Muse

Cross promotional spots for a monster truck rally to be read during non-stop rock blocks? No thanks, TJ. Never again.

Look, Z-Man, I know you're not happy about what happened back then, but I had no choice. Those traffic updates gave us critical mainstream support. And all we had to give up was one hour of non-stop rock. We never could have held on to that power rush hour. People just weren't ready for that much rock with so little talk. The 9 a.m. compromise allowed us to bring back Get the Lead Out Friday. In 96, the ratio of rock to talk was 3 to 1. Today, it's 5 to 1. And yes, someday, God willing, it will be infinity.

TBTL!

I suck without the internet, dude. It's like, I'm too real for it, you know? Sometimes people say that my head is too big for my body, and then I say, compared to what? If you had a favorite saying, what would it be? Life's the party, rock your body. You're so shy and small, and you're so loud and huge. I swear, every time this guy talks, all I hear is a turkey goblin.

You're both little troublemakers. You're both huge in Japan. You probably have a lot to talk about. Go!

Keep things light. Don't bring up your divorce. Alright, hello. Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Monday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. Intimate conversation, self-disclosure, and a little music thrown in, too. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. Brother, who are you? What are you doing? Coming to you from the Nest Broadcast Center high in the sky, above Portland, Oregon, where we're looking at a real nice Monday weather-wise. I'll tell you what's got me excited, looking at the weather app. Sunset, 7.17 p.m. Oh, ma, pa, it's just beautiful. As I wrote on Twitter.com yesterday, some people were complaining about losing an hour of sleep. I mean, it's not the best part of springing ahead, but it is so worth it in my mind for more daylight. And I said we should just spring forward one hour every Sunday until each day is 48 hours of uninterrupted, white-hot sunlight. I would vote for that. I'm pretty sure that's how that works, right? Here's how episode 3,379 in a collector's series works. Let the fun begin. We have some top stories. We talk about them. and a lot of the time we don't actually talk about them but we do something for roughly one to two hours and uh present it to you today on the list of possible top stories uh the beloved classical musician yo-yo ma was um in that kind of waiting period after you get your vaccine Where they have you sit there For about 15 minutes to make sure you don't have Any kind of medical issue And he Whipped out his cello and started playing This was in Pittsfield, Massachusetts At like a community college where he had just been Vaxxed And it's an interesting Well in the world of TVTL It's an interesting story because my My first thought was That's beautiful And then my second thought was alright Yo-Yo So we're really carrying a cello around like we get it. And then my third thought was I'm crying as I watch this. So we will get into that also. I didn't know this until very recently, but I guess in South Korea, television commercials, like during broadcast TV, at least during Korean dramas, TV commercials are effectively illegal. But what is allowed is product placement. So working products into the plots of these TV shows.

And you know who the company that spends the most money working its products into the plot of Korean, South Korean dramas would be none other than Subway.

Is it too early to get a fish sandwich?

And some of the ways that they have people interacting with Subway sandwiches is pretty fascinating. Also, there seems to be a strong kind of opinion that Subway sandwiches are better in South Korea. And in fact, there are people in this article that we'll be reading who have eaten Subway sandwiches in both the U.S. and South Korea. And they would testify to this. What is going on with Subway in South Korea? And then time permitting, we will dazzle you with some deets regarding the fact that today is the 84th anniversary of dance marathons being ruled illegal in the state of Washington.

It's literally illegal.

By the state led. legislature. 84 years ago, they sat down and they said, we have got to do something about these dance marathons. So we'll maybe get into that. If I were a betting man, which I kind of am, I would not bet on us getting to that dance story. But I took the time to

put this audio drop together. It's literally illegal. So I thought we'd at least preview

it. All right. We'll do all of that with the help of this young man, the longest running Cobra of the show. He may be best known for his drawings of the tall ships. He's looking to really make kind of a different impression this week, maybe, than in some of the past weeks. He's really trying to start things off on the right foot here on a Monday. He is Andrew. You dress for the podcast you want to host. Walsh. And he is joining me right now from the Roosevelt neighborhood of

Seattle, Washington. Good morning, my friend. Oh, dear. That's a, I don't know, unfortunate or possibly apt drop to use today because 99 out of 100 days when I am doing this show with you, Luke, I am wearing a collared shirt of some sort. It might not be a nice collared shirt, but it's a collared shirt button down. And today is the first day in a very, very, very long time where I didn't put on a collared shirt. I'm merely wearing a T-shirt and a hoodie, a zip-up hoodie, a Hanes brand green hoodie Over top of it which means Maybe we're not in for the or I'm not in For the best podcast hosting of my

Life here or it just means You're I guess what do you what podcast Would you be dressing for You mean I mean like what's Because you said I mean as you have said on the show Hundreds of times you dress for the podcast You want to host so you're dressing For the podcast you want to host so you've got a T-shirt and a hoodie on is that like maybe A skateboarding podcast yeah

Probably you know

something possibly sponsored by Red Bull

was it you it was one of our friends and if they listen to the show they're going to be mad that I'm giving you credit for their tweet but did you see somebody in our friend gang I think tweeted out a picture of current day Tony Hawk and just said I'm going to tell my kids this is Tony

Hawk that was our friend Aaron Roden

that was Roden okay good he was exactly the person who would be mad if I credited the joke to the wrong person I'm glad you knew that yeah I thought it might have been Roden congratulations Roden if you're listening

I had mixed feelings about that tweet though Because I have had occasion to meet Tony Hawk And it's uncanny because like Uncanny is the wrong word there But like I think We could just call Roden up Sometime and ask him but I think that the I think that the premise there is that Tony Hawk looks really old now But the weird Thing is that Tony Hawk Both seems very old but he's Actually very youthful and fit and with it for his age it's just that he got famous so young that it's you know what I mean like it's like if Tony Hawk just was like a tech entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and he was being interviewed on CNBC that you'd be like oh wow this is as far as like 55 year old guys go this guy's actually really keeping it together and then if you went out and did a skateboard trick you'd be like holy shit how is this guy doing this oh yeah I mean I think but because Tony Hawk because he's been in the public eye since he was like nine it's weird to see Tony Hawk as a 55 year old but I but it's almost like not Tony Hawk's fault yeah I don't think that was I

don't think that that was making fun of Tony Hawk I don't think that that is like a joke that gets run up the chain in a writer's room and and maybe on Saturday Night Live like to me it just seemed like kind of a funny thing because I mean right now Tony Hawk is I wouldn't have even known what he looked like five years ago I sort of feel like he is more powerful as as far as a wide-ranging pop figure now in 2021 than he was when he was younger i mean the guy is like somehow he's achieved like national treasure status do you see like who's the thing like he like i mean there's all kinds of amazing stories about him being just an incredibly gracious guy and still like you say like still like so agile and good and what didn't he dress up like larry david's somewhat recently and was like skateboarding around as larry david like i i think he's beloved and i don't think that that was like really kind of making fun i think it was my guess is it was like rodent's probably like me he just saw a photo of tony hawk and kind of said oh kind of look it's funny that this is tony hawk right now and tweeted that out you know like which right right i ticked my funny

bone a little bit the one of the things that tony hawk does that i think is pretty funny on twitter is he's just people are always and this is sort of i guess maybe to rodent's point a little bit there it seems pretty frequent that when he is buying something or checking into a hotel or making an airline reservation people comment on the fact that his name is tony hawk like the skateboarder but they never know it's him right because you know he's not 11 years old anymore and so it's like he'll all he'll tweet out these little events and it's what's nice about it is it's laced with a lot of bonhomie which was my experience ever so briefly meeting him we did wait wait in san diego and he was the guest and he was actually physically there Thank you. and so we were just like hanging out talking and he was like extremely nice and and down to earth and very much like in on the kind of weirdness that is his life you know like which is which is great like think about opposite Shatner vibes yes whatever that is um that's what Tony Hawk is is radiating and he told this story and he wasn't saying I don't he was not saying this to be braggy and I can't remember if it was on the show or if it was when we were like in the green room chatting i think it was on the show and it was definitely prompted like i want to preface this by saying he wasn't trying to flex but they were talking about the like phenomenon that is like tony hawk pro skater the video game and how he's something like his agent took him out to lunch and just said oh hey by the way they're releasing pro skater too so here's a check for 12 million dollars some kind of like bananas thing like that that he wasn't in on the negotiation didn't seem like he knew it was happening he wasn't banking on it it was just like the video game was really successful and they needed to relicense it or whatever and the agent was just like so here's this and i mean that was like you know that's being tony hawk i guess that that's why i'm wearing

the hoodie uh-huh that's what you and tony hawk are launching a skateboarding podcast i am gonna get into skateboarding because i have to and yeah we will have a skateboarding podcast to go along

