as somebody who doesn't like that kind of stuff but in the early 1950s a plumber in alaska named steve henson developed what is now known as ranch dressing while working as a contractor in the remote alaskan bush in 1954 he and his wife gail opened hidden valley ranch it was a dude ranch uh in santa barbara county california so he's making this this dressing whatever you want to call it and then uh you know unrelated he and his wife moved down to california they open a dude ranch it's called hidden valley ranch uh and apparently uh when the people come in to take part in the dude ranch he lets them have a little bit of this dressing that he's been making and it becomes so popular that they start selling it and then eventually hidden valley ranch food products is born this whole thing came from a plumber in alaska who's trying to mix something up to put

on his salad on his salad by the way when you just type in say that and i just when you type thousand island into google like with no other qualifier everything that comes back is recipes for something called thousand island dressing just for the record well right i'm not saying it is

not a dressing and maybe you'll win the argument because it's primary

Although this is the difference, I think, between growing up in the Midwest and growing up in the Northwest. Thousand Island dressing, my guess would be, is a bigger player in the salad space in the Midwest than in the Northwest. Interesting.

Because people aren't pooping up their salads as much out here, maybe which is why I like it out here.

Or maybe with just different stuff, like a lot of balsamic and olive oil. Yeah. A lot of, like, when I was growing up, Thousand Island was an outlier. And maybe that's why I didn't develop a taste for it. Like it was certainly not part of my family's salad habits, and I just don't – like being at church potlucks, I just don't remember there being a ton of Thousand Island around. So I wonder if it's more of a Midwest thing, therefore it's more entrenched as a salad dressing in your mind, and I'm a little bit more flexible on the matter because I just don't have a ton of experience with it.

The poll's been up for all of four minutes, and I already got a response. It's from one Amy Walensky who is saying, seriously, are we still on this? You love to hear it. I'd remind you that this all started on Tuesday evening, and here we are Friday mid-morning.

There's one last little bit of the – I'm very intrigued at the Hidden Valley Ranch story and also sad because there was a moment in time where I was going to get to go do a story about this for CBS Sunday Morning. And the producer who was pitching it was very excited, and then I guess just somewhere it hit a wall with these seniors, even though I think it would be a great story. Here's the one thing I don't love about the story. In 1972, the Hidden Valley Ranch brand was bought by Clorox for $8 million. Now, I know that they're not going to put Clorox in the dressing, but I don't like a salad dressing or a condiment company being acquired by Clorox. Can we make sure that we're manufacturing these products in very different factories?

Yes, absolutely. That's a bad brand extension, if you ask me. Right? I know something from brand extensions.

Right. The Little Debbie Company was recently acquired by the American Arsenic Association. Like, people don't want to see it. Arsenic-y. Yeah. Okay. I think we should take a quick break here so we can get into these top stories. And also an email from our friend P. Fletch that captured my attention this morning I thought made a good point. And also, to some degree, squares with my own experience. So that's probably why I thought it was interesting. Plus, music for your weekend. All coming up here on TBTL. Let's thank some donors of the day. Oh, this is an interesting group, Andrew. We're not related to any of them.

Really? Are you sure? Yeah.

Maybe I can marry into one of these families. This is the first time in a long time it hasn't been one of our actual blood kin donating. These are the generous, wonderful non-relations of ours who are keeping TBTL going. People like Trent Stoliarsis of Vancouver, British Columbia. Beautiful Vancouver. Don Tyler is in Seattle, Washington. Thanks, Don, for the donation. Isaac Burnett is out in Woodinville, Washington, where we have done many a picnic with the old Chateau Saint-Michel folks. That's just like one of those relationships where it's like, okay, we may not be together anymore, but we really want to see good things for them. They're very good to us for a very long time. We appreciate them. Can I ask you a question? And appreciate that.

Do you consider Pinot Noir to be a condiment?

On certain nights, it has been for me.

Are you dipping your fries in it? Sure.

Sure. I mean, very possibly.

Yes.

Tony Erickson is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Consider the Twin Cities an adopted hometown. Amen. For us and this show Thanks Tony Jessica Jordan is in Tacoma, Washington And then Heather Lynch is checking in From Newtown, Pennsylvania Thanks Heather for the donation Thanks to all of our donors of the day To you, to our two new listeners Who are unfamiliar with the business model Whereas Tony Kornheiser does not Apparently ask you to give money To keep the show going, we do And we make no apologies about it

Because our show is more valuable.

And that's how we do the show five days a week.

That's not a good way. That's not the tone I want to take.

That's not how we win. No. I don't point out that we do the show five days a week, even though it looks like the Kornheiser schedule is every other day. I don't point that out.

No, you're fine. It just occurred to me that I went from open arms welcoming to suddenly taking pot shots in another show. It was me trying to punch up, but I didn't like it. I didn't like the tone. It's not what I'm doing.

None of these donors of the day like that tone either Because they're

Awesome, supportive, loving people, much like the new listeners that we're welcoming to the program. Anyway, thanks to everybody who's helping keep TBTL going. 3,363 episodes in. Hello and welcome to Top Story. I mentioned on the show the other day that I was surprised to see that Larry King's estate was valued at somewhere, I think, a little bit south of $2 million. Now, $2 million is a lot of money for a normal person. It's much more money than I have. But it seemed like not as much money as I expected Larry King to have. And our friend and colleague, P. Fletch, Phyllis Fletcher, checked in with this email, which I'm reading here just because we don't really do emails on Friday because we do music for your weekend. Phyllis says, I've thought about this. Of course, the gambling and the bankruptcies, you mentioned, are factors. Because I did, you know, Larry King had had some financial trubs throughout his life But it had been a long time since he declared bankruptcy And he was working steadily, which made me think, you know He would have been socking away a fair amount of dough I've also, this is what Phyllis writes, I've come up with this Two million, one thing they say is you should always try to do math on a podcast, right? Especially exponential mathematics Famously one of the most followable topics Yes. Just like, you know, me talking about wash accounts and where the principal was being paid by Citibank out to the people who held debt by Revlon. I'm sure that was a real adventure for everybody yesterday. I'm going to do it again. Here's Phyllis's. What would you call this equation? Yeah. Two million times two to the sixth. Okay, so then she writes out the number 2 million times 2 to the power of 6 Larry King was divorced 6 times But you can make up a fake Larry King who didn't do that And you can double the value of his estate 6 times There's no way this would be accurate But if you wanted to pretend it is I, as APM Studios' senior editor Will allow it for entertainment purposes Thank you, Phyllis Oh, so the net worth of a fake Larry King's estate would be one hundred and twenty eight million dollars. So the idea is and I think she's probably not wrong, just generally speaking, that getting divorced six times, I think, is going to put a it'll put a dent in your pocketbook. I say this as a person who's working on divorce number two. It's you know, it's definitely it's a it's a bit of a setback for the old for the old bank accounts. And so six times. And Larry King seemed like somebody who, God bless, I mean, he I think he just went headlong into love. I mean, how else could you get married six times? Like, I think like I don't think he had prenups is what I'm saying.