with it but uh that's it i want my 12 million dollars i every day that i drive past or jog past that skate park that's underneath my apartment building i am more and more tempted to get out there with my skateboard not because i think i will be able to do any tricks but because it looks really fun to just it's so smooth it looks really like it would be fun to just kind of like very cautiously just skateboard around in like a circle you know what I mean like none no fanciness from me because that would probably lead to major injury but I am way too intimidated because it's a bunch of people that are really good at skateboarding I could go out there at two in the morning though I mean which maybe that's what I should do but it's it's kind of it's occurring

to me all the bad boy skaters and bad girl skaters I'm gonna be honest with you the bad boy skaters

also appear to be there during the day uh it's when i first moved here and was talking about that skate park and listeners were telling me the backstory on it which is pretty cool that it was built by skateboarding enthusiasts and the city was like that's cool that's a cool story and it is true and there's a lot of people there that are skateboarding there's a lot of people there who are just very much drunk and or openly using drugs at 11 in the morning like it's also kind of become this like there was a period of time where there were two cars both of which looked like they were something out of one of the more recent batman movies cars that were meant to convey that you were in a part of town that was very unsafe for you we're talking no wheels and the cars were burned andrew i don't know if somebody burned them on site or if they were burned somewhere else and brought to the skate park but there was two cars next to each other that were literally

on blocks and had been torched and you never know i mean depending on where you are you don't know if something really good happened or something bad happened because you know like i feel like i grew up in a car you know a college town where a couch would be set on fire possibly if a team won but also possibly if a team lost so who knows right so maybe like you know there was a i'm trying

to think of a national championship type event that could have occurred for the city of portland or again nothing's coming to mind you don't know they could be was a bad event they could be big

kent state golden flash fans and they heard that the golden flashes got a 360 spin and a slam dunk

pointer uh-huh sure that's oh that's actually probably what did happen um hey i was gonna ask you andrew you you were talking about your weekend when we were uh just kind of casually when we were getting our sound levels uh figured out but i i saw on instagram that you put together a little montage and you said pretty good weekend and what i wanted to do was scroll through and ask you what these are photos of uh so we can figure out how good your weekend was okay so first up there's a picture of a uh what i assume is a cocktail it looks very delicious and like maybe it's peach flavored or something or is that red bull were you getting an early start on your skateboarding

podcast what is this drink that's in photo number one that was a mistake of a drink um it looks

delicious doesn't it it does it looks refreshing like maybe it's peach flavored or something

yeah you're gonna hate this though um because what it was was so that was at the eagles we stopped by our our um air our eagles airy um and um genevieve was drinking a um what like a vodka soda i believe with a splash of of uh grapefruit juice which sounds good Yeah. But I already, I already.

had a drink or two and then i was like that sounds good but i want it sweeter so i had to make me the same thing with sprite but it was oh it was too much so that's a vodka sprite with a splash of grapefruit too sweet and also the the vodka that the bartender used was a flavored vodka of some sort so we brought out some sort of chemically taste it was it looks like i mean that that looks like the platonic ideal of a summer drink to me yes and um it does look very refreshing but between you and i why i don't know i it was not a good decision on my part i think that was half drunk

brain ordering what you did was what you did was a brown's bomb oh is he because we got a hawk bomb that camaro kev has to do which involves cool vodka and all this like weird you know blue flavoring and you got some flavored vodka um that you didn't really want okay uh picture number two a cool like a kind of red building almost looks like it's an old schoolhouse maybe from the turn of the century and then a window in the middle and it says sweet spot what was that oh that was

me walking down the street in um it's a beautiful weekend here man just so when did you get back

into portland by the way uh friday night and i also was uh able to enjoy well saturday was gorgeous Sunday was no bueno, but weather-wise. Yeah, Saturday was rough here, yeah. Saturday was really nice.

Yeah, Saturday was beautiful. So I was walking around Fremont, and that's probably like a chocolate shop or something. It's not far from Theo's Chocolates. Oh, okay. Is it Theo's Chocolates? Yeah, you know, it's a little... Is it in the chocolate district? Of Fremont, Seattle, yeah. So anyway, I just thought that that... I didn't go in there or anything. I just thought it was kind of a good photo. I had to stand on my tiptoes to take it, though. I like it.

It's a very nice photo. Then we've got a picture of a traffic cone. What I love about this picture is I think it's just a bit of an optical illusion, but it looks like the shadow of the traffic cone is actually the shadow of a street sign.

Yeah, I was a little bummed when I actually, after I posted that last night, I zoomed in. It's actually not quite as focused as I thought it was, so I'm a little bummed. But I did like it. Yeah, this was just me. That is on my street, not like a block or two from me. I was walking home. It was late at night, probably after the Eagles. Yeah, it was after the Eagles. And I remember feeling a little bit like I was putting myself in danger because some cars were coming behind me, but I had to stand in the street to take that photo. But everything's fine. But that's probably why it's slightly out of focus. That cone, if you kind of zoom in, it's not as sharp as it should be. But I do like it. Somehow that street sign shadow behind the cone plays with your brain.

Yeah, it definitely looks like that's the shadow of the traffic cone. Now, what about this Honda motor? That was actually what intrigued me the most out of the whole kind of series of photos. What is the – it's the inner workings of some sort of Honda device.

It's just a motorcycle that was on the street. I was walking – where was I? Oh, I was walking kind of in the Green Lake neighborhood not far from my house. And there was just a motorcycle on the street, and I just took a photo of it. I don't really like that very much. I had posting regret. Not that it's not –

Wait, are you bummed that I'm bringing it up here on the show?

No, I just, in going through the montage, so last night I just posted all of these and tried not to overthink it too much, but I did think that, like, that Honda photo, it seems to indicate that I was motorcycling or doing something, and it really has nothing to do with my life.

I thought you were maybe mowing a lawn is why I got excited.

It's just, it's truly, truly random, and also I think my posting regret might have to do with the fact that, like, yeah, it implies, especially with the tag, it was a good weekend, And it implies that I was doing something with a Honda. But instead, I was just walking down the street and I saw. It looks like it's an advertisement, too. I don't care for that one as much.

What about this sign that says trash? I think that was across from the motorcycle. You were really on a tear.

I was just walking down the street. I mean, you got a camera.

You got to use it. Absolutely. And then, of course, one of the more unsettling sites that we've all seen, which is a free toilet.

as in a toilet in the wild where was that at that is i bet you you know this stretch so um so our eagles area is up in um lake city and if you're coming down to the roosevelt neighborhood you just you can just follow roosevelt lake city way kind of turns into roosevelt but there's this one weird little stretch uh kind of i don't even know if this area of the road has a name like during the during the 100 feet where it transitions from lake city way into roosevelt there's a place where It's right by the Safeway It's kind of by the Safeway It's a little stretch of road where a bunch of campers Are parked, people are probably living in them And there's some old cars Kind of like you described, not burned out But kind of like in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie, the cars indicate That you're in the wrong part of town, as you say It's kind of like that kind of strip And there were actually a couple of toilets Out on the curb, but that was the one I liked the most

I wonder if that's the same stretch of road that I used to always find very interesting when we were driving home from church as as kids, because we would take Lake City Way all the way home from basically the Briar neighborhood, which is kind of near Lake Forest Park. We would take Lake City Way all the way home, and then I know that transition you're talking about, it's like a little residential street that's like a block that's in between. Like you said, it's the transition, and there was a woman living there, and I believe her name was Ruth Bell Thomas, who had – of course, I didn't really know what hoarding was when I was a kid. But she was the first house I'd ever seen Where somebody had Accumulated just Like a really really large amount of stuff In their yard and she was always painting these signs It would appear from the Outside that she was dealing with some stuff And we would go and I would walk For like 10 years Of my life every Sunday we would drive past that house And I would analyze it and then one day the Seattle PI wrote a piece about it

Yeah oh yeah The house you're talking about is a little bit further That is actually on Lake City Way. I know that place is still there.

Is it still covered in signs and stuff?

Yes, and wicker and bamboo and, like, I feel like tire. What do you – like, hubcaps is the word I'm looking for and, like, spikes. And it sort of looks like it's, like, a – it sort of looks like Colonel Kurtz might be hanging out in there. Like, it's some sort of a jungle refuge. Yes, I know that house you're talking about. That's a little bit further north than where this was taken. But, yeah.

Okay, so now that's been totally unhelpful to the listeners, but now I have a sense of where that toilet was, so that's good. And also, well, I guess I don't need to ask that question because it's obvious. I was going to say, why is it so upsetting when we see a toilet out of context? And it's like, well, for the obvious reasons, Burbs.