I think he was the kind of person who if he fancied someone, he fancied him and he was just, you know, I think he was sort of a romantic in that way. And so my guess would be and I do believe he married the same person at least twice. So maybe we're really talking maybe this is two million to two to the six, depending on what that other person did with the money they got in the divorce whilst they were divorced from Larry King before remarrying him.

I mean, I guess I like like the lack of cynicism going into a relationship and what you say is good up to a point. But like by number four, aren't you thinking like maybe we should just get an apartment together?

My guess would be, I mean, yes, that would be most people would look at that and say that's the logical that's the logical thing to say. But here's the downside. And this is something I've legitimately contemplated in my own life as a person who's approaching Elizabeth Taylor numbers in the marriage department. It's kind of unfair to the person who you may be in a relationship with eventually to be like, no, no wedding for me. I mean it's not unfair they can agree or not agree to that but like it may have also been a situation where on the fifth time or the sixth time for Larry the person who he was engaged to or the person who he was with said yeah I'd like to be married and it's not my fault that you have been married and divorced four times that means I don't get to have a wedding if that's something that they were interested in.

No, that's a really good point. And again, not completely unlike the condiment situation. I'm arguing from the outside here because I'm somebody who's in a 20 year relationship, but have, you know, I've never been married. So and that's not that's not, you know, kind of normal societal behavior. But I would say that maybe by the fourth one, you're right. If somebody really, really wants a wedding and that's a huge part of the relationship and you're like, I don't want to lose this person. So I will capitulate on this. Like, fine, everybody's negotiating their own lives and their own relationships. But, you know, if I were in a Larry King situation where I'm in serious, serious relationship.

Number four, and maybe it's getting about that time that I would usually propose. I might think to myself. Or I might even say to my partner, I'm not reluctant to marry you because I'm worried about the strength of our relationship or about how much I love you. But given my past record, I am starting to think that maybe the institution of marriage is adding a lot of pressure. And that is maybe one of the factors in my failed relationships in the past. And because I love you so much and because I really do want to spend the rest of my life with you, I'm wondering if maybe we can try this other route of maybe not entering into the official institution of marriage. Let's just try that out and let's see where we are in five years.

I mean, that's a very compelling argument and it's well put. And I could see, you know, somebody saying, OK, well, this person is worth it to me to take this other route of we're not being married. and then there's also just people that just like being married yeah like larry king i think probably i'm just going to psychoanalyze him and by him i mean me and by him i mean both of us probably i think if you're somebody that deals with a certain weird level of not being totally okay in the world if you can't define yourself by some external things saying like my wife or my husband that provides some anchor in your mind there's something nice about the ring of that you know what I mean the ring like so to speak that looks like something probably for somebody like Larry King and even like me of saying my wife there's something that just feels rooted or rooting about that like okay now there's this this this is just something and I mean I've always described myself as a super possessor anyway so maybe Larry King had some of the same thing going on where he just liked because of whatever his wiring was he liked having a wife and in fact he and his the his his I guess widow because they weren't all the way divorced they had been sort of in this like we're getting divorced but maybe we're going to get back together we don't live together but whatever they had been in this very undefined state for years and my guess would be it was because Larry because both of them were like we don't want to be married but we also don't really want to not be married to each other or something who knows but I could just see a world in which Larry King really enjoyed being married and also hey by the way so what he only had two million when he passed away well that's fine you know yeah he didn't die a pauper he didn't die a pauper and you know two million bucks uh he he coasted in on relative fumes which is really the way you want to do it yeah right exactly fumes for being larry king right right right yeah um the perseverance landed successfully yesterday i know everybody already knows that but there was a moment, Andrew, that is seared into my brain. And I almost think there's a chance I might get emotional talking about it, which is crazy if we're talking about a Mars mission. But they had this live camera on the folks at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Lab, which was working obviously with NASA to do this operation. And there's just this room full of people that had all worked presumably on you know different critical parts of the mission it's that sort of mission control thing we all know about and they're all masked up and there's this moment when the rover indicates to them that it has landed successfully and everyone's high-fiving and there's just this one woman and i don't know what her job was or what her job is she didn't seem to i i was wondering if she was going to become viral who i just saw subtly wiping away tears and it was so cool and it was just like

just thinking about the amount of work that this one person in this project had put in and like just how much of her own i don't know kind of um just how much emotion was tied up and it wasn't like she wasn't being showy about it she was trying to low-key it actually like nobody even i might be the only person except for her who knew this even happened because she just kind of turned away she had high-fived one of her colleagues and she kind of turned away and just right above her mask i saw her just wipe tears away

If you zoom in on her computer, and I'm not trying to be cynical here or take away the moment, but if you zoom in, is there any chance she was looking at her GameStop stock?

I mean, I can't rule that out because of the angle of the camera. Okay, all right. But no, it was just a really beautiful moment. And, of course, it was very cool that this thing landed. There is a tweet that was put out by – well, I'm following the rover. And I don't know if this started with the rover and then this person is retweeting it. but there was a tweet that I saw. I haven't actually listened to it yet. Now, you have been complaining that my audio has problems. I do not want to get sidelined with that, but the only thing that's confusing about this bad cable theory is why would some of the drops I play be fine and some not be fine? I can't figure that out either. It's so strange. So I'm going to play this, but if it sounds crummy, maybe we can play it from your computer, Andrew. This is...