Well, also, though, as I was taking this photo, Genevieve did note that the toilet's in really good shape. I mean, for a street toilet, like, zoom in on that, baby. It's not bad. There's no cracks. There's no stains. It actually looks kind of nicer than maybe the toilet we use now.

No, it's definitely not a bad toilet. What I don't like is that there is toilet paper in the vicinity of the toilet, indicating recent usage. Oh, I hadn't noticed that. If you look on the street, there are little piles of toilet paper.

Well, there's definitely piles of garbage, but there's a lot of garbage strewn around the whole area. I don't know.

I'm hoping that that's toilet paper that randomly blew into the area, as opposed to somebody having used that toilet that was not hooked up to plumbing. And then skipping towards the end here, there is an album. that was on the ground. You took a picture of it. It looks like it says Disc Jockey Sampler from 1969. Doesn't look like it plays.

No, unfortunately. It's like it's on that's on the ground. It's a weird it was very, very dark when I took this which is why it's all like kind of it's hard to see.

Did you bring the record home though to see if you can play?

No, because look it's all like it's literally cracked and it's on the ground in the street. This is another one where I was kind of like trying to like dodge cars and take it and not get my feet in the photo. But I mean what are the chances that there's a it's capital records promotional record disc jockey sampler february 1969 oh if i had found that anywhere other than literally under the tires of a car i would love to bring that home i know that's that's like very up your alley as far as like found audio goes oh i did get a record this weekend though if you want to hear about that let me grab it here um i think sorry um i got uh rowan and martin's laughing record and it's a really sweet record you know It's got that great kind of 60s psychedelic cover color vibe on the cover. And then you open it up and there's like little windows in there so you can see all the main characters. I'm very excited about this record. Maybe it'll be some we don't do like comedy for your weekend, but maybe I'll swap out music for your weekend with a bit of Ronan Martin's laughing on Friday.

I wonder how much of that holds up. You just comedically like if it if it's actually, you know, funny, I'll be interested to get your report on it. My guess is not that great.

I feel like it was a very visual show.

Right. Sock It Toomey and all of that. Yeah. And opening up those little, it was like a, you know, what do you call that? An advent calendar of comedy.

Yes. The way, are you talking about the way the cover opens up with the little windows? No, but that's also the show, right? Oh, right. And everybody always in some kind of box or like, you know what I mean?

Like little doors that would open and people would say jokes.

Yes. And you know what, though? And I kind of totally missed the point in the fact that this record album, it doesn't totally recreate that. But I'll bet you the little window thing is a is a nod to that, actually, Luke. Very perceptive.

Well, that's how you spent your weekend. I spent the early part of my weekend making a kind of a fool of myself, Andrew, or at least being less than gracious to somebody. And I felt bad about it. I mentioned on the. show on Friday how I kept getting these calls from some company that had been hired by the people I'm leasing my car from to find out if I'm if if everything is going okay with the lease and how it's like they just would never stop calling me and I would hang up on them sometimes because I was always in the middle of something sometimes we'd be doing the show or i'd be actually literally in a tv situation and so uh after we talked on the show on friday it was like friday afternoon i was at the airport oh by the way i overheard another great conversation yeah i i'm worried now that people are going to think that i'm i've gone jason blair on it uh where i'm just now inventing these conversations between little kids because Well first what happened was I'm sitting there And my phone starts ringing And I look down and it's the number Of this freaking survey place And I finally For the first time had a moment So I like of course I like stand up to answer it and I like leave The waiting area like In the airport because I don't want to be having This conversation around people so I'm like hustling Down to another gate where there are no people Which I'd like to mention everyone Is the proper way to comport yourself in public yes it is have a phone call hide your shame from everyone go where there are no other people please and have your conversation in hushed tones which is what i did so i picked up the phone call and it's like that thing where it takes like two seconds because there is a computer system and the person is like am i speaking with luke burbank and i said yeah they said i'm calling from ron talk and i said i know and i was like listen i know that this is not your personal decision but can you please stop calling me the service was fine i go you guys are calling me like 10 times a day and she goes oh okay i'll take you off the list and i was like thank you and then i immediately started feeling bad because that was all i needed to do was say hey the service was fine could you please take me off your list like i i unloaded like a week's worth of frustration i did at least say i know this isn't like your decision but it was i was pretty worked up about this and the person was just like oh i'll just take you off the list like right it was it was not it did not need i did not need to be as heated as i was but you never know like i mean no i know

why you have that the guilt about that i'm not trying to make it worse but yeah and i know that feeling but also in the moment you don't know if this person is just when you say take me off your list there they could just easily hang up on you after that right like like i told you that's what kind of got what burned me the other day is somebody said hey do you want to take a poll and And I politely said, no, thank you, but I appreciate it or whatever. And then they just click, hung up on you. So you never know what level of humanity is on the other end of the line in these situations. Totally. But you should always maybe err on the side of a decent amount of humanity.

Yeah. I guess I just was like – I hadn't – I had developed this very, very one-way angry relationship with this phone number. And when it came up again, all of those feelings came rushing back in. Because, again, every time that that person – and I don't think it was the same person – but every time this robot calling me from a call center, which maybe had, who knows, 50 people in it or something, every time that phone number came up, it was literally the last thing I needed to be doing in that moment. And so, anyway, the good news is I'm off of that list apparently. Although, I'll tell you what. If they call me again, I will climb through the phone at the ring style and go down to California and personally unplug all of their computers.

How's your Domino's pizza situation? Remember, didn't I help you get off a Domino's pizza mailing list one time? I remember distinctly being at the gym and you sending me another email that they sent you unsolicited. And so I think I somehow unsubscribed you from my phone while I was on the crunch bench.

And I appreciated that. I think they maybe started emailing me. But the problem was I ordered more pizza from them. So that's on me.

You keep opting in. Yeah, well, it's pizza.

The conversation I overheard between these two kids was pretty incredible. So these were, and I'll just say their first names because they had interesting names. One was a little girl named Hazel, and one was a little boy named Ivan. Great names.

I love the name Ivan, yeah.

They were probably in, like, first or second grade. And they didn't know each other before the flight, but they clearly, like, become friends because they were, you know, like, when you're a kid and you're, like, waiting for an airplane there's another kid roughly your age you're just like well i guess we're friends now so that's what these two kids were doing and then well there's layers to this but hazel was clearly very very smart like extremely intelligent and so she was well the first thing that happened was her and ivan are chatting and she asked ivan do you have any

Thank you.

do you have any enemies? And Ivan was like, what do you mean? She was like, you know, like enemies or rivals. And he was like, well, my brother. And then he asked Hazel, well, do you have any? And she was like, every boy in my class. Wow. Which I was like, wow, this is some real like, you know, Arya Stark stuff. Is Hazel going to sleep and, you know, quoting the names or saying the names of every boy in her class then uh the this other uh kid comes over who's kind of about their age and this other kid's mom is kind of walking her over and i couldn't quite tell if it was because she wanted her kid to be able to hang with these kids because that's also a whole dynamic sometimes if we can all remember back to being that age like maybe you're on vacation and there's a like a swimming pool at the hotel and there's some kids kind of your age you kind of know how to break in and maybe your parents might even come over and introduce you um so you can kind of be part of the club so i could tell this little girl kind of wanted to hang but she comes over she was and uh she appeared to be uh maybe latinx and hazel starts talking to this girl in spanish oh wow what a smarty except the girl responded in english oh i don't know if the girls even spoke spanish it was like hazel was assuming that this person this young gal her age uh was going to be more comfortable in espanol which was a bit of an assumption by hazel unless there's any is there any chance that these two kids knew each other nope not a chance because they the the the the young gal who again you know like we're second graders responded kind of in English in an accentless English and kind of looked at her mom and then they just kind of wandered away and then it was back to the Hazel and Ivan show and then Hazel was explaining to Ivan that you know they take Spanish in her school etc etc and I was like wow I see a lot of myself in that move Hazel yeah it is it is kind of presumptuous a lot of me saying assalamualaikum to my uh you know uh Lyft driver uh because I perceive them to maybe be Muslim you

Right. Right. Yeah. Read the room, Hazel. Did you say that? Did you say, Hazel, you just made another enemy?

I did. I didn't. But I was I wondered if me even tweeting their conversation. I mean, I feel like that was OK for me to tweet their conversation because it'd be unlikely anyone could identify them. But I did wonder for a minute, like, oh, man, what are the chances that their parents this would get back to them? And they'd be like, why are you putting my kids on blast? What part of the conversation? The enemy's part? The enemy's part, not the Spanish part. Yeah, right. That was just for me and you and the listeners. Okay, good. All right, let's take a quick break, and then when we come back, we will do the top stories and some emails and V-mails. Stay with us. It's TBTL.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready.