26 seconds of the Perseverance rover on Mars. So obviously it's a video feed, but this is also the audio from Mars. This is what it sounds like. isn't that crazy yeah i think some of that static actually is because just it's the microphone on the rover coming back however many millions of miles it is but just that like i don't know the eeriness of that sound and yet just kind of i don't know if it's wind martian wind or just like But just that noise, I was also thinking yesterday as I was watching all of these kind of computer recreations of the thing landing, I don't I don't think there's any indication that there's like intelligent life on Mars. But I was just like, what if you were just a Martian and you looked up like and that thing just happened? You would just be like WTF, you know, as if it's like we, you know, many humans are sitting around waiting for something like that to come from a different galaxy. like something like that I just I kind of was like can you imagine that happening on earth because it happened on another planet it was just us doing it and what if the alien or the

Martian in this case is just like oh god more drones we have too many drones go back to California I don't well you're gonna be ordering your burritos and your lattes by drone do you have any idea how loud those things are uh speaking of the microphone really quickly uh I just wanted to shout out a little bit of public radio humor that I saw online that really spoke to my previous experiences i don't know if you saw this but casey martin who's a reporter and producer over at kow tweeted out after like seeing that um somebody had tweeted for the first time ever there are now microphones on the surface of mars and casey martin tweeted don't forget to get that room tone which is a very um public radio thing you whenever you go into an interview situation or any kind of recording you're supposed to record like 30 seconds of just ambient sound for the editing later which It's something that I just had not had to think about for quite some time.

That is the most awkward 30 seconds you will ever spend in your life is getting the room tone with the – we had to do it when I was doing the Brent Musburger interview the other day. Because anytime you're somewhere where there's any amount of noise, and the reason for that is because later on, if you're editing the piece and there's the room that someone's being interviewed was noisy, you can kind of ease the listener in and out of that noise by having some of it start a little before you're in that piece of tape, and then it goes on a little bit after and fades out. And it does a trick to your ears where it's not so jarring. But, man, that moment of, like, okay, 30 seconds of room tone. And then everyone just sits still. And then you're just staring at this other person. Yes. This is the longest 30 seconds of your life.

Yes. And you have to make eye contact the whole time. Otherwise, the room tone won't be good. You have to just, like, lock eyes and try not to blink. Yep.

Ted Cruz is back from Cancun. Oh.

Do you have a nice time?

I think he had an okay time. That story was Other than the Perseverance Rover yesterday The other big story was the Ted Cruz thing And honestly they both gave me extreme joy For different reasons Seeing him get What I feel like was at least some amount of his comeuppance Was just delightful What I loved My personal politics are Anti-Ted Cruz Or as our friend Chris Hayes Pointed out last night on his show A quote from Al Franken Who he also had on as a guest Al Franken at one time said I like Ted Cruz more than Most of my colleagues and I hate Ted Cruz Which is a pretty great Line like he's just a generally Despised person I think outside of Just barely enough people in his In the state of Texas who got him elected Over Beto O'Rourke last time but anyway He just seems like a very unlikable person And even amongst a lot of politicians who I find to be unlikable, he's kind of extra unlikable. And the idea, me thinking of him waking up in Cancun yesterday morning and realizing just how badly he had messed up from a PR standpoint and then thinking about him having to go back to the airport where they were in Cancun, where there were reporters waiting for him. And then, I mean, flying is not that fun no matter what, but imagine just the pit in his stomach and then getting on the return flight home. And then, I mean, I just love that he had to go through that experience because I think he is a.

bad person at his core and i like to know when he is feeling emotional discomfort yeah that flight

that flight home must have been just the worst and then like getting on and all the footage of him walking through both airports on the return trip right like just knowing that everybody's looking at you he's wearing his big um texas flag face mask um yeah very very uncomfortable time for that oh and i know i was gonna say my second thought i could you tell i was leading up to something And then I forgot it and now I'm back I was just going to say like his first lie Just it gave me the bad Feeling in my stomach like being a kid Like I know that lie so well I'm somebody who Maybe because I'm just a really good person And what some people like to describe as a hero But also just because I've constructed My life in a way where I'm not Super responsible to a lot of people But I don't lie a lot In my life as a kid it seemed like Lying was just a matter of survival i just felt like i was always lying about something i always had something that i was keeping from my parents often something school related that i had to get signed bad bad grades homework i didn't do note from school because i got into some kind of trouble there was always something you're always your first instinct is always just to lie a flat-footed lie that will

not stand up under scrutiny but it's just knee-jerk and also will not be allowed to join the army What is that? Oh, flat feet was commonly A way that people were not allowed to do military

Absolutely So anyway, just like his first lie of saying Well, I was just being a good dad I was just trying to escort my daughters on their trip And I'm coming back the next day While he's, you know, dragging a bag A steamer trunk Exactly Somebody's like, quite an overnight bag, Senator It was just such a shit lie And then he had to, like, think on the entire flight home about, like, not only does he have to explain everything, but now he has to sort of explain away the lie. And, like, it just – the whole thing gave me that feeling. I felt like I was in fourth grade again and I was in trouble.

I liked knowing how stressed out he was, and I hope still is. I wonder, and I don't – you know, I'm not – I'm terrible at predicting what will happen politically. but I wonder if this actually I mean he barely beat Beto last time and this is the kind of thing they were even talking about it on Fox News like this is the kind of thing that if I were a Texan even if I was a conservative Texan it would it's just such a bad look if it even moves the needle by a hundred thousand votes that could be the difference of him getting re-elected or not so I also like knowing that he is because he just exists to try and I'm mostly paraphrasing paraphrasing chris here but i mean a person like uh like ted cruz he doesn't have any real policy ideas he approaches his job as a u.s senator as just basically trying to own the libs and trying to you know make brash statements and get attention it's not something where he's thinking how do i actually take care of my constituents in texas like oh my gosh it sucks for everyone here Who do I get on the phone with? How do I get more aid deployed to Texas? How do I fix this as one of two people that's tasked with representing the state at the federal level, I mean in the Senate anyway? That's just not the way his brain works. And so knowing that all he wants to do is at a minimum to be reelected as a senator and ideally to be elected as president, that's really his ultimate goal, to know that that must feel like it's crashing down for him today, I love it. I mean, honestly, put it in my veins. It just feels real good to me. Also, I like that he knows that his friends or maybe mostly the friends of his wife of his wife also don't give a shit about him because they immediately threw him under the bus to the New York Times.

I did like that before we get into the text, though, because that is the best part of the story. Can I just respond to what you just said? Because here's the thing I can't get my head around. And, like, I will admit that you and Chris Hayes, to a lesser degree, know more about politics than I do. But he's coming along nicely, though. But in the pace of the news cycle of today, I just find it hard to believe that this thing will be more than a blip the next time he's running for reelection for his seat. And certainly 2024, which I believe would be the next year. I can't remember exactly when he's up. I think 2023 I just feel like we know I mean remember we were make four months past the first the first impeachment of Trump and I reminded you on a show one time like remember the impeachment you're just like oh my god like I mean so much happened I mean that was a specific four years but I just think like really like the next time this guy's up for re-election this is what's

going to sink him I think the nature of this misstep is different so the the first impeachment of Trump is a phone. call with ukraine and we never heard the phone call it's can be spun as as as you know no no no the president was it was a it was a sort of somewhat hard idea i mean not for i think people with five brain cells but that was an event that happened in a closed room that we didn't have access to and so then there's a way to minimize it and spin it the pictures of ted cruz with his suitcase in the airport admittedly by his own admission on the days when texans were suffering to me the optics of that will play very well in attack ads in three years okay maybe just just to

be very clear though because and this is my fault i wasn't being clear i wasn't trying to compare the sins i was just using the impeachment as an example of how only a couple of months after it happened it was a news event that seemed years prior i was i was trying to comment not on like the the you know how both of the i wasn't trying to compare apples to apples the two sins i was just saying that like things move so quickly and we feel like there are lifetimes between news stories that like then again you know rick perry really has disappeared after he forgot the third the third thing he wants to eliminate from government so so who knows but i just think that i mean i i honestly think that something even maybe more damaging could even happen to cruz before that or or people will just forget about this i don't know i agree i don't i agree

with you in that i don't think that this is the texans are going to carry this in their heart for the next three years and every day think about it i think you're absolutely right that 2500 things will happen between now and then but what i my guess would be with again no formal uh you know training or education in this area my guess would be that it's the kind of thing it's just it just plays so well as a political ad that even if there have been 2500 other events when the election comes back up and you show hashtag fly in ted leaving the state of texas while texans suffered i mean you just couldn't have more dereliction of duty and my guess would be a bunch of people will be reminded of it when it's time to vote and maybe if enough of those people are reminded of it um they'll be like yeah no thanks like i just think it's one of those things that when it it's just you you kind of couldn't do a worse thing to your it's not even like he went back to dc and voted on some esoteric piece of legislation that didn't help texas or whatever i mean it's just i think it's such a bad move that it's going to hurt him is my hope anyway Who knows? But I'll tell you what's hurting is his relationship with his friends or at least the people that his wife texted about we go into Cancun because his wife, Heidi, apparently sent out a text to some friends saying anybody want to go to Cancun? It's only $300 a night at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun, and it's very safe, and it would be fun. Let's do it. It would appear no one on the text chain took her up on it, but somebody definitely sent it into the New York Times, and then somebody else corroborated it so they know these texts are legit. So at least two people that were on that text chain that the that the Cruz family thought were their friends sold them out to the New York Times over these texts, which I wonder if that's not the most painful part of this whole thing for the cruises.

Now, you said something to me before the show that I think it's OK to repeat here. If not, I will legitimately cut it out. But we're just talking about like the kind of invasiveness of this. Right. Obviously, from a journalistic standpoint, good on the journalist for getting these. I mean, you need people to speak off the record and leak things and what have you. And that's how good journalism is often done. I think, though, for a lot of people, they're reading this and just thinking, oh, shoe on the other foot, though. This is chilling. And they're just like thinking about things, maybe just snarky things that they've tweeted or texted amongst friends in the past. And you said before the show, this will just be one long beep if you don't mean to say it. You said that somebody could hold a gun to your head and you would never leak a text message between you and I to The New York Times. Yeah. Do you stand by that on the record? Absolutely. Now, but here's my question. So number one, thank you. And number two, I'm sorry for all the things I have leaked to the New York Times or tried to. They seem very uninterested in your hot takes on the Mariners. But for some reason. But is there anybody in your – is there anybody who has your number? So you wouldn't even have to initiate this. But is there anybody who has your number and feels close enough to you that they could text something to you But you don't hold them in as high a regard as you hold me that you would leak it because I can I think there are people in my life, people that I've worked with before who would maybe text me something. And then if it becomes a new story and I find it onerous, I would send it to The Seattle Times, I think.

if it was a legitimate news purpose, not just to throw somebody under the bus, but if it, I mean, there are people in my life. You would do that to Nick Jarin. I have done it to Nick Jarin. Again, nobody interested in his takes on the Lakers for some reason or tennis shoes. That's not true. Everybody loves hearing him talk about tennis shoes. But yeah, so I don't know.

There are those people. I mean, my take on this isn't that I'm, yeah, I'm not disappointed in the people who who sold them out and i guess you know what even though i said andrew that i would never share our texts with the new york times i guess if you became a senator who shut down the government for no reason and actively worked to disenfranchise people and uh make the world a worse place if somehow that happened to you and we were still texting maybe then it would be fair game in my mind yeah yeah caveat on that statement i made to you if you do become a u.s senator and do all those things my commitment to not sharing our text with the new york times is officially revoked

i am thinking about running for senate in my new home state of texas by the way um you could win right now running in the people's party um i uh yeah i mean i i guess the reason i was i caveated so much was hesitant is because i mean i think that's where some people are right now they're thinking like yeah but there are certain people that i let my guard down around and i don't say anything terrible you know and again like these aren't text messages where uh ted cruz's wife is saying like just you know using epithets and saying just terrible terrible things it's just like what her plans are and it exposes a a disconnectedness from the issue at hand and a bouginess and all of these things um and i just think though that some people are kind of like oof wow and they're just thinking about their text messages and i wouldn't want somebody to think that they couldn't trust me you know but on the other hand it really has to do with what your relationship with that person is and how you regard them and sometimes people regard people different ways like i think that's what we've learned here i think she thinks she had a

relationship with these people that she did not in fact she at one point in the text does something kind of nice which is she says look our gas is still working so if anybody wants to come over to our house and like boil water because they're under a boil water order in much of texas she's offering their home now their home is vacant because they're in cancun or as our friend snacks the bunny wrote on twitter just because you can coon doesn't mean you should coon literally my favorite tweet yes the best joke around this that's been made in my opinion um but you know So obviously these are not just this isn't like the, you know, everybody on next door. This isn't like the, you know, I don't know, the like the soccer parents like list serve because she's inviting whoever's on this text into her home to boil water if need be. That's that's a level of closeness that's pretty close to be like, hey, come on over. Use if you're not going to come to Cancun, come over, use our house, do what you need to do. Those are people that you must consider to be pretty much inside your circle.