Go. Everybody rattle, dazzle. Everybody rattle, dazzle.

Let's thank some dazzling donors, people who are dazzling us with their donation each month as a thank you for that, because it's a not insignificant sum of money. We read some messages from these dazzling donors that they have submitted. First one comes from dazzling donor P.J. Lynn, who's in Rome, if you want to, Georgia. that's gotta be I mean where are the B-52s from? are they from Georgia?

they are from Georgia they were from Athens they were one of those Athens bands but the song is for some reason

when I hear that song I've always assumed that it was a Rome a Rome Georgia reference but maybe not Rome if you want to Rome around the world I mean maybe they're just talking about you know taking a journey well I mean it's spelled like taking a journey yeah well that would further undermine my theory I don't know PJ probably knows about it He'll check in with the answer to that question Along with dazzling donations We need you to be Yeah just have Fred Schneider call us Thank you Can you imagine a phone call with Fred Schneider It's Fred Schneider I can't imagine it A whirlwind of a year has gone by But some things never change Including my love of TBTL You guys are my constant pocket companions Even in the darkest of dark times and especially in the Laugh Out Loud lightest of light moments I'm assuming my Fred Schneider impression falls under that category PJ

Everybody's getting a phone call Thanks for all you do

and for being heard Yeah with a little Kermit I gotta I don't know what's going on You're gonna break You're gonna bust

Some kind of vascular situation. Also, PJ is a doctor, I believe. PJ identifies the pronouns he, him, and doctor. So we may need Dr. PJ to... We may need emergency surgery in the studio. Dr. PJ says, Thanks for all you do and for being here for me five days a week. I'm excited for another year of podcasting adventures as we hopefully get closer to a new normal. Also, Luke, please don't say anything offensive to get you canceled. I can't afford to lose any more daily podcasts. Love you guys. Dr. PJ in Rome, Georgia. Dr. PJ, thank you so much. By the way, Dr. PJ sounds like a sitcom on CBS.

It's sort of, or what do they call it, guys? A dramedy, maybe? Sure. Like an hour-long kind of...

Zach Braff is back as Dr. PJ.

And, of course, it's Braff.

Thanks, PJ, for supporting the show, man. We really appreciate you. And if you could get back to us on that B-52s thing, that would really help out. Maestro.

On your mark. On your mark. Get set. Get set. Now ready. Ready. Go. Everybody rattle down.

Oh, well, look who it is. Everybody rattle down. possibly our most fashionable, dazzling donor, one Brent Martin of Los Angeles, California. We've known Brent for many a year and have seen him out at many an event, and he has been donating and supporting the show for years. Thanks, Brent. Appreciate you, man. He says, Andrew and Luke, new year, new city, new accountant. Same message. Brent Henry Martin is a photographer who specializes in capturing images for interior designers, architects, builders, and real estate agents. His portfolio and contact information can be found at his website, which, by the way, is sugarhigh.ltd. I'm on it right now.

So beautiful. I want to puke. These photos are so beautiful. Any pictures of Honda Motors?

No, because he's smart. He knows. I will tell you this. No, I think actually you're a great photographer, Andrew. I love your eye, but I am actually looking at listener and dazzling donor Brent's website. And there's a whole other level to what, and I'm not saying this to drag you at all, because I'm an absolutely terrible photographer. You're a pretty good photographer. Brent is a professional photographer. and that you just see what that means when you look at these photos. They're just incredible. So if you have any need in your life for photography at a professional level, why not reach out to listener Brent, who is a 10 and a supporter of the show and has quite the eye. He says, last year's message was written a few weeks before, shut it down America, and so your suggestions for places to frequent Had to be modified But Los Angeles has not been exactly the bustling Dynamic city I hoped to explore During my first year here Yeah, that must have been weird for Brent It hasn't been terrible either For instance, I once drove to Santa Monica From East Hollywood At 4pm and made it in about 18 minutes You know That's This is not part of Listener Brent's question But I'm actually going to be going to LA In a couple of weeks uh to for a tv thing and i was talking to the travel folks at cbs about where i would be staying and ideally like because i don't go to la very much and because i live in a landlocked part of the country other than the willamette river uh i it's it's appealing for me to kind of try to stay in santa monica stay near where the the ocean is because that just feels like a radical change of scenery for me but in the normal times if you're staying there but you need to go Anywhere east Of the city you're just I mean forget it You're going to spend four hours sitting in traffic On the tent But maybe This time because we're still kind of in that In-between phase of things coming back To life and it looks like Listener Brent's been making good time on the freeways Maybe I could stay over on the west side somewhere Anyway that's not important to this conversation

Well let me say this though I'm pretty sure they've completed The purple line I'm pretty sure you can now Take a train directly from I know you're not a huge public transpo kind of guy, but I'm pretty sure there is a direct shot now from Santa Monica into Koreatown, into downtown. I don't know how far east it goes.

That's actually not a bad idea. And, like, I'll tell you when I am a fan of public transportation, Andrew, when everyone in the cars is sitting in traffic. Yeah, right. Exactly. Like, you can take the CTA from O'Hare. into like down into chicago proper and you can also take it from chicago proper out to o'hare airport and there's just nothing more satisfying than whizzing past just the gridlocked cars i mean they're not technically gridlocked because gridlock is when you're at an intersection and you actually can't move because there are cars behind you and in front of you and it creates this locked up kind of four-way situation but anyway there's nothing more satisfying than than whizzing past people sitting in their cars while you're on public transportation. That, I will say, is very fun. Yeah. Listener Brent continues, I also know the best parking lot to eat a pastrami sandwich in. Cantor's. You can watch the sneakerheads in their natural habitat on Fairfax and enjoy delicious sandwiches. Lunch and a show. I like it. So you get that you get that Cantor's delicious pastrami and then you watch, that's probably near the Supreme store, I guess, right? You watch all of those.

Is it Supreme? Whenever you do your bit about a sneaker store that only has one sneaker in it wow that hurt it's my bit sorry uh there's one of that enjoy your tony hawk podcast this one is over i always picture the one that i believe undefeated two doors down from is that what it is undefeated like that to me is the pinnacle of that it's a big empty white store with a bunch of young people with like a young person like kind of uh looking grumpy uh behind a desk somewhere and like one tennis shoe on a uh on

some sort of a display case well i mean i haven't checked for myself in a while but back in the olden days of however many years ago it was uh when i lived there yeah that there were some stores called undefeated and they were that kind of very much that um uh but i know somewhere in that area and i think i am mixing up my locations but not too far from there is also where the like the supreme store is which gets that all of the you know crazy lines when a when a sneaker is going to drop and the funny thing about that is i believe that the building or the supreme store is adjacent to some real estate that's owned by julie newmar who is the original cat woman who's been who was at one point locked in some kind of uh a sort of a um uh what would i say like some legal battle with because she felt like it was destroying the neighborhood all of these sneaker heads lining up and then i think julie newmar may have also had a beef with jim belushi involving their homes and and and backyards and then i think they made friends and jim belushi had her on according to jim after they've had a bunch of lawsuits about their backyards it would appear julie newmar the first catwoman is involved in a lot of litigation

right now by the way i think you're right though i think the one i am talking about it's about four i'm on google map street view right now and i there is there is a supreme right there and it's about uh maybe four or five doors down from canter so i think that's i think you nailed it that is

exactly what i was thinking of and that's also where the original largo was right oh uh before my time i don't know before oh before the coronet that was that was where you would go uh to uh see all of the up-and-comers in la all right uh a little bit more coming from brent's dazzling donor message by the way why isn't la known as pastrami town there's so much pastrami that's a good point there's that what's the pastrami place in culver city johnny's oh yeah johnny's i love

that that's yeah that's a different kind of pastrami place on the hoagie rolls yeah oh okay

see i'm not i don't have the depth of knowledge you do about this sandwich but i i will agree with listener brent that there's a lot of pastrami in la like it seems like it's a regional cuisine more so than like in here in portland there might be like one or two places yeah they claim to have

the first dip, you know, not Kohl's. Well, Kohl's also claims to have the first dip, but also Philippe's claims to have the first dip, which is a pastrami-based thing often. Yeah, no, it's pretty strong. You think New York City, but, you know, L.A. has some of that, too.

I once saw a pastrami taco at a taco truck on Sunset in Hollywood. I reached out to Mayor Garcetti about this new tourism PR angle, but his office said he was busy with other things. Eric Garcetti was once my local city council guy when I lived in Echo Park. I always feel like, I know people in LA have mixed reviews on Eric Garcetti as the mayor of LA, but I always think like, oh, I knew him before he broke wide. I knew that guy when he was just still playing little indie shows to like 10 people. He's a handsome man. He reminds me of the guy from Modern Family. Oh, sure. Sure. Ty Burrell? Yeah. You know, Eric Garcetti's dad was Gil Garcetti, one of the prosecutors, I want to say, in the OJ case. Yes, I think you're right. But enough L.A. history from old burbs. Let's wrap up Brent's message by reading this. Thank you both for keeping me so close to home with TBTL. I'm looking forward to more widespread travel opening up so we can all get together again. You're both appreciated more than you know. Ah, Brent.