Yeah, and also, and maybe I'm filling in blanks here, as I often do, and maybe it's inaccurate, but I thought I was reading, like, the word neighbors, so I got the impression that, like, if you live, you know, in a wealthy area, and then these are the people around you, and you feel comfortable saying, hey, you know, come to this resort with us, like, you get the impression that, you know, there is a bit of a closeness here, or at least that these are, you know, she wasn't, like you said, just blasting this out to everybody on nextdoor.com. So, yeah, there's some familiarity there, certainly. Also, the way it was portrayed in the Times, I sort of felt maybe this, again, was the way the writer was portraying it. But it was kind of like almost an aside, like, oh, yeah, and I guess if you want to boil water, you can come here. But, like, for real, let's go to Cancun.

I do think $309 a night for the Ritz-Carlton is a pretty screaming deal. Yeah, I know. I thought that. I was like, man.

It's too rich for my blood, but also, like, pretty, you know, but, you know, that's not bad for that. But is it too rich for your blood? Ooh, it is. I'm going to write that down. Maybe a possible show title. I don't know. Yeah, I need something. Yeah.

If we're going to go in the opposite direction of Ted Cruz's behavior, we need only look to Mattress Mac. Jim Mattress Mac McIngvale, who owns Gallery Furniture. I found out about Gallery Furniture because they sponsored a bowl one time. There was the galleryfurniture.com bowl. And I remember that was the beginning of like – because when I was growing up, it seemed like the bowls, the college football bowls were like the Orange Bowl, the Sugar Bowl, the Rose Bowl. And then at some point, they started becoming the Poulon Weed Eater Bowl, the GalleryFurniture.com Bowl, the TaxSlayer.biz Bowl, just like the names got – they felt sort of less – more respectable to me and more just whatever. So that was how I knew there was something called gallery furniture. Well, it turns out this guy, Jim McIngvale, has now for the last, since Hurricane Katrina actually, has been opening up his, he owns this successful and I assume pretty large chain of furniture stores in Houston. And he has been opening his furniture stores to people who don't have power. And he puts it out on social and he's like, anybody that needs to come sleep on the beds sit in the recliners we're gonna bring some food in just come down and get warm and be safe and this is just such an obvious amazing thing like it's obvious because like oh yeah you what happens when you go in a furniture store you sit in the chair to test it you you sleep on the bed or you pretend sleep on the bed which is very awkward in a normal times but like what this guy has is basically the interior of 50 houses in this store and he still has power like it's a great solution or at least it's helping with the problem and again it's the opposite of what Ted Cruz was doing listen I don't know if Jim Mattress Mac McIngvale and I share a lot in common uh as far as our worldview I mean a story that he told to the um Washington Post by the Kathy Free wrote a great piece about this in the Washington Post was that he was driving to church uh this was years ago and he saw it was another cold snap in Texas and he saw the police basically covering up somebody with a sheet who was unhoused and who had passed away in the cold and he just had this moment of and he said he was on his way to church and he's had this moment of being like there's got to be something that can be done that's when he started doing this and uh and so since then when it gets bad out there he opens up all of his gallery furniture stores and people come and hang out which i just think is an amazing and kind of beautiful thing yeah me too

i love that it's and it's so against like the i'm thinking of all these negative stories and i want to turn this negative this positive story negative but like so many other cities I've been reading about you know their reactions to pandemic and especially the unhoused during the pandemic and like there is a I'm forgetting I'm forgetting which hotel it is but there's a big fancy hotel in downtown Cleveland that was built I believe in the past decade or so in fact Veves and I stayed there for my friend's wedding a few years back and it was nice um and also very affordable because it's cleveland and the thing about cleveland is they don't have a downtown core it's actually a bummer because cleveland has a cool yes gritty but also like scenic um and an old school midwest downtown but like on weekends it just clears out and it's a real real bummer it's kind of like a ghost town the last time i was there on a sunday it was just like like a tumbleweeds were blowing through in the afternoon and so cleveland's always trying to figure out ways to like kind of reinvigorate its downtown and so um i don't want to google and talk at the same time but in the past i don't know decade or two they uh built this big hotel that's part of a hotel chain it's very nice and supposed to be part of the core but it was built with taxpayer dollars like that was the agreement like the structure of it was i mean that this was a public private partnership because the hotel chain needed some investment from the city it's not unlike a um a stadium deal in a certain way right but the rules are just a downtown hilton that's owned by cuyahoga county i believe so do a news search on that and see if i'm right about what i'm about to say because i read this appalling story the other day that now that hotel is is struggling so bad and failing during this uh this covid shutdown that the city has to spend funds to bail it out as a branch and it's apparently the headline i saw from the cleveland scene was like they're spending more money on this than the actual other pandemic relief efforts and the city can't even look at the hotel's books because that's part of the that's proprietary so like it's just one of those situations i don't know how i ended up on this story from this beautiful story that you just told um but it's just like and and all of this is to say also one of the reasons they're failing of course is because they you know people aren't traveling and so they have all these empty rooms maybe we could house some people in those rooms temporarily i I know that that's a complicated thing. I know that you would have to make sure you have a certain kind of insurance and that it's not super easy. But this is a company that could do that. They could open up those rooms that were built with taxpayer money and help bring some people inside from the Cleveland winter during the pandemic. But that is not on the books.

Yeah. Cuyahoga County intends to pay at least $7.9 million to subsidize debt payments and property taxes for the taxpayer-financed Hilton Cleveland downtown, where revenue and occupancy plummeted due to the pandemic. Yeah, not to oversimplify on a story that I didn't know existed until 45 seconds ago, but it would seem that if Cuyahoga County is going to be footing $7.9 million of the bill, some Cuyahoga County residents and citizens who are unhoused should.