Thank you. We do know it and we appreciate it. And we're we are we're very touched by A, the donations and B, the very nice messages that people tend to put in these in these messages that are, you know, something that we we sort of try to offer to the to the donors as a thank you. And then it ends up being a thank you to us. So thanks, Brent. And thanks to all of our dazzling donors. hello and welcome to top story all right uh this was a an interesting thing that happened recently it was over the weekend uh this is an article from the washington post paulina ferrozi writing in an airy sunny gymnasium on saturday afternoon under basketball hoops and banners in front of people freshly pricked and waiting for minutes to pass yo-yo ma played a little Bach do you say Bach or Bach I don't usually talk about it but I would say Bach yeah me too I think the real like if you listen to classical music radio which I do sometimes I find it very soothing in fact it's rare that I'm listening to classical music that I'm not thinking

I should be listening to this all the time I had that exact thought this weekend because a satellite radio I'm just flipping through flipping through and then I didn't even realize I had stopped on it Luke and then like a few minutes in I was like oh I've been listening to classical

music for a little bit now it's very i mean it's it's very soothing and really kind of like yeah i should get more of it into my life but um anyway yo-yo ma the renowned cellist was there by the way this was uh in pittsfield massachusetts andrew home that's the birthplace of one ross reynolds one of our uh former colleagues anyway uh yo-yo ma um i guess went over and asked one of the people working there so he had gotten his shot and uh they like i said at the top of the show they have you you have to sit somewhere for like 15 minutes to make sure that you're you don't have an adverse reaction and then you can leave although i will tell you this having been vaccinated myself it's pretty much the honor system and i was so euphoric when i when i was able to get well really either of those shots because i got the pfizer that it was like the only time in my life andrew i've ever followed the rules around something like that like normally i would just be like 15 minutes i'm fine i'm gonna peace out in like three minutes but i was it was very emotional as you know as as we've all seen unfolding you know online and for those listeners who haven't been vaccinated it's a pretty intense experience just thinking about how life-changing it is uh i'll tell you who's not getting vaccinated the uh guy the cab driver Who drove me home on Friday After I got back from Oklahoma City, Andrew Very nice fellow Was I texting you about this?

You did text me about this

He was really nice Like very kindly He was like the classical music Of cab drivers And he just asked Have you had the vaccine? I said, well, oddly enough, I actually have And I said, are you going to get it? Because he was older than me He looked like he was maybe in his mid-60s or something And he very nicely explained that he's going to wait on it because he had read on the internet that henry kissinger one-time secretary of state under nixon i believe and prince andrew of the royal family had were part of a cabal that were looking to eliminate six billion humans because they were worried that planet earth was going to go into a thermal spiral because of overpopulation and that's what had happened on venus which had once had life on it now venus the ambient air temperature was 800 degrees and so because of that he was going to wait on getting the vaccine just wait but wait though not not take it off the table altogether and he had literally said at some point like i don't believe everything i read on the internet there's a lot of garbage on there and i thought this wasn't the garbage part of it and i had that moment rejecting right and i was just like it was i was very conflicted on that ride because part of me wanted to really try to debate the you know how clearly illogical and irrational that perspective was that he was bringing up. But I didn't think it was going to change his mind. So I tried to just kill him with kindness. And I just said, well, you know, I go, I can tell you that having had it myself, I didn't have any adverse reaction. And it's really been life changing for me. And so I sure hope that when you get the chance, you'll consider it. You know, like I didn't really want to get into trying to debate this because there's just like no bottom to it. You know, like, I mean, first of all, is Henry Kissinger even alive?

I thought he died, but maybe people like Kissinger live forever. Seems about fair. Well, because he's part of the Build-A-Burgers. But I would have done. Not to be confused with Build-A-Bear, which is a very fun place to take your kids. No, dude's still alive. Of course. Of course, this one would live forever. Right. But anyway, not that I'm using my podcast to wish people dead, but I would say.

that um what i would have done in your case is say and i think this is where we actually got the drop uh of me saying weird but you could have said something like i'm telling you i took the vaccine and i'm fine and just like hold it for as long as you possibly can that's that's another way to go

there sure yeah uh and basically seal this guy's fate as dying from covid like worth it for the bit though yeah you know i mean honestly nothing i was gonna say is gonna change his mind anyway but it was weird because he was the like he wasn't he was not aggressive about it yeah that

was the weird part but he brought it up though i was surprised to hear that he brought it up so

he wanted to kind of get this out there yeah he was in very interested in talking about it and he was very like kind in the conversation but he was like he would bring something up and then And I would say, well, it seems unlikely to me – like one of the things I said was I go, well – because I did end up getting into it a little bit. I go, one thing that's interesting and where I don't know if I totally buy that theory is that we're actually looking at population decline in a lot of places because of a bunch of reasons, including more access to birth control and slightly more autonomy for women on this planet in terms of making reproductive health choices, et cetera. Like I just read an article not that long ago about how there are, you know, in Japan and in Spain and in a lot of places, the concern is actually underpopulation if you look at the long trends. So he would go, oh, well, I hadn't really heard that. So that's interesting. Well, maybe that that might be and he'd kind of be considering it. But then he would just go to some other like whack-a-mole theory like Bill Clinton. He was like, well, did you know that Bill Clinton apologized for something the FBI did where they released a virus into the atmosphere to test how far it would go? And people got sick and three people died from that And I was just like And I go are you reading Infowars And he goes no no no I don't believe in Alex Jones It was the weirdest thing Because he was just like I'm not into that crackpot stuff But everything he said was incredibly crackpot

Wow I do wonder where he's getting Oh could it be Could it be Coast to Coast

I haven't listened to Coast to Coast In a long time but my guess is it's not from there because that being coast to coast is again i i i can't confirm this based on recent listening but the conspiracies were always somewhat benign they were sort of like remote viewing linda molten how will stop by and talk and remote viewing just being kind of like you're gonna like astrally project yourself out of your body and go look at something Or ancient aliens I mean the chemtrail stuff was probably not great But like it wasn't usually Henry Kissinger trying to eliminate 6 billion people

And you would I mean you've clocked I mean I have hardly Listened to that show so I don't want to like Weigh in or debate and say that you're wrong I will say that one of the times I did listen I remember I was I was in LA actually doing that drive from Santa Monica Oh actually this is a good Moment where I can correct myself Don't take the purple line Purple line does not go out to Santa Monica. I believe it's called the Expo line. But I was I remember I had to stay at work late. Like, I think my buddy was in town, actually, and I was doing like an after work podcast with him or something. So I wasn't leaving Santa Monica until like nine o'clock at night in some a.m. station, I swear, was playing Coast to Coast, which maybe I'm undermining myself because it seems too early in the evening to play it. But I swear I heard them talking on Coast to Coast about, like, FEMA and, like, you know, some government conspiracies. FEMA camps. Yeah, involving it. And, again, this would have been, right, like 2014, 2015. Did you say it was a Friday night, though? I feel like it was a Friday night. Well, that might have been Ian Punnett.

Wrong show, yeah. No, no, just the guy that hosts on Friday nights and Saturday nights is not George Norrie, the main guy. Oh, I see. And probably the host, depending on who the host is, they may go further in one direction or the other as far as letting just the really kooky theories out there. But again, I don't know either. I haven't listened to it in a million years. I don't know what this cab driver was, where he was getting his info, but I know that there's no chance of him rolling up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and listening to the beautiful music of one Yo-Yo Ma, who had brought his own cello. Well, here's what it sounded like when he started playing a little Bach. This is an actual recording from someone's cell phone.

Oh, I actually know this. This is a cello, one of the Bach cello suites.

And as I sort of said at the top of the show, like when I first heard about this I was like I had a lot of questions like

is Yo-Yo Ma just bringing a cello everywhere with him?

Like, you go to a party at Yo-Yo Ma's house, and it's like, oh, you know there's a moment he's going to have too many glasses of wine, and he pulls out the cello. Gets out the cello.

At least in that case, you're at his house where the cellos also live. How about you're just out at, like, you know, you're in the airport, and Yo-Yo Ma's just, like, jamming out in the waiting area. Like, I thought it was interesting, because apparently he had come through and gotten his first shot with little fanfare, with little cello performance, but then he when he came back the second time he he had his cello with him and then he went over and asked one of the folks uh working there if it would be okay with them if he played some music and they said yes and so then while he was waiting on his 15 minutes he was he played a few songs actually um he played wap which i thought was i mean cool and edgy but not what i expected um but anyway he he uh played some music and when i when i heard about this i was like i didn't know how to feel about and i watched the video and andrew i swear to god i started tearing up because i was just putting myself in the perspective of being some of those people in that community college in pittsfield massachusetts who are either having just received the vaccine i know that their life is is changing for the better or the people who are giving the vaccine which are just like the the people that i got both of my shots from were both retired nurses who had come out of retirement to do it which was just like incredible i mean i couldn't thank them enough like thank you so much for for for being a part of this and and you know risking your own health and and dedicating your time to this i mean it's a very emotionally charged situation at these vaccination sites and the idea that yo-yo i mean it probably helps it's yo-yo ma but i wonder how many people even realized who it was i mean he's just he had a mask on he had a hat so it's like this is just a guy of a certain age who's playing cello like really good but i can tell you that had i been there in you know irl waiting on my 15 minutes that i would have been so moved by this experience i was moved watching someone's shaky cell phone footage of it and i kind of i went from thinking yo-yo is being slightly extra to being like what a cool thing to do like i think i bet you it just really made everybody's day who was there yeah yeah i could

see that and it's so beautiful too now i have a question i think more for the audience than you unless you have insight on this like as soon as you started playing that i recognized it and it's you know and it's like an incredibly it's it's like the most i i would i get i would guess and this is i guess my question like the bach cello suites are so famous right and like i only know because I had some Pablo Casals. Is that a guy? I had like a Pablo Casals. Like, yeah, I had that on my iTunes a long time ago. I listened to it a lot and like it stands out. But is I guess to our, you know, classical music loving listeners. Is it just always the go to? And it sounds like I'm being negative about it and I'm not like it's beautiful. I love it. But I just wonder, like, every time if there's one person who's going to play solo cello, is it always the Bach cello suite and at a certain point does it get old you know what I mean like you would think that Yo-Yo Ma would play something that maybe isn't like the Sergeant I don't know the Sergeant Pepper or I don't even think that's the right that's the right parallel there right like what's the most popular song that's ever been played on the radio do you know that off the top of your head probably by the Cars

I was gonna say yeah I would guess it was the Beatles yeah I wonder how you even figure that out like the most played song well it's probably rock around the clock right oh maybe i mean i'm not kidding doesn't rock around the clock have some has a crazy distinction as being like the most played song of all time or something i didn't i didn't know that i by the way yo yo ma later played rock around the clock yeah um then they asked him to leave uh he also uh so he also performed uh ave maria oh okay uh while he was there um and uh yeah that's a good question i my guess would be By the way, this is an album recording of Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach's cello suite number one in G major. My guess would be that Yo-Yo Ma was thinking, what's something that is familiar and comforting to people that people have some context for? So he wasn't going like, let me do some Shostakovich or something very edgy and challenging. He was probably like, let me just play the hits here for these fine folks. This was something that Yo-Yo Ma said, I think this, like last summer during the lockdown, Andrew, who was being interviewed by the Washington Post talking about music. I thought this was kind of interesting. He said, our skin is our largest organ. And how much we respond to touch during COVID, that's been taken away from us. You can't touch, you can't hug, you can't shake hands. But what music does, it's sound moves air molecules. so when air floats a across your skin and touches the hair of your skin, that's touch. That's the closest thing to actually someone touching you. It's as if you were miniaturized and you're in the middle of a lake, but that lake is a bowl and you're in the bowl and that vessel is holding you. That's what music can do. I was like, damn, that's pretty profound.

If you keep reading, though, he goes on to talk about Kissinger's plan to eliminate a big chunk of the population. Was it eliminate or add to? I already forgot. Eliminate, Andrew. Yeah, because, yeah. Google it, okay?

This article about Korean television, and so I guess we can lose the cello music, unless we just, maybe that could be our new thing as a show. We're just running Yo-Yo Ma under the entire production every day.

I feel a little bit weird about what I just said, if I can just add, just like, it felt like I was like negging. I think the thing is, when you played that, I was surprised that I recognized it because I can I don't recognize classical music. Right. And it just seems like it's interesting that when somebody plays something, I'm like, oh, I know that. Oh, of course. It's a Bach cello suite. I just wonder if it's just something that is like kind of overplayed or what have you.

I yeah, I think. Well, Andrew, it's like my new bestie, Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips told me last week. Remember how I said on Friday that that was going to be the end of this being a Flaming Lips fan cast? um he was he was talking about like first of all one fun thing was him dishing on all of the

musicians that he doesn't like oh really i wouldn't from everything you said about him i didn't picture him to be like a negative nelly he's not negative but he also just has no compunction

like he was telling us telling me that when they toured with beck it was like the worst experience of their life beck was a total nightmare and like they were beck's backing band for this thing they did and he wouldn't eat any of the food he would like had a personal chef and he wouldn't stay in the hotel that everybody else was staying in and he was just like um and uh and also he was talking about a time when he saw radiohead and they didn't play creep and he was saying look people come out to hear you play your songs and like play the songs that people want to hear you play like they're paying money to come don't be you know don't be adam duritz from the from Counting Crows like jazzing up every single song so that it's fun for you but unrecognizable to the people who've paid $25 to come to a winery. Speaking from personal experience. Yeah, I was going to say it got real specific there at the end, didn't it? But my guess is that Yo-Yo was following the same principle, the Wayne Coyne principle we'll know it as heretofore. Wait, does heretofore mean going forward or does it mean before this? I think heretofore means leading up to this, right? here to foreknown as oh yeah yeah i guess you're right but in the moment i was with you when you said it the other way going forward we'll call it the wayne coin principle which is play the hits right yeah right yeah um speaking of the hits korean dramas are kind of a big thing right now like even in the u.s like i feel like korean pop culture and when i say korean i'm referencing south korea uh just because obviously north korea is is sort of a a black box to us but um like you know of course k-pop is a huge thing i think k-pop is the most fascinating whole like phenomenon because i'm sure that i brought this up on the show multiple times but like what i didn't know until fairly recently was that k-pop was a government project no i didn't

know that backed by henry kissinger i was gonna say no you mentioned this on the show before

maybe i don't know andrew the line between when we're recording and i'm doing my professional job and when i'm just boring people in real life it is it's just so thin it's just such a thin porous line but um so like some number of years ago somebody who was in charge i want to say was like the president of south korea somebody who was pretty high up was looking around and was saying what can we do what can we what kind of industry can we create here in south korea uh to make to generate more more gross domestic product and this person came up with the idea of korean pop music being a thing and it was a lot cheaper to start up than like you know some giant industry of like ore mining or whatever like the investment in a pop music industry in south korea that investment was less than the investment in some other things that could have generated money and so they just set about building this pop music machinery that has

totally worked wow i mean like i don't follow this world at all but like when i'm doing prep for one of my other shows i always end up coming across bts and i don't know why like and my guess is just from casually seeing that pop up all the time that's like a korean boy band My guess is they must...

oh really they must be the biggest act in the world that's my assumption i just feel like they are whenever you stumble on some sort of bts thing if you're not careful you get sucked into this um this fan universe that is uh just seems so so passionate and just all consuming

yeah it's and that's part of why i haven't dipped my toe much in the world of like bts or k-pop i used to when i was in college there was this is something we have brought up on the show because I believe years ago we like looked it up and tried to find it there was a guy named Kim Gunmo who I believe might have been a Korean singer and he had an album called In My Pops which I would go to this teriyaki place when I went to the UW I would go to this teriyaki place down on like Lake Washington Boulevard kind of across from University Village Mall and the dude who worked there was always playing this Kim Gunmo CD and I loved it and I was like what is this man and he told me And I started listening to it. And I believe that that may have been K-pop music back in the day.

Oh, I didn't realize. So this story that you were telling about it kind of being a government-backed idea, I thought that that was way more recent because I had not heard of K-pop until Gangnam Style. Did I say that right? I certainly didn't because I said it three different ways. But, yeah, the whole world was new to me when that took over the world.

I'm just reading from Wikipedia The South Korean government has acknowledged benefits of the country's export sector As a result of the Korean wave It was estimated in 2011 that I Oh man, that's getting very Sort of economic very fast I definitely know that I read this Somewhere reputable So I know that there was some governmental involvement But also as I'm looking at the Wikipedia page for K-pop It's just really about a lot of specific K-pop bands And it sounds like This is just based on me doing a very, very, very quick scan I think that I'm not saying that a government official Invented the idea of popular music in Korea I just think that there was some governmental intervention In really kicking it up to a new level And making it international Right, really pushing it Because it existed, but I think it got a big boost When they decided this is going to be Something that we really hang our hats on As a nation And also Korean TV dramas are really becoming kind of a big deal in the U.S. Well, according to this article in The New York Times, which, of course, because I printed it out, I have now lost the name of the person who wrote it, which is kind of too bad because my sense is this is a person who might be living in South Korea and just figured this out, or maybe is living in the U.S., but just is very immersed in sort of Korean culture. Seth Berkman? Okay, Seth Berkman. Does it give, like, a byline where Seth Berkman is writing from?