be able to have some warmth in the winter during a pandemic in the place that their city and county

is paying for. You'd think. So anyway, that's kind of the opposite. I'm sorry to take a nice story and make it. I mean, and again, there are complications. There's a little and I don't I'm not pointing fingers in this case or shouting malfeasance, but there is a block of buildings very near where I live. In fact, it's the same block that my local bar Teddy's is in. And then around the corner same block there's another uh bar called the atlantic crossing which i like a lot kind of a soccer pubby kind of place good burgers and wings and but there's also a bunch of empty storefronts in there because they're going to be tearing it down this right where they're um it's kind of right next to where they're building a a light rail station and so that's all going to come down and be redeveloped into something kind of you know nicer and more moneyed and that's fine i mean that's it's a bummer but i mean that's the way things work but But since we've lived here, which has been about three years, you know, a big corner chunk of that building has been completely empty. And it also has these big glass windows so you can look in there. It used to be something like a shoe store. You might even remember it from your youth. Can you picture the corner I'm talking about, Luke? It's a Roosevelt and what exactly? So Roosevelt and 65th, like across the street from the burger place. It's like this huge storefront. And the lights are always on inside for safety purposes And it's got huge windows So when you're walking by at night, which we do a lot Especially during the normal times when we're going to Teddy's a lot at night You would leave and you just see this huge, open, well-lit area Inside that has been empty since we've moved in here for at least three years And there's almost always somebody sleeping outside of it And there's just so much irony there, right? Like, I don't know if irony is the right word But it's just like, oh, if only And again, I have no idea who owns this or, you know, there's if it's empty, you're not paying certain insurance on it. You can't just like open up, I'm sure, a de facto homeless shelter like on your own without any consideration. So, again, I'm not trying to point fingers, but it's just so effed that we live in this world where there's constantly somebody sleeping on the ground in the rain right outside this big empty building where that person could just sleep at least covered and on a piece of carpet.

it yeah i mean it is this is i'm not saying anything at all that is helpful here but living in portland where there is there are so many people like i'm looking out this window and i can count 20 tents there's so many people who are unhoused in portland and i think it is a very complicated issue because i do not think it is always necessarily just a capacity thing in other words i don't think it's that there are not beds sometimes um and i wonder if you could build i was saying this somebody the other day in portland i was like can't we just all put however much tax money we need to put in i was saying that's my sister and josh like can't they just tax us more and use that money there's a lot of people that live in portland there's a lot of people with money in portland and build two skyscrapers that have enough rooms figure out how many people are unhoused in portland and then build that number of rooms because i don't think it's like a hundred thousand people it's probably like 10 000 people figure out how you build 10 000 rooms and then create space for these people but i don't even know if that would solve the problem because i think there are so many complexities to it there are some people that don't want to come inside for various reasons um you know they're obviously shelters themselves have a lot of challenges at times with people who are there etc it's just it's i'm like in this city where because i didn't live in downtown uh you know seattle very recently and even where we lived in bellingham it's kind of a little bit more out in the residential area so this is the first time in a long time that i've lived in an area where there's just so many people that are experiencing homelessness so it's on my mind a lot and yet i i if if somebody said to me write a check for five thousand dollars everybody in portland has to write a check you know who can afford it for five thousand dollars and we'll fix this i would do it in a heartbeat i think most people would but i don't i i don't know enough

about the subject to know if that would actually be the fix yeah i listen there's so much i want to say here but i sort of don't trust myself and i also don't think that maybe this is the best forum for it but i will say that i have been following something i've become very intrigued i'm not really involved with them but i've sat in on a couple of meetings of this organization in seattle called the third door coalition and they are an interesting combination of business leaders and homeless advocates and you always read that and you're like oh okay whatever but like when the businesses are involved i never like fully trust it um but i've been sat in a few meetings they're like no really we were just at opposite ends of this for a long time and we were fighting and we have some like real homeless advocates on this coalition as well and they are pushing for um you know permanent housing Thank you.

solutions. And they have all kinds of research and studies that says that exact thing that you're talking about, Luke, like, you know, ending chronic homelessness by giving people a permanent place to live first really does solve the problem. Because once you have the place where you can come home, lock a door, take a shower, other things can fall into place. And it's never completely simple. Obviously, there's a lot of mental illness and other things that go along. And sometimes it's hard to convince people to to take this path but there are so many people who would take this path and there are so many um kind of rumors and untruths about the fact that people want to be homeless and the thing is it takes a huge financial commitment up front for a city to buy into this and there's so much mistrust especially here in seattle about just you know a lot of people just see us throwing more and more and more money at the problem but with a bunch of like kind of half solutions so now you don't have the trust of the taxpayers that like a huge pull like this would do like a moonshot yeah exactly and also this mistrust of like the homeless themselves they equate it with crime and undeservingness and all of these terrible these terrible things um but man if anybody's really interested in this like for real and i'm sorry to suddenly become an advocate here but i'm just so impressed with them and also i'm just like learning about this stuff and it's blowing my mind and they're called the third door coalition check it out you know obviously the

financial model is different and in terms of what the at least alleged like tax revenue and stuff is but it's like if a city can build a fucking baseball stadium that costs how i mean now the cost of a sports complex is a billion dollars probably if you if a city can like what i feel like is in portland you know and there's talk about trying to bring major league baseball here it's like if you were going to build i feel like if you if you surveyed folks in portland you said For the cost of a baseball stadium, we can house 95% of the people who are currently homeless in Portland and living on the streets. I don't know anybody that wouldn't take that deal. Again, you know, those stadiums allegedly kick off a lot of revenue in other ways. That wouldn't be the case for something like this. But it's just like we do that. We do stuff like that for baseball and football and basketball, like build a tremendous facility. And it's like if you could build a tremendous facility in a city, that would also mean that there are far, far, far fewer people who are having to live on the streets. I feel I mean, I don't know, but I feel like maybe I'm just new to this in Portland. And so I'm particularly touched by it and also very like wanting to know what the solution is. But it just it seems like maybe that's the way you frame it.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Except then, of course, the big money comes in with things like stadiums and they say, well, this is how we're going to benefit you. We're going to profit off of this and you're going to share in those profits and we're going to, you know, transform the, you know, I don't know what the deal is in Portland, but we're going to transform this part of town by doing it. So it's like an investment and a payoff as opposed to what people would see as just like pure charity. Like nobody's going to be getting rich off of, you know, permanent housing first.

Yeah.

Well, I think we've solved that crisis here. Again, can I just say welcome, Tony Kornheiser fans. No joke, by the way. And it was nice having you here. And it was nice having you here. We just got followed by another person who describes himself as a little in his bio. So, I mean, something's happening. Something is happening. Nobody tell Tony that we're picking off his listeners. He doesn't need that kind of competition from us. And also, I'm a little bit disappointed in Twitter because apparently the poll is broken. And the numbers that are coming in don't scan with my understanding of the world. So I'm going to work on this solution.

Okay.