It doesn't appear to be. No, there's a dateline, no byline.

Well, good. This is, I think, some good enterprise journalism from Seth Berkman because he writes about how, you know, in South Korean television, they don't let them have ads. But they, at some point not that long ago, kind of loosened up the rules on product placement. So you can you can somebody can pay to put their product in a like a Korean drama show. And Subway is the company that has really, really doubled down on this. Like they have really put their money behind this on TV. Pristinely clean Subway shops that pop with bright colors serve as the setting for business meetings, social gossip and dates for beautiful couples. Instead of cookies and tea, elderly Korean TV characters keep freshly wrapped Subway sandwiches at the ready.

Oh, wow. Oh, man. I'm getting hungry. It's already working. The product placement in this podcast is already working on its host. I'm so hungry now for a Subway sandwich.

I think that's pretty funny, though, because it's like, if you think about it, that would be like an American TV drama where you had an elderly American and they were like, would you like some bulgogi? Right. You know, like it just seems like the the people who are going to be the last to embrace something that's come from some other part of the world are likely to be the older people. Right. Like they're probably the most set in their ways. They're probably like going to, you know, be the last ones to be like, would you like a I don't even know what would you call it? Like what? What are the I can't even think of what a Subway sandwich like what the names of them are. Oh, an Italian dollar foot long. Would you like an Italian BMT, my friend? on the popular Korean drama Crash Landing on You North Korean soldiers and a South Korean businesswoman find common ground through Subway sandwiches on the show Guardian the Lonely and Great God which is also known as Goblin there is a scene where it's inferred that the protagonist prevents a man from committing suicide side in an effort to cheer him up the suicidal man is handed a subway sandwich so the sub subway sandwich in korea is seen as a cure for suicidal thoughts a subway is also celebrated in death in another episode the grim reaper is shown enjoying a meal from subway now that's a mixed message right there yeah right you would think um apparently it's working though by the way subway is like very popular in Korea, and people think that it actually tastes better. They were talking to this professor named Sung Chul Yu, a communications professor at Iwa Women's University in Seoul, who says, to be honest, it tastes way better in South Korea. Mr. Yu said that in South Korea, Subway is generally viewed as a healthier option than burger chains, which added to its appeal. During the decade he lived in the United States, he rarely ate at Subway, but now he regularly enjoys the sandwiches in Seoul. I wonder if that happens, by the way. These are franchises, right? But I wonder if the Subway, if the sandwich artists in Korea – and I'm not trying to drag Subway sandwich artists in the U.S. I have those sandwiches sometimes. They always seem fine to me. But I wonder if you do get a kind of a thing where in a particular country, they're just better at it because maybe the people are better trained or like the owners of the franchises are doing something different. Do you think there's a possibility that Subway sandwiches are better in South Korea?

I wonder if the menu is even the same. Does this article get into it? I take it not. Like, is it a is it a one to one? Are they are they selling the Italian BMT or are they selling something that might have more, you know, more of a Korean flavor to it?

That's a good question. I know that this is not going to answer your question because I would say that the cultures are more similar. But when we were in Australia, I was grubbing out on some subway and it tasted exactly like we were in America. Yeah, right. And you also had a Hungry Jack. Let's never forget. That was good. I loved that Hungry Jack right when we landed. Yeah. And I got like they had a fake meat burger that was almost more like a like something you'd get in an Indian restaurant, sort of like a what's that called? A dosi. Like it was like peas and carrots in kind of a great, really tasty sort of doughy thing.

You know, I know that you are not Cora maybe is more what I'm thinking. You're an you're an impossible burger over beyond meat guy, right? I only raise this. Genevieve has been going hard in the Beyond burger. She was experimenting with a meal kit company. I can't remember the name of it. They've never sponsored TBTL, so I refuse to mention them. Of course. They're the one. And in it, they had some pre-made Beyond Meat burgers that were like kind of pre-made patties. And she loved them. And now she has me at the store just pick up like kind of the beyond ground meat that she forms into patties herself. While making them, the consistency is very upsetting. She says it's weird because I know it's just plant-based, which is so much less gross than anything that is animal-based. Yet it has a very kind of, I think she described it as kind of a slimy feel when you're trying to make the patty. She says, but the second you cook it up, she's like, she says, I don't see any reason for me to eat ground beef anymore if it just tastes like this.

Yeah I like the impossible ground beef For the same reason That's what I was making my Fake quarter pounder with cheese From Which I was very proud of Very successful And I just don't think you would ever be able to tell the difference If you ate it For me the thing with the Beyond burgers When you get them in like a restaurant setting It's a pre-made patty And it's too big for me But that's just generally a thing I don't want a big giant hunk of either real or pretend meat. I was surprised, Andrew, that in the Oklahoma City airport, when I ducked in to get a little lunch before overhearing those seven-year-olds and yelling at someone over the phone unnecessarily, that one of the items on just like the airport bar menu was nachos, like beyond nachos. So it was like nachos with fake crumbled up ground beef that was beyond. And I was like, wow, this is very progressive for OKC. And I got it. And it was, I mean, to be honest with you, the nachos were terrible but it wasn't because of the beyondness it was just because they put the minimum amount of effort into like dolling these up like it was like the nachos supreme with beyond whatever and then it just comes out and it's like you would get out of like a baseball stadium just that like paper square tray thing with some chips randomly thrown in and then just like a dollop of like queso i had a different expectation but the the fake meat part of it was fine and i was surprised that that's made its way to oklahoma yeah you know i i would think i

don't go in for nachos

Because I don't eat cheese or sour cream or any of the things that people enjoy on nachos. But it seems to me that, like, yeah, because that's, like, crumbled, you know, ground beef. Like, it seems like that would transition really well into, you know, a plant alternative.

Yeah. The things that I have made with plant-based meat stuff that have been the most similar to the real thing, as it were, would be tacos. Mm-hmm. Because if you put taco seasoning in with, you know, some like either I probably go with Beyond or even corn I've used, like Q-O-R-N or whatever that product is. If you use it probably just about any of the leading like fake ground beef now and you throw taco seasoning in there and you put that in a hard shell taco and put some, you know, your fixings on there. I dare you to tell the difference. That's that one. I mean, literally, I couldn't tell you. I could do a Pepsi challenge and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. and then it kind of goes down from there like a burger i can kind of taste in the burger a little bit of a difference which is fine to me it's you know although i i i didn't even hear the piece but somebody was saying to me the other day that they heard something on probably on npr where they were saying that the carbon footprint of the fake meat industry is vastly larger like than the farming industry in terms of like maybe per pound or something i wonder if that's a scale issue

Because, I mean, isn't that what they always say about the plant-based stuff? It's supposed to be – I mean, that's one of the – even if you're not – you know, if you're not giving up meat for ethical concerns about animals, a big part of it would be about the environmental footprint, right, of these massive farms and the – what is it? That cows are always belching out. Oh, they're not belching.

They're farting, my friend.

Well, aren't they doing it both? Maybe. Are they coming up both ends? It's definitely – there's definitely a methane problem. Methane, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so but that's funny. But they're saying right now as this industry kind of ramps up and there's a need for it. But but now the fake meat has a bigger footprint, a bad environmental footprint.

Again, I didn't hear the story myself, so I'm just I'm not able to really give you a good solid answer on that. But you're probably right about the scale thing. I sure hope that they get it figured out, you know, so that it can be it won't be worse for the environment because then it's just like. Yeah, right. Like, wait, what? So now here I am on my high horse. Here I am feeding a fed horse and feeding two birds with one scone and all of that. And yet maybe am I making the world a worse place? I don't know.

You know, it's interesting as we talk about the plant-based alternatives and you comparing it to a hamburger. How long has it been since you've had a hamburger? I'm not trying to undermine you. But as time goes on, you're going to forget more and more what a real hamburger tastes like. and you're going to be a worse and worse judge. And that's good. I mean, that's actually a good thing. You know, you're just like, you like it for what it is, but at a certain point you stop, I would assume that a vegan or vegetarian stops comparing it to the meat alternative because the meat alternative is, I mean, for you, like, is it five years? No, maybe more like three years or something. But still, you know, quite some time.