All right. Before we get out of here for the week, a little music for your weekend. Andrew, would you like to start things off? I would, Luke. Would you believe me if I told you I'm going to make this really complicated? I almost warned you that I was going to do this before the show, but I was scared you were going to say no. So I'm in one of those better to ask.

You're going to sing a song.

Better to ask forgiveness than permission situations. I told you that I got a record player I didn't get when I hooked up my record player the other day because I got a new record and I want it, but it is across the room from me, but it is plugged into my board. So I thought I'm going to open up another microphone in here. I'm going to walk across the room and I'm going to play a song off of my record player. What do you think of that?

I love it. Are you kidding me? This is great. We're finally shaking it up a little bit on this show. That's right. I'll tell you, too, as you're walking over there, that my – Addie is coming down to visit this weekend, which I'm very excited about, for sort of a birthday weekend. And then my mom, who basically almost lives in Portland, and my mom and dad are coming down, and my mom asked me, oh, did you bring your record player down from Bellingham? And I said, no, that's an odd question. She wouldn't tell me why she asked. There's 100% chance that she has picked up a random record for me that is part of – some kind of belated Christmas or birthday gift that I will not have the ability to play, but I'll be very excited to report on what the record is on Monday, Andrew.

Ooh, I'm excited. By the way, I put on a different pair of headphones. All of my headphones sound drastically different. This is going to get in my head, and I'm going to be obsessed with this issue for the rest. This is what Genevieve listens to when she's on. Is it louder? Is it quieter? It's bassier.

It's bass for your face. Uh-huh. not an eight track kicking it good to the wood so the people can react etc etc i was about 40 right what is that song uh bass in your face not an eight track that's uh public enemy oh okay right

right right um okay here's the deal you can still hear me right i'm on a different microphone now across the room so the record that i'm picking here is a supremes record oh and it's called a bit of liverpool and this is the supremes covering a bunch of british invasion bands mostly the beatles there's some like animal songs on here too but the last track on side one is the beatles song you've really got a hold on me so i'm gonna that's a beatles song yeah i think it was a beatles original i could be wrong about that though i'm googling okay please hold and then tell me when I can literally drop the needle, which is a phrase we use on the show a lot, but I never actually do it.

I think it's, let's see, it's very hard to know because it's been covered a bunch of times and that's what they're trying to, okay, written by Smokey Robinson. Really? Nice. Yeah, right? You really got a hold on me. Is this the one? That's the song. I didn't know that. I love you and all I want you to do is just hold me, hold me.

Okay. Now, that's interesting that the Supremes, a Motown band, would do that on a little bit of Liverpool. That's a song that started here, went over there, and now they're including it on their album. But it really is a nice song. I'm excited to hear this. All right. Now, will I get it right in the groove is the question. It's more of a groove. It's more of a groove. Oh, I love it.

I don't like you, but I love you Seems that I'm always thinking of you Oh, you treat me badly, I love you mad. You really got a hold on me. I don't want you, but I need you. Don't want to kiss you, but I need to do you. You do me wrong now, my love is strong now. You really got a hold on me. You really got a hold on me. You really got a hold on me.

All right, there you go, Luke. Our first record playing live on TBTL. Still, 12 years later, breaking down new barriers.

I love it it had just that Perfect amount of little record Crackle at the beginning Oh man that was perfect I also didn't Know they did that song So that I'll add that to the list That's a great version

Of that song yeah it's really nice and Yeah again I always especially because it was On this record which had a Liverpool thing I think it's weird that they

What are some of the other tracks Let me reach over here and grab this thing

Let's see so it starts with how do you do it how do you do what you do to me i can't play these i'm on the i'm back behind my computer yeah um world without love i don't know that house of the rising sun they do a version of that's the animals right um but isn't that also isn't house of the rising sun also based on a traditional i could be wrong okay it is hard days night um anyway a lot of beetle stuff i want

to hold your hand i want to hear that i want to hear like their their beetles covers uh at some point maybe if you know if you invite somebody over like invite me over to your house well can you bring your record player no no that's in bellingham um what do you think god i i am so curious about what this album is going to be because my mom you know buys let's just say interesting gifts and i don't know if she has a sense of what my music is or my musical taste is So it's either going to be spot on Like it'll be weirdly a thing that I was like Oh my gosh, I love this

would totally play this or it's going to be something that in a billion years i would never

have an interest in putting on a turntable could it be something from her youth like from philly that she came across or something from the bristol stomp oh yeah maybe we could do that song maybe

that'll be my well we just we just heard an old time song maybe next week we'll play the bristol

but like could it be like she found some birthday record of yours and your siblings or something

you know a lot of moms the answer would be probably with that i'm going off of my 44 years of experience i'd be surprised if it was something that we had a strong connection to historically but i will find out on uh this weekend and i will report back on monday um all right my uh song i was gonna recommend is from this uh as yet unreleased album from uh the band fruit bats the they've got an album they're still kicking around they're still kicking around uh what's the guy eric anderson i believe he's the guy in fruit bats he's actually been on live wire i think playing under his name not playing under fruit bats but this yeah this project uh continues this album is going to be coming out march 5th it's going to be called the pet parade but i thought this song, The Balcony, is kind of nice. Are you able to locate that there? Yep, I got it right here. I'm very

excited about this. Oh, cool. Okay, this is Fruit Bats. Alright, let's take a listen to this.

Once again the winter's gone but still chilling your veins They tore up the place to make way for a new doorway We're waiting for the warmth of spring to come To turn your world green Hopping soon to be Twisting along the open road Like a snake

But you're alone again As usual Out on the past How can I But soon the drought A couple things on this.

I think I said the wrong... I think I said Eric Anthony or something. His name is Eric Johnson. Eric D. Johnson is the main guy behind Fruit Bats. Also, what do you think of the song? Oh, I love it. I just dragged it over to my current playlist. Yeah, this is great. Now, I've heard one other song off of the album, which I really liked. I can't speak for the rest of it because it's not out. And I understand in reading one review that it does start with a seven-minute tone poem that I have yet to hear. So if March 5th you get the record and the first song is a seven-minute tone poem and you think, huh, maybe just stay with it. And maybe that's great, too. Maybe that's a great piece of work as well. But anyway, I certainly like the two songs that I have heard off of it. You're sure it's not a Tony, Tony, Tony poem? Mm-hmm. When you say to maybe one of the listeners, and by this I mean our new Heiser heads, if one of the new littles, if you're still listening, let's see, an hour and 19 minutes in, could you please – this is the initiation to being a TBT listener. You have to do some research for us. When I hear the name Tony, Tony, Tone, I remember a story that I heard a DJ say when I was a kid. Have I brought this up on the show before?

No, but I like that you call him Tony, Tony, Tone, because that was always my instinct as a kid as well.

Right, because the last Tony is like with T-O-N-E or something. So Tony, Tony, Tony, I remember being a kid, and Tony, Tony, Tony's big song was It Feels Good, right? Yeah. It feels good. Yeah. And didn't they also do a cover of an Elvis song? If the rhythm feels good to you, baby, let me hear you say. Okay, I'll stop doing my Tony, Tony, Tony now. But anyway, I heard a DJ say that Tony, Tony, Tony recorded that song or a song nude. All of the Tonys were naked when they recorded the song. And it's just one of those weird things that I heard a DJ say when I was a kid and it just, you know, it burned into my brain. So if anyone ever brings up Tony, Tony, Tony, I think, oh, yeah, the guys that recorded that song naked. Now, is that even true? Did I misunderstand?

as a seven-year-old even what the dj was saying quite probably but that's what comes up in my

mind when you mentioned tony tony tony now i may have a little bit of a clue here okay do you want or do you want me to leave it up to the listeners to figure this out so i don't know if this is totally unrelated but when i type in tony tony tony nude i get um a lot of previous things that i've already searched for oddly um but i don't get anything related to that song but i do see They have a song called Lay Your Head on My Pillow, and it says that it's charted at number 31. It was promoted with a music video wherein the group appeared nude. They conceived it as their response to criticism of male artists for sexually objectifying women in music videos. Is there any chance that little lookals back in the day kind of heard this on the radio and kind of crossed wires over the years?

That would very likely be the case, right? Because what are the chances that this band did record a video where they were nude, and the one thing I know about them is that they record nude? This has to be the same thing that I just misinterpreted in my mind. Or maybe the DJ was speculating on if they were really nude in the video or not. Who knows? But that's got to be what the reference is. Okay. So Bulldog dodged littles. You don't have to do the research on this one, but there will be future assignments.

Now, this I have to tell you about this because I'm literally on this page right now. And if I'm going to be on this page right now, well, then I need to tell you about it because it has to be for work. Because I am on eBay and I am looking at a magazine, I'm looking at the cover of a Playgirl magazine from September of 1994, which apparently they are not on the cover of it. Somebody named Cheyenne, the ultimate Latin lover, is on the cover of it. but it does say that it has a Tony, Tony, Tony nude layout.

It says exclusive Tony, Tony, Tony in the raw. Yeah. Now, can I, I don't know how the audio quality is going to be. This is the song, Lay Your Head on My Pillow by Tony, Tony, Tony. I'm watching the video. They're pretty naked. Are they? I mean, you can't, it's artfully shot. So you can tell that they appear to be naked, but they're not, like, you know, full frontal, as it were. Somebody's carrying a flower pot. Exactly. God, that was in the perfect place. That's a huge cactus that woman is carrying. Why all the balloon animals? Did anybody order a French baguette? I got one French baguette here that I'm holding at waist level.

There you go.

I was going to say, I'm surprised it's only been viewed 5,500 times. It just sounds like a song I would have vibed with back in the day. But then there's the official Tony, Tony, Tony version that has 3.6 million views. I just happened to find myself a less watched version of the video. But just so you know, people are looking this video up, and they are watching it. People get it. It's an amazing video and an amazing song.

I don't know if Google is censoring my results, but I was just like, I'm going to go for it. Like, I'm already here, so I just typed in Tony, Tony, Tony, Playgirl. What's a toy girl? Yeah, and I just thought for sure I'd be able to see the spread, but I don't see any of the actual images from the magazine. Well, clearly, I have my work cut out for me this week, and I'll report back on Monday.

Figure out the headphone situation. Yep. and get us some Tony, Tony, Tony pics for Monday's show pic. I could just buy this magazine. Should I just buy a Playgirl from 1994 on eBay? I bet you the ads in there would be, I mean, I'll read any magazine just about from that era just to see the ads, you know? Yeah, let's see. It's $20, condition is good. Shipping is going to be another $9. Oh, you know where I bet you can find that magazine, though, is that weird store where you got your Jefferson Airplane record. I'm sure they have one flagpole from the 1990s.

It isn't this one. Exactly.

Our listener song suggestion comes from listener Scotty. Our pal Scotty with the Hotty Body, the world's biggest weedist fan. That's not even true. It's just he likes to do teenage dirtbag at karaoke. Dear, dear friend of the program for all these years. Scotty says 2020 was a nutso year, and one of the main things that got me through it was all the great music that was released. I can't think of a year in quite a while that had so many incredible albums released. He says Phoebe Bridger's Punisher being my favorite. I like that album a lot as well. The album that this song came off of was actually released in July, but I didn't hear about it until Spotify suggested it as a song that I might have missed near the end of.

the year and i have been obsessed with it ever since it's by the chicago three-piece band i'm gonna assume it's pronounced dead andrew d-e-h-d yeah the song is called loner now i will admit when i went to this song i recognized the album cover so the comedy tragedy mask and this is a band that certainly addy has played before uh at my house and i've been like oh what is this but i think the name d-e-h-d dead would always sort of keep me a little bit at arm's length you know i Don't go in for the macabre. But I listened to this song, and it's really, really good.

Yeah. I played the song off of this album, Did You Flood for You. Now, I haven't played this song, but I played, and I remember you liked it a lot. It's very much up our alley. I don't think I know this whole album, so I don't know if I know this song, Loner. But, yeah, definitely a general thumbs up from me. Yeah.

I like, again, not to make this about my take on the band's name, but I like the sound of this band so much, considering that the name of the band is definitely not something for me. So I'm going to listen to this whole album later, probably. But anyway, this is Scotty's suggestion. This is Loner from the band Dead. And that's going to bring us to the end of our broadcast week. So thank you so much, everyone, for spending the time with us. Hope you're doing okay, particularly if you're in an area that's been affected by the cold and all of the issues that are going on, particularly in Texas and other places. So thanks for sticking with us this week. We'll see you on Monday. Until then, enjoy your weekend. Try to stay safe. Try to take care of yourselves. Mask up. And please remember, no mountain too tall. And good luck to all.

We'll be right back.

Oh!

Play it, Rockwood Play for keeps I'm the right girl Play for me

I've had enough It's all the

Power out