I mean, I have had, I will say, I've had bites of meat in that time because I had a piece of steak that Wolfgang Puck handed me and I had a bite of a chicken wing in Texas for a Super Bowl cooking story. So I'm not like, you know, it's not like meat has not has not touched. I was going to have some turkey on Thanksgiving because we didn't time it right. And I was like, it was going to basically delay the meal by like an hour and a half for me to cook my fake turkey. And I was just like, plus I had a few drinks. I was like, you know what? If I decide I want to have some turkey i'm just gonna have some turkey i don't because we were eating at like 9 30 at night and then i just ate so many mashed potatoes that i wasn't hungry for turkey so i skipped it but yeah i haven't had a whole lot of meat over the last three years you know here or there

if you ever are tempted on thanksgiving to eat turkey um but you don't trust yourself here's a a very solid way to avoid eating turkey on thanksgiving order it from eric rivera in seattle You'll never get the turkey.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. No, man, it's not from a female.

All right, Andrew, emails or v-mails?

Emails and v-mails. Whoa. Let's get, I want to kind of zip through a few small things here. Got a lot of emails, text messages, various kinds of communique saying when we were looking for a gender-neutral term for fishermen. Angler fits the bill. A lot of people sent that in. Very good. Yes, good. Angler. And also, gender-neutral. Yeah, gender-neutral. Also just a good word, like angler. I like it. Cheryl says, just heard the episode where you talked about... butter and you mentioned an old Jewish recipe in quotes using butter on chicken that's probably not possible it's an old Jewish recipe since it isn't kosher boy did I mess up this sentence not possible that it's an old Jewish recipe since it isn't kosher to mix milk and meat maybe a newer recipe since few people keep kosher nowadays says Cheryl you know that's I mean I

what I can tell you is that my friend Kevin Arnovitz described it as an old Jewish recipe But maybe he just met in Atlanta where he grew up in the 80s. Right, exactly. And yet it might not be necessary. I don't mean it. I didn't come over from the pogroms or something.

Okay, and now I promised you a voicemail, and I like to keep my promises. This is a story about a mirror.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. It's listener Corey from East Hampton, Massachusetts. And I wasn't going to send this voicemail to you, but you've mentioned a couple of times on the show pulling plastic off stuff, and I feel like it must be a sign so I bought this stickable wall stickable shower mirror to shave in the shower it's supposed to be like fog proof and like great to stick to the wall won't fall down because I mean you know the problem of shower mirrors is that inevitably they fall down in the middle of the night like 3 a.m and you get up out of bed all amped and you got to find out who's breaking into your house and you find out it's just the shower mirror fall down so anyway I figured even though this particular shower mirror wasn't doing a great job of staying fog free, it was doing a good job of staying on the shower wall. So I've had it for like, I don't know, a while now, a number of years. I just keep having to like splash it with water and clear the fog off and get the thing to work. And then last time I used it, I was in the shower and I was like, I'm just going to spread conditioner all over this thing, see if I can lube it up or something. and I do that and I realize as I'm doing that there's like there's bubbles happening what appear to be under the surface of the mirror and I'm like what are what is going on here so I reach under like this plastic encasement that the mirror is in and I realize that the piece of the piece of fog-free glass has been under a plastic coating for like let's say three years and I feel that stupid thing off and now fog free mirror for life hashtag pleasure that's it power out

what was that listener's name hold on I have it written down somewhere that was Corey

in Massachusetts appreciate the call that's a great one I don't know if we've had a voicemail that has lube and hashtag pleasure in the same message and it hasn't been dirty but gosh that's great so in other words this product was actually more well designed than listener cory even realized he was like he was like well it sticks to the wall so that's good or the shower so that's good and we'll just kind of call it a you know we'll just call it a i don't know a hazard of life that that this does get fogged up a little bit but that was because it had a cover on it i think i used to have that

mirror i mean there are a lot of i'm sure shower mirrors i i've said this before on the show I realized, but that's the only time that I kind of regret having a beard is, um, I love the experience of, of shaving in the shower. I remember I had a high school teacher who encouraged us to try that. Um, and at first I would do it without a mirror and you just do it by touch. Uh, and so you have to be very deliberate about it. But then I did get one of those suction cup mirrors, a little round one, um, that actually mine fogged up quite a bit, even though it promised not to. So, again, I mostly did it by feel, but there's something about the experience of shaving in the shower that I love so much and I miss, but I'm too scared of my face to do it.

I'm not surprised to hear that because I know you love brushing your teeth in the shower.

I do. Yeah. Well, that's more of a practical thing. I wouldn't say I love it. It's not the same kind of experience, but it is easier to brush your teeth in the shower with an electric toothbrush because, you know, sometimes it just gets messy. um

Corey also brings up a good point which is just the the tremendous rattle and clatter of a shower mirror falling in the middle of the night or at the Bellingham house the problem was we had one of those like a squeegee that was in the shower and it was on a hook and that hook Was suction cupped to the wall And about once every three months It would just give out in the middle of the night And it was always terrifying And I don't know who's in charge Of that technology The suction cup in the shower technology But they really need to up their game

Do you know that Teddy Roosevelt slept with a pistol Next to his bed As President of the United States Would that surprise you? No, I would assume he had a pistol in his mustache Well, I didn't say that You didn't let me finish He kept it in his mustache.

Now, where were you reading that fun fact? I am reading this. I think I told you a while back.

I had finished.

one nonfiction book i sound like such a child when i say this but um i don't read a lot of nonfiction but i had um just read that book about the lucitania um and i said you know i kind of want to read another book um that this is you know teddy roosevelt is a different era but i find him sort of interesting and i think i said it on the show and somebody suggested reading um this book called uh theodore rex which is a book about you know it's a biography of his presidential years by Edmund Morris and this is where I'm in Edmund Morris is the guy oh really of history

yeah he writes he wrote I think he wrote biographies of like Reagan and he writes these big kind of you know he's a like David McCullough type

it's interesting because the book Theodore Rex came out in like 1995 but then this is where I'm weird like that's what I mostly wanted to read was the presidential years but when I saw that it was part of a trilogy I immediately am like well I got to be a completist about it. Like, I don't like to jump into book two of a three-book trilogy. It doesn't even matter in this case. And also, I'm like, am I really going to get through three biographies in a row of Teddy Roosevelt? Like, most likely not. But I went back, so I started the first one, and it must be – it's a digital book, so I can't, like, kind of flip and see how big the appendix is. But this must be a pretty big book because I keep on turning pages, and I'm still in, like, 3% in, maybe slightly more. Do not mess with Robert Caro. You would literally be reading Robert Caro until your life is over. Well, if I try to finish this trilogy, I'm already embarrassed. I know that if I try to read this trilogy all three books in a row, it will be probably three years from now. I'll still be telling you. Do you know that when Teddy Roosevelt died, he was carried with a gun?

I like that. And maybe I'll start reading Robert Caro, and then you'll tell me a Teddy Roosevelt fact, and I'll tell you a Lyndon Johnson fact. I am finding it really interesting for whatever that's worth. Well, thanks for the great voicemail, Corey, and congratulations on your newly, even more functional shower mirror. Maybe I'll shave today.

Why have I just did that?

Hey, I was thinking, could we go out with a little Kim Gunmo, my really only contact point with K-pop music? Could we wrap things up with that today?

Did you say that you used to eat to this music? You would go to some...

It started with I would go to this teriyaki joint. Yeah, that's what I thought he used to. And the guy who worked there, like I just, you know, swing in and get lunch or whatever, like to go usually. But he was always playing this really great music. And one day I went and I was like, what is this? And he's like, oh, it's a guy named Kim Gunmo. And I was like, oh, okay. So then I think I got the CD, this like CD called In My Pops. And used to, you know, bump that in my Honda Accord or whatever.

I'm just trying to decide now Because now I'm kind of hungry for teriyaki And now I'm taking teriyaki

When did they come up with impossible teriyaki

Can I get a teriyaki sandwich at Subway

You 100% can

That's a thing That would solve all my problems Alright, maybe I'll think about that

Alright, we're going to go out with that then A little Kim Gunmo Thank you everyone for listening Thanks for being part of TVTL We'll see you tomorrow Until then, stay safe, take care of yourself And please remember, no mountain too tall And good luck to all

Like the sun Our love has only just begun Take my hand and lead me to the ocean Baby, share our love and emotions Tonight is perfect time for us to demonstrate our love Even through the hard times I have never lost my feeling No matter what you ask for girl, you know that I was willing So take some time to think about the love you've been receiving Nothing in this world compares to love that you've been giving Show your smile And baby let it shine just like the sun Our love has only just begun, my love Girl, don't you worry about the life before us Our love has only just begun, yeah Power out.